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I did a little experiment recently on another blog I am involved in.

This blog rarely uses graphics in its posts, but I have started including an image in each and every post, in part because it’s good practice and secondly because, while I started this practice on 451 Press blogs much earlier, I wanted to be able to quantify the effects of this small change.

I’m not at liberty to release all the statistics to you, but I can tell you for a fact that using images increases page views by a factor of four, at the minimum.

Sometimes it was a factor of four, and sometimes it skyrocketed to a twenty.

That’s up to twenty times the average number of page views just by throwing in an image or two.

This blog was not doing too well before and the average page views per post was almost ridiculously constant, so we can safely assume that these increases are almost solely thanks to the inclusion of images.

The Many Aspects of Successful Images

Not just any image thrown in anywhere in the article will work.

You need to consider a variety of factors to optimize the results that images help you secure.

The contents of the image

We’ve probably all heard the story of the blogger who used images of hot women in every post, regardless of relevancy. It worked. Hot women increased his traffic.

While I like to go for something a little more relevant (I have used the above tactic with success and relevancy), consider how attention-grabbing the contents of your image are. Even if it’s not a hot half-naked woman, something that is odd, intriguing or just interesting works better than something mundane.

The colors of the image

This one is a no-brainer: bright, interesting colors work better than dull and subdued colors. Black and white pictures can draw interest, but on the internet, they have a lot harder time of it.

Not only is it better when colors are bright and interesting, they should also be bold. Instead of that lighter red, choose that in-your-face blood red.

The placement of the image

You can and should use more than one image per post. Spread them out fairly evenly throughout the post, with the first one right at the top - either to the side of the first paragraph or above it, beneath the title.

The lower down in your post, the less effective your image will be.

The size of the image

You obviously have to work within the confines of your blog’s theme and the widths it allows, but the bigger you can get the image without detracting from the content, the better. It’s there to grab attention so having an image right at the top of the post that takes up the maximum width of the content area is fantastic. Small images don’t get noticed.

The number of images

As I briefly mentioned in placement, the more images you can put in a post the better. Balance is important, though, and you shouldn’t overcrowd your content.

One image to every three paragraphs is a good rule of thumb, but you can get away with less. I only use one image per post, right at the top, most of the time.

There you have it; the five factors that determine how successful your images are in increasing an article’s page views. I hope you learned something from this post, and please feel free to leave your questions and comments.