As the old saying goes, "a picture is worth a thousand words." This is particularly true when it comes to web design projects. Web surfers have extremely short attention spans and a few well-chosen and properly optimized images can do wonders in terms of drawing visitors to your web site and capturing their attention once they are there.

Here are 4 Tips to Leverage Images for Better Web Design Results:

1. Enhance the Message. The images you select for any web design project should supplement the written text on the page. In other words, your readers should be able to look at an image and immediately "get" why it is on that particular page. The worst thing you can do is pick an image because it is cute or funny, but distracts from the main points you are trying to make. It may capture attention and even generate a laugh or two, but that won't help pay the bills. If an image takes attention away from your intended message and call-to-action, you should replace it.

2. Complement the Overall Design Aesthetic. Care should be taken to avoid adding an image to a web page that competes with or clashes with the overall look and feel of the site. For example, if your web design scheme is based on warm, earthy colors and conveys a sophisticated and subdued tone, a silly cartoon image comprised of neon pink and lime green will look out of place. Your readers will be scratching their heads and trying to figure out why that particular image is there, rather than focusing on your message.

3. Incorporate Keywords. Adding images to your web design projects can do more than help communicate your message to your target audience. They can also be used to help the search engines find and return your web pages to online searchers.

There are two main ways you can accomplish this:

First, change the file names for your images to include a targeted keyword or phrase for that page. This will make is easier for search engine spiders to "recognize" the image. To illustrate, a file named "TrendyYogaPants.jpg" is more meaningful than one with a generic file name like "0983491.jpg."

The second way to get organic search engine traffic from your images is to use "Alt Text" tags. Again, use the keywords or phrases you are targeting for that particular page. Not only will this help the search engines figure out what your image is about, it will also help your human visitors by providing a text explanation in the event the image fails to load.

4. Optimize for Speed. Site load speed is an important web design consideration. This is because slow load times can negatively impact how your web site ranks in the search engines and cause visitors to quickly reach for the back button. Overly large image files can slow down your site speed, so be sure to properly optimize each file to the smallest size you need before uploading it.