Adding Images to Your Article: Uploads and Alt Text

Images go straight into your article, in the order's editor, so they travel with the text from your first draft to the publisher's site. This guide shows how to add images to your article: uploading or dropping files, pasting a Google Doc with its pictures, writing alt text, choosing a featured image, and what to do when an image won't upload.

Who Can Add Images, and When

Images are added by whoever is writing the article, while it's their turn to edit:

• Guest Post orders: you, the buyer, write the article and add its images.
• Article orders: the publisher writes the article and adds the images.

While the article is your draft, only you can see its images. The other side sees them once you submit the article for review, exactly as with the text.

How to Add Images to Your Article

1. Open the order, go to the Content tab and click Edit content.
2. Click where the image should go, then click Add image on the toolbar.
3. On the Upload side, drop your image files onto the box or click Choose files. You can add several at once, and each one starts uploading straight away with its own progress bar.
4. Type each image's Alt text in the field under it (more on alt text below).
5. Click Insert, or Insert 3 images when you've added several.

To use an image that's already online, switch to By address and paste its address. It must start with https://.

A few details worth knowing:

• Changed your mind about a file? Click the ✕ on its row before inserting.
• An upload failed because the connection dropped? Its row offers Try again. A file that was refused shows why instead (see troubleshooting).
• Closing the popup inserts nothing. Any file it had already uploaded is deleted automatically later.
• Images can't go inside a table, so Add image is off while the cursor is in one.

Faster Ways to Add Images

You don't have to open the popup first:

• Drop image files onto the article. The popup opens with them already uploading, so you only need to add alt text and click Insert. Dropped onto a paragraph, the images go before or after it rather than splitting it.
• Paste a screenshot or an image you've copied. The popup opens with it uploading.
• Paste content that has images inside it. The text pastes as usual. Images that came with the copied content open the popup to be uploaded, while images that live on another website keep pointing there, as if you'd used By address.
• Drag an image from a web page. It's added by its web address, without the popup.

Pasting From Google Docs

Writing in Google Docs? Paste the whole document into the editor. Its images come with it: Serpverse copies each one as you paste, cropped the way it looks in your doc.

• While it copies, each image shows "Copying from Google Docs…", and the footer under the article counts how many are still copying. Wait for that count to clear before you leave the editor. If you click Done too soon, you're asked first, with Keep editing and Leave anyway.
• If an image can't be copied, usually because of how the doc is shared, it's flagged Not copied from Google Docs. Upload it, and the footer shows how many weren't copied. It still shows from Google for now, but it stops working if the doc's sharing changes. Download that image from your doc, then click the flag to upload it in its place, alt text included.
• Rotated images come across unturned. If you rotated an image in Docs, rotate the image file itself and upload that instead.

Writing Alt Text

Alt text is a short description of what an image shows. Screen readers read it out in the image's place, search engines use it to understand the image (Google explains why in its image SEO best practices(opens in new tab)), and the publisher receives it with each image file when they put your article on their site.

Alt text is recommended for every image, but it's never required: nothing stops you submitting an article that has images without it. Serpverse just makes the gaps easy to spot:

• In the popup, an empty alt text field shows a reminder in amber.
• In the article, an image without alt text has a dashed outline and an Add alt text flag. Click the flag to add it.
• In the footer, a count such as "2 without alt text" takes you to the next image that needs it.
• To change alt text later, click the image, then click Edit alt text on the toolbar.

Adding a Featured Image

The featured image sits above the article, apart from its text, and you set it under Publishing details in the editor.

1. Click Add featured image.
2. Upload one file, or add one by address.
3. Click Add.

Once it's set, the image has three buttons: Alt text, Change (which keeps the current alt text unless you edit it) and Remove. An image without alt text shows "No alt text" as a reminder. If the same image is in the article too, you're warned that it would appear twice, since most themes show the featured image above the post.

Some sites require a featured image with every guest post, and then you can't submit without one. If Serpverse has removed the one you chose, submitting says: "Serpverse removed this article’s featured image. Add another under Publishing details before submitting."

Image Formats and Limits

SVG and HEIC files aren't accepted. Export an SVG as a PNG, and an iPhone's HEIC photo as a JPEG, then upload that.

What Serpverse Does to an Uploaded Image

Before an upload is saved, Serpverse:

• removes the details cameras and phones save in the file, such as where and when a photo was taken and on what device;
• turns it the right way up, so a phone photo never arrives sideways;
• converts its colours to a standard colour profile, keeping the richer colours of a photo taken in wide colour.

Everything else stays as you uploaded it: the format, the full dimensions and high quality, with no resizing. The publisher receives that full-size file, so their site's own size rules apply to it. In the editor and the previews, tall images are shown shorter to fit the page, but the file itself isn't changed.

Who Can See Your Images, and How Long They're Kept

Uploaded images are private to the order. Only the order's buyer and publisher, and Serpverse's team, can see them, and they never have a public address that works anywhere else. That's also why the publisher downloads them to put the article on their site: our guide to downloading an article's images covers their side.

• Images you don't use, such as files in a popup you closed, or images you took out before submitting, are deleted automatically, usually within a few days.
• Images in any version of the article you submitted stay with the order's content.
• If our team hides or removes an image, its place in the article on the order's Content tab says why: "Serpverse is reviewing this image" or "Removed by Serpverse". In the editor, the image simply won't load. Take it out, and add another if the article needs one. Our guide to orders under review explains both.

For deleting your data, including images you've uploaded, see our Privacy Policy.

Troubleshooting: Why an Image Won't Upload

Each refusal appears in the image's own row in the popup:

"Uploading is paused while this order is under review or in a dispute." While an order is paused, you can keep working on the text and add images by their address. Uploading comes back once the review or dispute ends.

Still stuck? Open a ticket from the Support page in your dashboard, with the order and the image's file name.