Being Freed logo

What is a featured image?

What is a featured image on a website? It’s the picture or graphic which you assign to represent a post or page. Mine is quite silly.
Being Freed logo with a ridiculous seagull

Where does it appear?

It often appears at the top of the blog, usually near the heading.  The featured image for this page is above: my logo plopped over a landscape with seagulls.  Yes, I’m silly.  And I like seagulls.  A featured image is also important because it appears as a thumbnail next to a link in search engines and social media posts.  The website designer integrates it into the metadata of the page so it appears on any platform that supports a link + image.

Why do I need one?

What is a featured image on a website? It’s the picture or graphic which you assign to represent a post or page. Mine is quite silly.

If you don’t assign a featured image some platforms may randomly select an image from your site.  Some won’t show an image at all. 

I add featured images to all my posts and pages, and it should be a priority for you.  Images grab viewers’ attention.  A picture, after all, is worth a thousand words.  The Yoast panel gives you a place to customize the image for Facebook and Twitter, which allows you to format to their specs.  You can also add Alt text and a Description to featured images to enhance your SEOFor more on images and SEO, see my post here.

Let’s look at my friend Mickey Marion-Rowe’s book, Fearlessly Different (which, BTW, you should buy here).  He’s posted about his book on Facebook & LinkedIn, and I’ve searched the book on Google.  Here are the featured images that automatically load. 

A featured image in action

What is a featured image on a website? It’s the picture or graphic which you assign to represent a post or page. Mine is quite silly.

Let’s look at my friend Mickey Marion-Rowe’s book, Fearlessly Different (which, BTW, you should buy here).  He’s posted about his book on Facebook & LinkedIn, and I’ve searched the book on Google.  Here are the featured images that automatically load. 

Facebook's image for book Fearlessly Different by Mickey Marion-Rowe
Image of Google search of book Fearlessly Different by Mickey Marion-Rowe
LinkedIn's image for book Fearlessly Different by Mickey Marion-Rowe

Use featured images on your site

A link with an image is more polished, more professional, and it offers an opportunity to reinforce branding by putting your image in front of more eyeballs, more times.

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Freed with her ukulele while scuba diving

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Did you know I'm Mailchimp Certified?

I’ve completed Mailchimp’s Fundamentals training, so you can feel confident about my skills with contact hygiene, templates, customer journeys, and other Mailchimp mysteries.  In coming blog posts I’ll elaborate on various aspects of the marketing platform such as tags, segments, and groups.  I’ll go into depth about customer journeys and why it’s important to design forms such as sign-up and update user preferences.  I’ll talk you through templates and how they can save you time and help reinforce your company branding every time you send a campaign.

Mailchimp Certification

Did you know I'm Mailchimp Certified?

I’ve completed Mailchimp’s Fundamentals training, so you can feel confident about my skills with contact hygiene, templates, customer journeys, and other Mailchimp mysteries.  In coming blog posts I’ll elaborate on various aspects of the marketing platform such as tags, segments, and groups.  I’ll go into depth about customer journeys and why it’s important to design forms such as sign-up and update user preferences.  I’ll talk you through templates and how they can save you time and help reinforce your company branding every time you send a campaign.

Mailchimp Certification