How Many Images Should You Use in a Blog Post?

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Hello everyone!

A frequently asked question by content creators is How Many Images Should You Use in a Blog Post? I’m going to answer this question today but with some extra information. Can the number of images shared in my blog post impact my ad revenue? Well, you see, just throwing a number out there is not that simple and you should think about all the variables that impact your post when you share photos.

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How Many Images Should You Use in a Blog Post?

What is the Ideal Number of Images used per Blog Post?

This question is frequently asked by all types of content creators. So if you are posting makeup content, food recipes, travel experiences and so on, as long as you are a blogger, this post is for you.

If you want me to give you a short answer so you can skip the rest of the article then here it is. As many as you possibly can as long as your content will justify them. If you want a more detailed answered then keep on reading.

Every blog is different, every niche is different so each type of content is going to justify a different number of images. Me, as a luxury beauty blogger I can use more or less images than someone who runs a food blog. It also depends on the content itself and the topic of the article.

You should always keep in mind user experience and place yourself in the position of your readers. How many images would you like to see? How those images are going to help your user experience? You need to find value in those images as nobody wants to see the same photo or similar photos showcasing the same product, posted 10 times.

The final number of photos should be determined by the content you’re creating and the images you’re producing or licensing. Experts generally recommend 4 to 6 images for a long-form content but the goal is always as many as you can.

The more info you receive the more confuse you get? Let me share with you some examples. 🙂

My niche is luxury makeup so I’m focusing a lot on reviews of the latest makeup releases. This means that I’m reviewing eyeshadows, lipsticks, highlighters, you name it. I’m providing detailed reviews and many times I’m reviewing each product individually. So I’m thinking of my readers when I post photos. What they would like to see when I’m reviewing a lip product and how useful will those photos be for them.

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I’m not going to showcase that lipstick from 10 different angles even though the background is really nice or the sunlight glows beautifully on the product. Instead I’ll be posting 6 images and sometimes more by showing different details of the product. If it’s a lip gloss, I want to show a close-up photo of the applicator, lip swatches, details of the packaging and even before and after photos of my natural lips vs when I’m wearing the product. I like to top it up with a selfie where I’m wearing the product so my readers can get the bigger picture.

For food bloggers things may be easily different. Instead of running 6 images of the final product why not take us to the beginning. This will be a bad user experience as nobody wants to see 6 photos of the same thing. Start to rethink your content from a user perspective. What images you should use to help improve your content?

Think about offering them photos from “how to create the recipe” and start taking photos throughout the entire preparation process. Photos with step by step instructions will be very helpful for your readers so you’ll provide a quality experience for them by improving your content on the same time.

Many users love behind the scenes photos so you can insert 1-2 photos. I would appreciate photos with all the necessary ingredients before you start showing us how to create the recipe. If you are blogging for many years I know how hard it is to go back to the beginning and rewind in your mind all your experience. Try to think like a beginner sometimes and remember that some details that you don’t find them to be important can be crucial for your visitors.

One of my favorite domains is travel and I enjoy reading travel blogs but also watching travel vloggers. Travel bloggers can post a photo of every spot on a list of destinations they provide. Show details that will make each photo unique and not repetitive.

Running More Photos Will Increase Your Earnings!

Google loves longer posts as long as you provide quality content. Photos are part of that content and you know what they say… an image is worth a thousands words. Nowadays almost every blogger runs ads on their website. So you must know that the number of images posted in your articles can impact your revenue.

Every ad management company is going to lead with the revenue so they are going to tell you, the more photos you run the better. But keep in mind what we talked before and think about quality before quantity. I hope you didn’t miss my last blogging article where I shared Why is Alt Text Important for SEO? Every image needs to have an Alt Text so make sure you check that article and improve your content.

Running more photos in your post is going to increase your RPM, that’s facts! Many ad companies place ads in your content to preserve user experience, so the more photos you’ll have the more ads will be shown on your article. Don’t think only about money and get tempted to run photos just for the sake of posting.

Since photos count as content, the ad company is going to measure the amount of content that you produce (text included) and insert ads accordingly on the settings you usually control from your dashboard.

You’ll be able to serve more ads to users without disrupting your user experience by including more images, for the simple reason that they occupy more space than text. If you run “sticky” ads on your website then photo-heavy posts will improve the performance of this type of ad. By including more images you’ll be adding more “height” to your content, therefore users will spend more time on your page allowing sticky ads more time to refresh. 🙂

So if you are a reader, follower, visitors and you want to support that content creator this is another way to do it…by spending time on their blog. Every time a sticky ad refreshes (I have mine in the sidebar), the content creator gets paid for an additional ad impression. So every second counts, therefore additional images are great for optimizing performance.

SEO & User Experience

I mentioned before in my How to Write Quality Reviews post that being a blogger also means to learn some SEO. While everyone can write, not everyone can blog and I can’t stress this enough. You have to educate yourself on the tech stuff as well, unless you are lucky enough to have an IT expert in the family or as your partner.

Search engines love images and Google is one of them who also has it’s own image search engine, Google images. Google follows the user experience and quantity doesn’t automatically translates into quality. I said it before… don’t run photos for the sake of running more photos.

If you are going to run identical photos with the purpose to improve your revenue, you will fail. Don’t think you’ll be fooling Google because it will pick up that’s not a good user experience so it won’t improve your monetization or SEO.

If users are just scrolling past images because they’ve seen the same image the previous four times, you’re not going to get that increased time on site. This will make it impossible for you to create unique alt text and image file names that will help your image rank well.

Just ask yourself what your new visitors will like to see and how your photos will improve their experience on your blog. How your photos are going to help your visitors have a better understanding of your content? As a content creator with over 12 years experience, I know is not easy to create a lot of unique images. This depends on the types of content you’re creating and the specific topics that vary from post to post.

Photos by Unsplash