Last November I wrote a post titled Do Images Increase Readership? At the time, I had 7 posts in a row with some kind of image on them as an experiment to see if it increased my visitors any, because I’d read on some blogs that talked about increasing visitors that it helped. I doubted it, but wanted to see what would happen over a 7 day period.
Of course, nothing happened, because I thought it was a pretty bogus recommendation. But the comments ranged from my not doing the test long enough to the images not being really relevant to the conversation. That had been part of my point way back, that just because you put an image on a post didn’t necessarily mean it was relevant. I even remember Dennis and myself talking about it, with him saying he could put any word into Google and come up with an image, and my saying sure, but that image might not match up to the content of the word you put in.
Anyway, most of this month I’ve had some kind of image in almost every post. Some have been from Imagekind, where if you clicked on it and decided to buy it, or any other pictures on the site, I’d have gotten some money out of it. Those are the pictures with the titles, just so you know. Some have had direct relations to the topic. And a couple were there because I liked how they looked; so sue me.
Has readership, aka, visitors increased? Well, to tell you the truth I don’t really know. That’s because, for some reason, starting around April 13th traffic and visitors suddenly spiked in coming to the site based on that article on cleavage I wrote near the end of January. As you saw in my last numbers report, that post is killing every other post I have, and I have no real idea why. It’s skewed my numbers so much that I hope there’s not a bot that’s locked onto it in some fashion that will end up hurting the blog later on. That page is averaging more than 60 visitors a day even now, and has actually reached 100 visitors a couple of times; outstanding for what I considered a throwaway post of sorts. I’m trying to figure out new ways of monetizing it. lol
So, in lieu of trying to decompress all the numbers, I’ll just ask you what you think. Is it breaking up some of the text at least a little bit, have you found it intriguing, or is it getting on your nerves, or you’re totally ignoring it, because you see the same sort of thing on other blogs?
You have no idea why a post on ‘cleavage’ would spike you numbers? Hey, sex sells. Sprinkle a few more suggestive posts and I bet you’ll get even more visitors.
If I was you, I’d rotate your ads on that cleavage post.
Now, go check out my Ladybug photo. 🙂
.-= Scott Thomas´s last blog ..Sidelighting a Ladybug =-.
Actually, all of my ads rotate on every blog post, but I went back and added some text ads to that particular post that I figured some might like; no sales yet, though. It’s just the drastic spiking of the numbers that seems out of place.
And no, I’m not looking at no ladybugs! Got the word “bug” in it for a reason.
Good morning, Mitch.
It’s pretty obvious why your cleavage post leads the way in number of visits. First, we all love boobs. Second, you have a lot of celebrity names in that post and many of them are searched for a humongous number of times every day.
Have you looked at your stats to see how many of the visitors are finding the page via images and how many are from search engines based on celebrity names?
I still agree with you that images on posts don’t necessarily increase visitors. It depends upon the topic, what people are looking for, relevancy of the image to the post, and other factors. It’s not a silver bullet.
All the best,
JD
Hi John,
The word “cleavage” and anything added to it seems to be the main thing drawing people here. The one I don’t get is “belahan dada”; I don’t even know what language it is to try to find a language converter for it.
I have to admit that I’m now thinking that for long posts having an image somewhere does seem to break it up some. You’ve noticed I don’t always put the image at the beginning of a post. We’ll see if I continue doing it as often as I’ve been doing it.
I think images matter in some niches while in others, they’re just nice to have. I highly doubt that they will increase readership though, but I *always* include an image in my posts. If I don’t, then it’s because it’s a rather short post and it also includes a video of some kind. I can’t remember ever having published a post without either a video or an image.
It just looks better with an image – especially if it’s relevant, I’d say 🙂
Not a bad idea linking to Imagekind, but does people really buy “random images” of the net, like that?
.-= Klaus @ TechPatio´s last blog ..Mozy – Online Backup. Great, Except For Restoring iPhoto & Aperture 3 =-.
Klaus, people aren’t coming here to buy anyway, so it doesn’t seem to matter what I do. But I try. lol
I think images break up the text, make a blog more interesting, etc…
I do agree that it depends on the type of blog. A mom blog definately needs pics- that’s one of the things visitors look for.
On a business blog, pics aren’t as important as people are there for the educational content, not cute stories and pics.
.-= Carolee´s last blog ..Motivating your downline =-.
Thanks Carolee. You’re right, I rarely pop an image on my business blog or my finance blog, only here. And I don’t do it here all the time, just trying something different lately.
I’m thinking that too. lol You have no idea why a post on ‘cleavage’ would spike you numbers? Come on now Mitch… We all know why. lol
.-= Rose´s last blog ..My Epilator Experience =-.
Actually Rose, it kind of doesn’t make sense to me. Yeah, a small increase I could see. But the numbers are really drastic, and that kind of stuns me. I mean, I went to Google & typed in the keywords it says I’m being found for, and I don’t see my site coming up in the top 50 positions, so logically it shouldn’t matter.
You’re going stand a much better change of getting paid from the imagekind (or any other art site that offers affiliate percentages on sales) pictures if you also blog about the artist. If you just put them into a post into which they are not relevant, you are not only not doing yourself any favours but it’s not going to help the artist any either as then his or her art might be linked to something not to do with them. No offense to you, Mitch, but I wouldn’t want my artwork associated with stuff that had nothing to do with it.
.-= Val´s last blog ..Life goes on =-.
Well Val, obviously I know nothing about the artists, and I’m glad there aren’t the types of restrictions you’re mentioning when I do use an image from Imagekind. In my mind, promotion is promotion whether one knows much about the artist or not. I doubt most people know all that much about artists in the first place, only what they like when they see it. If this was a history blog I could understand that.
By the way, I guess that’s something you need to consider if you ever put any of your stuff on another site, how it might be used, even if that usage is legitimate, like how I’m using it.
Sorry, typo. ‘Chance’ not ‘change’.
.-= Val´s last blog ..Life goes on =-.
Mmm… yep, definitely.
🙂
.-= Val´s last blog ..Life goes on =-.