SEO - Avoid Too Many Visuals

You have probably noticed there is a trend to add less photographs rather than more with websites. This is because it is now common knowledge that many search engine spiders read photographs as blank space. This is why it is so important to add a photographic caption beneath your website so that the spiders have something to index.

It is always a good idea to add images and photographs to your site to give it visual appeal. As you are a publisher, you might want to think about magazines that you like, and mimic the layout and look of those. Try and think of each web site page as a page in a glossy advertorial and you will get the idea of what people find the most attractive.

When it comes to images, less is usually more, not only for aesthetic reasons, but also because certain types of images can cause your web site to act sluggish. A slow site can be perceived as a dysfunctional one and dysfunction of all kinds is read as bad SEO by the search engines. Two main graphic types take forever to load - Java and Javascript. If you hire a designer request that he or she avoid these applications.

Also having a very large image is not always the best choice for your website. One great thing about web pages is that the smaller the .jpg, the better it often looks. Also thanks to such tools as Adobe PhotoShop, it is easier than ever to improve the resolution and appearance of a badly taken photograph so that you can still use it on your site.

You can hire a graphic designer or you can add simple .jpg images by yourself. Remember that as a rule of thumb, the more graphics and images that you have on your site, the longer it is going to take to load. This is just going to frustrate your customer and perhaps have them move onto a similar site that isn't as "heavy" for their browser to deal with. Over time this type of aversion to a site can affect its page rankings.