Featured images are a really useful part of WordPress. But how effective they are depends greatly on how your chosen theme and plugins handle them.
They can be used automatically in lots of really useful places, such as:-
- at the top of the post, or as a header image
- as a smaller image to illustrate the post on category, tag and author pages
- in visual navigation areas such as ‘image sliders’ often used on blog homepages
- in ‘related posts’ sections created by plugins such as YARPP.
So they not only make your blog a lot more attractive, they can make your blog a lot more ‘sticky’ too. That is, your readers stay on your site for longer because they see more interesting things to click on. We’re visual creatures so images tend to catch our eye a lot more than text. Continue reading “Why WordPress Featured Images Are Important”