Are you tired of slow loading times and low search engine rankings on your website or blog? One often overlooked factor that can have a huge impact on both is the way you handle your images. According to Websitebuilder, 39% of website visitors will not engage on your website if your images load slowly.
Not only do images add visual interest and help to convey your brand and products, but they can also drive a ton of traffic to your site. However, if your images aren’t optimized for both your customers and search engines, it can result in the loss of potential clients.
By optimizing your images, you can improve the user experience, increase traffic, and boost your search engine rankings. In this article, we’ll learn more about image optimization and simple tips to help optimize your images.
What is Image Optimization?
It’s the process of reducing the size of your images to the appropriate format without sacrificing quality, dimension, or resolution and resizing the image to the appropriate dimension.
A well-optimized image can have a huge impact on your site’s health, including reduced load times, improved user experience, and improved web rankings.
Why should you optimize your image?
When you optimize images, you stand a chance of ranking in Google images and driving traffic to your website. Google Images is a powerhouse, accounting for an impressive 22.6% of all internet searches in 2018. And the numbers don’t lie – with a staggering 3.5 billion daily searches accounted by Internet Live Stats, it’s clear that Google is the go-to for finding what your audience is looking for online.
So, we can see that Google Images is a vital tool for internet users, with a dominant market share and a consistently high volume of searches, making it the go-to choice for finding your business online.
Aside from organic traffic, below are other reasons to optimise your images.
Higher ranking on search engine result page
Optimised images also lead to higher rankings on search engine result pages, as search engines consider page load times as a ranking factor, and slower loading times can negatively impact search engine rankings. Faster loading times also mean that your site will rank easily on search engines’ image search
Fast loading times
Increased page load speed is one of the characteristics of an unoptimised image. If your page takes too long to load, your visitors might get frustrated and move on to something else-ultimately leading to a loss in conversion. Page load speed is a crucial aspect to consider as it directly affects user experience and can greatly impact conversion rates.
Reduced data usage
In addition, optimising your images can reduce data usage and save money on hosting and bandwidth costs. Smaller image files take up less space and require less bandwidth to transfer.
Optimising images can also significantly reduce the amount of data required to load a page on the part of your visitors. This can be especially beneficial for users on mobile devices with limited data plans.
So, how can you optimise your images for both search engines and a better user experience? Here are a few tips:
9 Image Optimization Tips For SEO in 2023
- Use the appropriate image file types.
Different file formats are suited for different types of images and use cases. JPEG is a good choice for photographs because it supports a wide range of colors and compresses well, while PNG is a good choice for graphics with transparent backgrounds because it supports transparency.
For example, Imagine you have a photograph of a sunset at the beach, It has a lot of different colors and gradients, like the sky changing from orange to pink and the water reflecting the colors. JPEG is a good format to save this image because it can handle all those different colors, it will keep most of the details while compressing the file size.
If you have a logo with a transparent background, PNG is the best format in this case because it supports transparency, so you can place the logo on any background without losing the transparency. JPEG and PNG are image formats supported for the web. BMP and TIFF, on the other hand, are not suitable for web use because they tend to have very large file sizes, This means that the loading time of the page will be longer, and not all web browsers can handle them.
- Use alt text.
Alt text, or alternative text, is a written description of an image that is displayed if the image cannot be displayed for any reason. It allows screen reader users to understand the content of the image and helps search engines understand the content of the webpage.
To add alt text to an image, use the HTML alt attribute in the img tag. For example <img src=”image.jpg” alt=” Description of image”>. Using descriptive relevant alt text for each image improves accessibility and SEO.
- Compress your images.
Compressing images can significantly reduce their file size without sacrificing quality. There are various tools and techniques you can use to compress images, such as ImageOptim, Adobe Photoshop, etc.
- Resize your images.
Large image sizes can slow down your site and negatively impact search engine rankings. Resizing your images to the appropriate dimension can help reduce their file size and improve loading times.
- Use responsive images.
Responsive images are images that automatically adjust to the size of the device they are being viewed on. This is important because it ensures that your images look good on all devices, including desktop computers, tablets, and smartphones.
To create responsive images, you can use the srcset attribute in the img tag.
For example: <img src=”image.jpg” srcset=”image-small.jpg 480w, image-large.jpg 1080w”>.
- Use descriptive, relevant file names.
The file name of an image can impact its SEO, so make sure to use descriptive and relevant file names for your images. For example, instead of using a generic file name like “image1.jpg,” use a descriptive name like “red-flowers.jpg.”
- Use image sitemaps.
An image sitemap is a special type of sitemap that provides search engines with information about the images on your website. It can help search engines understand the content of your images and improve their visibility in image search results.
To create an image sitemap, use the <image:image> element in your sitemap.
- Use web-friendly image file sizes.
Large image file sizes can slow down your site and negatively impact search engine rankings. To ensure that your images are web-friendly, try to keep their file sizes below 100KB.
- Use lazy loading.
Lazy loading is a technique that defers the loading of images until they are needed, which can help improve the loading times of your website.
To implement lazy loading, you can use the loading attribute in the img tag. For example: <img src=”image.jpg” loading=”lazy”>.
By following these tips, you will optimise your images, improve your user experience and search engine rankings of your website or blog.I have a strong passion for search. It excites me to experiment with different strategies and effortlessly monitor the outcomes
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