A report from Skyword found that using images to supplement news content increased page views by as much as 120 percent in some cases.

A report from Skyword found content marketing pages that include images are more likely to generate traffic than those without.

The company conducted a study and found that page views were 94 percent higher for pages with visual content than pages that only contained text. Notably, the study saw a difference between relevant pictures and those with images loosely tied to the article or not at all.

Additionally, images that contain metadata and other text that can be another plus for SEO, when used properly. As images can’t be crawled, marketers must remember to apply their keyword strategies to photo captions and descriptions to improve content visibility.

In terms of specific subjects, news content saw 120 percent more page views when photos were added to the page. Entertainment content received the smallest boost, but it still saw about 30 percent more traffic.

Best practices for content marketing will be a major topic of conversation moving forward. Brafton reported last week that more than 80 percent of companies plan to implement content marketing in the next 12 months.

Joe Meloni is Brafton's former Executive News and Content Writer. He studied journalism at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and has written for a number of print and web-based publications.