Graphics
Graphics provide eye-candy to Web pages and posts. They attract our attention, and often, the right graphic does more to pique our interest than the catchiest title ever. Moreover, quite often graphics provide information—they not only support the text, they augment it. There are things that can be said with a carefully chosen image or chart that can barely be conveyed with even a thousand words. What's more, on many blogging systems with sidebars for recent posts, only those posts with an embedded image will appear in the sidebar.
That said, it's important to realize that not all readers can see graphics. Not only do graphics not work for all all readers, they may even disenfranchise readers. Keep in mind that a lot of people read pages and posts on devices that may not show graphics, as well as the fact that many readers "read" with the help of technology—they don't see images at all. For those reasons, it's best to avoid using images to display important names, content, or links that are not duplicated in the main text. Google's crawler doesn't recognize text contained in graphics. As a courtesy, and an aid to search engines, us alt attributes (sometimes called "description" in WYSIWYG interfaces) if your page or post contains graphic data that can't be also formatted in regular HTML as text. Also remember that a surprising number of people will be reading on a hand-held device, or cell phone, or using dial-up. Use smaller images and link to larger ones to conserve bandwidth. Sometimes, the easiest and most efficient way to credit or link back to an image creator's site is to associate the image with a link to the original, but do be cautious. Don't automatically associate a link with every single image.
Keep in mind as well that graphics, whether photographs, true graphics or charts, are covered by copyright. Be respectful. Don't use images without permission. Be courteous, and link back to the original creator where possible and practical. Quite often, all the rights holder wants or needs is a copyright statement or image credit, and a link back. Don't use images you don't have permission to use. That said, I've never been refused permission to use an image when I've asked, specified where and how I want to use the image, and offered to provide an image credit, copyright and link.
