Report: A picture is worth 1,000 views

From personal blogs to business blogs, newspaper articles to magazine articles, content is filling up the Internet fast. In some cases, faster than consumers can read it. Publishers can't control every piece of content filling up the 'Net, but they can control how their content is viewed - and by adding one simple aspect may increase the number of reads.

by Kristina Knight

That one aspect? Images. New data from Skyword finds that content with related images had 94% more page views than non-imaged content. For example, two articles are written about the Texas Drought. The piece with an image gets 94% more views than the piece that is words only.

Other interesting findings include:

• News, sports and politics content categories received the most benefit from images
• Images with captions and metadata optimized for search pushed performance even higher
• In all content categories, articles with images performed higher than articles without images

According to the Newspaper Association of America visits to newspaper websites increased 20% from September 2010 to September 2011. On average for Q3 just over 110 million unique users visited newspaper websites (age 18+, 64% of all adult Internet users).

"This strong audience growth coincided with the introduction of paywalls at many newspaper companies," said Caronline Little, NAA President and CEO. "Clearly, consumers place high value upon the content that newspapers create - and they are seeking out newspaper websites to get it."

Other interesting findings include:

• 74% of newspaper website audiences are from affluent (earning $100,000 and up) households
• 58% of visitors are between ages 18 and 34
• 62% of visitors have children living at home

Skyword analyzed the content produced within its infrastructure for the report.

Tags: content images, NAA, online content, online publications, optimized content, optimized images, Skyword