Images and infographics are essential elements of websites. Whether e-commerce, blogging, or any other kind of website, images are almost everywhere. Images play a vital role in a website’s performance and user experience. Images also impact the websites’ rankings over search engines. That’s why SEO experts and website owners are very demanding regarding images.
This guide will briefly discuss why image optimization is essential and how you can optimize your website images. Let’s start with the need for image optimization!
How to Optimize Website Images?
As per many experts, Google and other search engines give more value to images than ever. Furthermore, image optimization is not limited to only one thing. Therefore, web owners should know everything to ensure an image is perfectly optimized. Coming to the ways to optimize an image!
Reduce Image Size
Regarding image optimization, size is the most important thing to consider. The pictures’ size directly affects website speed, bounce rate, and user experience. That is why you must check the file size before uploading it. According to some experts, a picture you upload on a website must not exceed 4MB. If an image’s size is enormous, you should compress photo size using an image compressor.
However, remember that you should not compromise on the image quality while reducing the size.
Select a Suitable Format
Another crucial thing that you need to check is the image format. Usually, website owners don’t check the image format before publishing them. Instead, they just download the images from stock image platforms and upload them over the website.
However, not every picture format is perfect for every purpose. For product images where maintaining image quality is mandatory, PNG and JPG formats are the best. PNG files are comparatively larger than JPG files but are more detailed. JPG files, on the other hand, can maintain quality without putting a burden on the website.
Check Dimensions
You should always check and adequately use the dimensions for your website’s image optimization. If an image is not according to the website theme or screen, it will be stretched or cropped and look odd on the webpage. That’s why before uploading any image, always look at its dimensions; otherwise, it will ruin the user experience.
The most recommended size by many experts for images is 2400x1600px. However, you can also upload an image with the same length and width of 1500px when you have to upload it inside a blog post.
Why is Image Optimization Essential?
Images and other types of graphic content can make or break a website. Furthermore, this content also improves user experience and lets them stay on a website for longer. Besides, there are many different reasons why images should be optimized. Look at them below!
Boosts Website Speed
A website’s loading speed matters a lot as most visitors don’t wait for websites to load if they take a long time. They start searching for an alternative. That’s why improving and maintaining an adequate website speed is essential.
Image optimization is one of the ways that can enhance a website’s speed. When you properly optimize the size of all the images before uploading them on your website, you do yourself a favor as those images don’t increase the website’s loading time.
On the other hand, if you regularly upload pictures without optimizing their size with the help of an image compressor, the images will increase loading time and reduce speed which could be destructive for your website. So, get help from a photo compressor and maintain your website’s speed.
Also Read: Create, Edit and Publish Holiday Videos
Improves User Engagement
To improve user engagement and reduce bounce rate, you should optimize images according to the standards. The properly optimized images convey your message and let users stay on your website for a longer time. In addition, picture optimization improves user experience, and they spend more time looking for what else you offer.
When images are not optimized properly, and your website is slow because of them, it will enhance the bounce rate, and users will leave your website within a few seconds. Furthermore, they will not visit it in the future.
Increases SEO Ranking
A website is useless if it isn’t ranking on the first page against the selected keywords. Almost no one visits the second page of the search engines, so the websites there always stay away from the sight of internet users. SEO experts try multiple methods to improve website rankings over search engines, and image optimization is out of them.
Image optimization assists websites rank higher in multiple ways. First, by improving the user experience, which almost every search engine counts. Second, by reducing the loading speed and bounce rate. At last, proper optimization of images also strengthens the keywords, which assist search engines in determining what type of content is published on a specific webpage.
Optimizing website images is tricky, forcing web owners to hire professionals. However, if you equip yourself with some knowledge about image optimization, you can do it without anyone’s help.