For many entrepreneurs and marketers, images are essential to their business. Images can have a tremendous impact on both users and a website’s performance; Therefore, mastering image optimization is essential for your site’s well-being.
What exactly is image optimization and how do you optimize images for websites? We will share with you all the steps you need to take into account to ensure that your images upload smoothly.
In this summary, we’ll guide you through the following:
When you optimize images, you reduce their size without compromising image quality.. Your pages load faster when you reduce the size of your files. This is important for both your SEO and your visitors. The faster your content loads, the lower the bounce rate will be. Another thing to keep in mind when it comes to images is the imperative of good resolution which means high quality images. It’s pretty easy to increase the resolution of an image using tools like Photoshop, so you have to find excuses for missing it. But let’s get back to the topic of image optimization for speed today.
About a decade ago, Google decided to factor site speed into relevant ranking factors. Webmaster John Mueller wrote in 2016: websites should take less than 2-3 seconds to loadand that still holds true to this day.
Over time, Google has even developed tools such as: Google’s PageSpeed Insights, to help people evaluate the speed of their website. Countless other tools that serve the same purpose, eg. pingdom, GTmetricor Page Weight (which tells you how many images affect your page speed), but PageSpeed Insights remains hugely popular with SEO professionals.
Don’t forget to use optimization tools for better ranking, some of which are completely free.
If your images are too large, Google probably won’t be able to crawl and index them, and this could be another factor contributing to lower rankings.. Note that some of your visitors come from Google Image Search. Check your image traffic in Google Analytics), so do your best to keep them.
Another benefit of using smaller image files is, You can create instant backups. They also takes up less storage (this reduces the cost of backup storage) and consumes less bandwidth. Most hosting plans come with specific bandwidth limits per plan, so you should use your images wisely.
File Formatting
Let’s start by showing you how to choose the file format that suits you. There are many image formats, but the three most common are:
Image Dimensions
The pictures you take with your smartphone or with a professional camera have a large resolution of around 300 dpi and dimensions of at least 2000 pixels and above. But such large photos won’t fit on websites, they take forever to load. Sure, you want your images to look impressive, but still need to have a low load time. That’s why you need to change the image size in Photoshop or any other image editing software of your choice before adding it to your website. The resolution itself is ultimately not as important as the weight of the image, which should stay below 100kb or 150kb maximum. But more about that in the next section.
Image Compression
If you overdo it and compress your image too much, this will result in a small file size and a poor quality image. On the other hand, when a compression ratio is not large, the images are very high quality but also large.
As a rule, The total weight of your website should not exceed 2 MB. Ideally, the fast-loading website should be around 1MB in size..
With this in mind, consider keeping your images around 150 KB or smaller. Do not exceed 100 KB if you are using the PNG format.
There are two types of compression: lossy and lossless.
Lossy or irreversible compression means that some of the data and quality from the original version will be lost. Even after significantly reducing the size of the file, there will appear to be no noticeable difference. Of course, upon closer inspection, these differences will become more pronounced. If the new file size is too small, you may see some pixelated areas and jagged edges in your image.
lossless compression It is a method that allows you to reduce the image size without reducing the quality. No data is lost when a file is losslessly compressed, meaning the original data can always be recovered. However, files cannot be compressed more than 50% because no data is removed.
Image Name
Do not overlook this step. Giving your image files appropriate names is important for image SEO, as Google and other search engines crawl the names of your image files.. Avoid generic names, instead go the descriptive route and include keywords. For example, if your website has a picture of a car, you can specify its make and model in the filename.
At the same time important for optimizing alt attributes i.e. text alternatives to images. If for some reason the browser cannot render an image, alt text will appear instead. Even when a page is fully loaded, sub-attributes appear when you hover over an image. They are very important as they affect the SEO of your website and increase the chances of your images appearing in Google image search.. Be careful not to overload your sub-attributes with keywords, as search engines may penalize you for doing so.
Blurred Image Preview
This step is all about Creating the impression of fast-loading, high-quality images by loading a lower-quality version of an image first. While your visitors are waiting for the website to fully load, a smaller version of the image appears. It looks stretched to its original size and blurry, but it only takes a short while before the full-size image loads. Although it requires some basic CSS knowledge, create a blur effect actually quite doable.
Image optimization tools allow you to modify your images according to your needs. You can compress them, change file types, change image sizes, etc.
Adobe Photoshop
Arguably the most popular image editing tool Adobe Photoshop. It includes some impressive image editing features, but Save for web choice is particularly interesting.
Use this option when you need to reduce the size of one of your photos without sacrificing quality. will let you choose image type, image quality and dimensions. Watch out Quality and Turbidity Options. By changing them (even without touching other settings), you can get a high-quality image that doesn’t add too much weight.
Besides Photoshop, you can also use: gimp, tinyPNG, Small JPEG, Paint.NET, ImageOptim (for Mac users), clipping, ezgifand others.
Image Optimization Plugins in WordPress
WordPress comes with lots of nifty plugins that can help you optimize your photos without much hassle. However, no matter how strong each resize your images before uploading them to WordPress otherwise you may lose a lot of valuable hosting space.
Here are some of the best plugins for image optimization: Optimol, EWWW Image Optimizer Cloud, ghost, crush, Optimus – WordPress Image Optimizerand Compress JPEG and PNG Images.
Smush is the most popular with over 1 million active downloads, but whatever plugin you choose, it will all help you optimize images so your website can load faster. All you can look at is a plugin you install can compress and optimize images externally on their own servers. This way your page load time will not be affected by image sizes.
Solution
Image optimization is one of the decisive factors for the flawless performance of your website. If done poorly, you risk low rankings, high load times, and large bounces and low conversion rates. Optimizing images properly will not only help you lead a more successful online business, but will also save you lots of site storage, which you will definitely need as your website continues to evolve and expand.
Nothing good has ever come from bad UX, so follow our tips on how to optimize images for the web and your website will run like a clockwork.
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