Quick Win: Image Optimization for Blogs & Podcast Guest Headshots
Get found online by optimizing your images—with just ONE simple step!
Image optimization—I’ve been hinting at this episode for a long time, friend! And I’m finally here to give you the goods. I’m sharing my very own 3-step process along with my favorite time-saving tools—and—an in-depth look at how to create thoughtful Alt text! This is the PERFECT episode to tune into whether you’re applying to be a podcast guest in 2024 OR you’re just looking for tips to efficiently & effectively optimize images for SEO in your blog posts. Grab your MacBook & press play!
With this episode, you’ll be able to:
Learn how to optimize your images for SEO—in just 3 steps!
Uncover the importance of renaming your images (for blogs & podcast guesting).
Discover how to write Alt text for different types of images (headshots vs screenshots, etc.).
Don’t forget you can submit a question that will get answered in an upcoming podcast!
Links & Mentioned Resources:
Quick Keyword Research Tutorial
How to Blog w/ SEO (email course)
Styled Stock Society (images + templates)
Related Episodes:
Connect w/ Brittany:
This episode of The Basic B podcast is brought to you in partnership w/ Leah Bryant Co.! Help me reach more service providers like you by following the show & leaving a rating or review on Apple & Spotify!
The unedited podcast transcript for this episode of The Basic B podcast follows
Welcome to the basic b podcast, a show for the wannabe SEO savvy service providers among this for the coaches and consultants who dream of becoming known for their storytelling skills. Not to mention the solopreneurs, who straight up need to master all things social proof to increase sales. After a little reluctantly, fully committing to this online rather business, I quickly realized I needed to get people to come to me, I needed to tell them I was here and how I could support them. I dove headfirst into social proof, which led me to SEO, which led me to storytelling. And now it gives me great joy to share what I've learned with other business owners, so they skip the hard stuff and ease straight into sales. This podcast gives you expert insights, actionable takeaways, and casual combos with some of the online world's best and brightest experts and strategists. I think that's enough of an intro. So here we go.
Hello, and welcome back to the basics with B, which is our special Friday segment where I get into really like the high level takeaway from our guests interviews, or sometimes an actionable thing that you can do. I don't even know how to say that from there. But this week, it's going to be more of an action oriented task, one that I've been talking about for weeks, probably months if I actually went back to reflect on what I said in every single episode.
What we talked about this week on the regular podcast show was accessibility in SEO and podcast marketing. And what we're going to highlight today is this is the thing I've been talking about how to optimize your podcast guest image, your headshot that you send out when you go in guest on different shows. Or maybe you have a speaking engagement. Or maybe you're doing an interview on YouTube or something, whatever that image is that you're sending out to people, it needs to be titled better than like IMG 3579, or red headshot, or I've seen some weird stuff. And it's not that it's wrong, it's just not helpful.
So often, what I will do as the podcast host is, I'm downloading the image, I'm retitling it right away before I drag it in anything else, any other place that I'm going to use it, for example, I use Canva a lot to create the thumbnail for the blog post Anywho. That's an extra step that I am taking. Because I want my guests to be found. I need my organization to be on point. So it helps everyone. But not every podcast host knows to do that or cares to do that. Because we're all short on time every single person under the sun is going to say we're short on time, right?
So I'm going to walk you through three steps. But if you are just planning on being a podcast guest, all I need you to do is step one. That's all I need you to do. So we're gonna walk through, like I said, three steps for image optimization. And if you're going to be putting images in your blog posts, for example, this would be a really good tutorial, let's say, to stick around for the entire three steps. But like I said, if all you're here for is how do I optimize my image as a podcast, guess where I'm going to send out this headshot to a show where I'm being interviewed. All you need is step one. With that, let's get into step one.
I'm gonna keep this really high level really easy, really doable. Step one is to retitle your image. Now, where you're going to want to actually start with this is with keywords. But at the very least, you could do this part right now. I need you to have your name in the photo. And that's all I just I need your name. I need your name. So I will use myself as an example. If I didn't know anything about image optimization, I knew that I had five podcasts lined up for the next few months. And I was like, Oh no, I'm listening to the show and Brittany's telling me that I need to have optimized image titles. What do I need to do? This is what I would do at the very least, Brittany Herzberg podcast guest have it say that. And what you're going to do, there are no spaces between the words there are no periods between the words, you want dashes. So I would say it would be typed out like this, Brittany-Herzberg-podcast-guest, and then it would be something like .jpg
That is all you need to do. You could stop listening to this podcast right now, haha. You could—I don't want you to but you could! So start with keyword research. I will link it tutorial below. It's like six minutes long. It's really quick, fast, easy, and it breaks down keyword research. So it's very doable. You can go and watch that right now.
But what you're going to want to do if you want to take your image titles up a notch, I have a podcast guest images that I send out this a Brittany-Herzberg-SEO-copywriter, I have some that I send out this a Brittany-Herzberg-podcast-host-and-copywriter. So as a lot of words, and I'm saying a lot of things, you could always like, of course, write this out or go check the transcript, and I'll have that for you. But the point here is that if your face is in the image, I want your name in the image!
If you want to really make some impact with your images, whether it's on your blog, whether it's on your website, whether it's just an image you're sending out as a podcast guest have those keywords in there. And just what you might have noticed is that with my examples, with one image, I had SEO copywriter, with one image, I had podcast host and copywriter. So I'm really tailoring these images to go out to specific people specific, whatever opportunities that I have. And I'm making sure that those keywords that are in that photo align with where they're going to be used. So just think that through, it's only going to take you like at the most maybe like 15 minutes to do this exercise. At the very least, have your name and the photo, you want there again, to be dashes between the words, I usually aim for anywhere from like 3 to 9 words in a an image title, just because you don't want it to be 20 words long, but you also very likely want it to be longer than like one word. Because if you have a bunch of images on your computer, it's very likely like if I were to just say Brittany, for an image that I'm going to work because I have a lot of images with Brittany in the name. And I don't want it to just be one word. Another example, I have pictures of my dog and a folder on my computer, I can't just say Jac, I have to say like Jac in a beanbag jack on a walk different things like that. So I want to make sure that there are multiple words, I will stop harping on that friend. So that is step one, you could stop listening to the podcast.
Steps two and three are going to be really important if you're optimizing images for your web page, or for a case study or for your blog posts, things like that. So if that is you, or if that is you in the future, I want you to listen to this.
Step two, is really simple, although it's gonna sound really complicated, and you're gonna go, oh, my gosh, I have to do what step two is resizing your image, I know, deep breath, it's actually really simple, I want you to go to tiny png.com, you're gonna see a screen where you're going to be able to drag in whatever photo it is that you're optimizing for your blog, post, website, whatever. And then it'll take a couple of minutes, and then you get to download the picture. Here's the cool thing, it does not change the quality of the photo, what it does is it makes that image lighter, which makes it faster for that page to load for whoever's visiting your your blog post or your web page. It's magical. And it is that simple. It is free, there is a cap on how many images you can do. But I think to pay for it. It's like maybe $30 for the year. It's very, very doable. So that's all for step two.
Step three is a little bit more time consuming. This step is to upload the picture into your blog post or web page and add alt text. Be mindful. There's basically two different categories of images. There's the headshot, the lifestyle ones where it's like me typing on a computer, me walking my dog. And then there's the ones that are more like graphics or screenshots. So if you heard my episode with Jamar, you know that I would screenshot horror. And I absolutely love capturing the feedback that I get from clients or the questions that I get from potential clients or even just questions that I'm being asked in DMs or something. So whether you have graphics or screenshots, or you have headshot, lifestyle type photos, you're gonna handle the alt text a little differently. The biggest difference is that with a graphic, or a screenshot, you really want to not repeat yourself between the image title, the alt text and the caption, you do not need to say the same thing three times. Please don't. In fact, Erin brought this up in her interview, like it just gets so annoying and so repetitive to listen to that. When you're doing alt texts for more of like a lifestyle headshot picture, you can put the alt text in there in the alt text and just make sure you're being really descriptive of what you're sharing what the scene is. That's it when you're doing more of like the image where there's words like a graphic or a screenshot, that one you really just want to highlight. Like, for example, let's say that I grabbed a screenshot and it was a paragraph long, I only want to pull out that very likely that one sentence that is what I want to share with the reader or the website visitor. So just be really mindful of that.
That's it! You retitle the image, you resize the image and then you upload the image to your website. Again, if you're doing this for a blog or something, and you add alt text, and you're done. But at the very least please retitle your images. If you're a podcast guest—mostly for you, but also for helping the podcast host to stay organized.
With that, my friend. Next steps. Other things you can do, you have a couple of options because of course, I love giving options. One is that you can join the how to blog with SEO email course, we actually kick off the course on July 5. So stay tuned for that there will be information below here. And then of course, you'll hear ads and stuff like that for the podcast. And remember doors open three times a year, this is the second time for 2024. So that means the fall is going to be the last time which you could wait around for that or you could jump in now in start blogging. That's my pitch for that one, I hope to see you there. I've really fallen in love again with blogging. So it would be lovely to see you in there with me.
Option two is that you can stay tuned for a really special collaboration with styled stock society. If you've been a listener for a while or you've joined my courses, or you've been a client, you know that I really love their images. I hope them so much they also have templates. They're a really cool company. And they have really great stuff. So I've created something with them that takes you into even more specifics for how to optimize your images for SEO and accessibility. Stay tuned for that June, there's gonna be some really cool stuff happening. So stay tuned for that. Other than that, I'll see you next time!
That was really something wasn't it? Let that really sink in and guide you toward being the answer to even more Google questions. Thanks so much for joining me this episode. You are the reason this show exists and that it keeps growing. You know, thanks to all those follows and reviews. If you know someone who could benefit from what we've shared, send it to them. We don't do shy around here. If you've thought of clarifying or follow up questions while listening. You know what to do. Say hi on Instagram. Check the show notes for all the things that were mentioned and I'll talk to you soon bread