5 Reasons to Include a Featured Image in Every Blog Post (Including SEO!)

Whether you’re a small business owner, blogger, or marketer, including a featured image in your blog posts is a must.

Not only does it make your post more visually appealing, but it can also help with your SEO efforts. Keep reading to learn five reasons you should always include a featured image in your blog posts!

1. Featured Images Help Your Post Stand Out in Social Media Feeds

Including a featured image with your blog post can help it stand out in social media feeds, which is especially important if you’re using social media to drive traffic to your website. People are more likely to click on a post that has an eye-catching image than one that doesn’t.

2. Featured Images Make Your Email Newsletters More Appealing

If you include links to your latest blog posts in your email newsletters, having a featured image will make them more visually appealing and likely to get clicks. After all, nobody wants to open an email newsletter that’s just a wall of text!

3. Featured Images Provide Context for Your Article

A featured image can provide some context for your article without giving too much away. This is especially helpful if you’re writing evergreen content that you want people to be able to find and read years from now.

4. Featured Images Help You Rank Higher in Google Image Search

If you optimize your images for Google Image Search using keywords, you’ll be more likely to show up when someone searches for those keywords. For example, let’s say you write a blog post about wedding photography tips and include an optimized image with the keyword “wedding photography tips.” If someone searches for that keyword on Google Images, there’s a good chance they’ll see your image and click through to read your article! This can help increase traffic to your website from Google Image Searches.

5. Featured Images Give You Another Opportunity to Use Keywords

Including keywords in your image file names and alt tags helps with your SEO efforts and can help improve your rankings in Google Image Search results. So if you want people to find your articles when they search Google, be sure to optimize your images!

And there you have it — 5 reasons you should always include featured images in your blog posts!

Adding a featured image is easy & only takes seconds–so there’s no excuse not to add one before hitting “publish” on that next great article of yours. If you need help finding the perfect image for your next blog post or email newsletter, our team at Caffeinated Design Studio can help! We have experience choosing the perfect stock photos for every occasion and can even create custom graphics, infographics, and illustrations for you. Contact us today to learn more!