Nowadays, every person wants to bring himself on top of the search engine. But have you ever thought that which factors are playing a role in this phenomenon? If not, then we are going to correlate some factors to help you know about all this.
The ranking on a particular search engine like Google, Bing, Baidu, etc. depends on SEO (search engine optimization). People do optimize their blog posts for websites for getting visible to more and more people. But along with post optimization, you need image optimization for your site.
Image optimization performs well for ranking in google images and speeding up the performance of your site. It is all about reducing the size of the image to the possible range without diminishing the quality.
Not only for a personal blog, but image optimization is also necessary for the eCommerce website, and if you are running an online store, it acts as a cornerstone. In this article, we will help on:
How to improve site speed by image optimization?
Which tools are used for image optimization?
Why is image optimization important for ranking a website?
After reading this article, you will be able to perform image optimization of your site in the right way. Let’s Start:
Optimize Images to Improve Site Speed:
For proper optimization of images for your site to rank on the search engine, you need to follow the following steps. We ensure that if you perform these steps in the right way, your images will get a boost.
- Add clear Descriptive Name to Images:
Setting up the name of your image is a game of mind. You will have to think that what keyword or name the visitor (customer) will search on your site. Search engines crawl the information in the form of text from both your webpages and names of images.
For example, you have written a review on YF YOUFU Skateboard. The image you captured with a camera will have name say DCMIMAGE21.jpg. So, instead of using that name, use the name YF YOUFU Skateboard or YF Skateboard.
You can also use other keywords for this product searched by customers but in a descriptive form. Make sure that the name must be relevant and similar such as YOUFU Skateboard. It is an essential step for image optimization because if you put even a single wrong word, the product will not appear.
- Plain and Proper Alt Attributes Text
Alt Attributes are the texts that add more value to the SEO of your site and hence to its ranking. This text is necessary because if a website does not render the images, it may render the text used as an alternative. For better ranking on search engines, make sure to add a plain alt text to images.
The website crawls the source code in the alt attribute to show the image. So, to appear in the search engine, alt attributes have a more significant role. The alt attribute is always in such format:
<img src=”YF-YOUFU-Skateboard.jpg” alt=”YF YOUFU Skateboard”>
If your website page has more than one images, it is recommended to add alt alternative to each image. Finally, write the alt text in plain language and stick to the name of the product with a particular keyword. For speeding up your site, ensure that all your images have alt texts appropriately added.
Tools Used for Image Optimization:
As image optimization is all about resizing the original image without losing quality, so you need some best tools to make the editing. Before uploading your images to either WordPress or Blogger, use tools to optimize them.
Image optimization not only saves you disk space but also ensures faster page loading in high-quality. Google and other search engines use page loading time as a ranking factor, and hence image optimization is necessary. The best tools to have image optimization for your site are given below:
Adobe Photoshop is the most popular and premium software that is used by most of the professionals for their websites and online stores. If you are also running an eCommerce store, we would highly recommend Adobe Photoshop.
It comes with a built-in “Save for Web” command feature to save images well-optimized for the web. With this feature, you can resize the image to your desired size and format without losing the quality.
Like Adobe Photoshop, PIXLR is a free and easy-to-use app for the high-level editing of images, and you can use it on the go. PIXLR can help in faster editing of images in no time. It can open the file formats like PSD, PXD, JPEG, PNG, and much more.
PIXLR has different editing options, beginner to advance, i.e. PIXLR X and PIXLR E, respectively. For beginners, PIXLR X is recommended, and after getting familiar with it, one can switch to PIXLR E.
A free and open-source for image optimization and editing, after Photoshop, is GIMP. It offers tools that are necessary for high-quality image editing. For website and online shop owners, it is the perfect alternative to run on a standard specs laptop.
With GIMP, you can increase the creativity level and resize images properly. First of all, you need to open your file in GIMP and after doing required editing, select the “Export As” option. After that, you will see a “Save File” dialogue box. Here, you can file your name and export the optimized image.
Canva is an online image editing tool that can offer advanced optimization of images for your site. If you are a middle-man in the aspect of editing, Canva is the best option for you. For enabling extra features, you can turn to the Pro badge.
Canva Pro can increase the appearance in search engines if you optimize your images with it. This online tool is straightforward to use, and therefore, you can save your time by taking work to the notch. You need to drag the file into the editor, improve its quality by cropping or resizing and download your optimized image.
PicMonkey is another online tool for creating an optimized image for speeding up page performance and engaging customers. Most people use their tool for brands and products photo editing, but you can use it for image optimization of your site.
The image created with the offered tools is well-optimized even after resizing. So, if you cannot use any of the above tools, then PicMonkey can help you out with your work. You can use their mobile version as well for faster and on-the-go editing.
Importance of Image Optimization:
The main point behind image optimization is its importance or benefits. Once you have performed the above two things, you will get the following benefits as a result.
- Page Load Speed:
Page load speed is the most important factor that compels visitors to stay on your website. After proper image optimization, your website page will load faster, and so; the visitor will get soon what he needs. Websites with less than 2 seconds of load time are the perfect one.
For increasing the load speed, you must have to optimize images so that they get lighter, and consequently, the site will be lighter. Optimized images also occupy less space than directly used images.
- SEO Ranking:
Faster page loading, which is because of using optimized images, improves the SEO ranking. When the SEO ranking of your site gets improved, your ranking on the search engine will also get increased. So, it is clear that light and faster websites rank better than heavy and slower websites.
- Higher Overall Conversion Rate:
As the page load is directly related to SEO ranking, similarly page load is directly related to the conversion rate. When the search ranking of your website increases, more users will reach, and there will be higher chances of conversions.
- User Experience:
The fact is that a user will be encouraged when your website is offering an excellent user experience. Image optimization makes your website engaging in different aspects, which are discussed above. A user will spend comparatively more time on your website if all its pages load faster.
Final Words:
Well! That’s all about the image optimization for your site till now. Whether you are running a website or an online store, image optimization can do the best for you. Moreover, if you are uploading content on your pages, it also needs to be optimized.
In the current digital era, every factor that we mentioned is necessary to be considered. If you have not using optimized images on your site, start using them. It is going to bring a significant improvement in your website speed and ranking it on the search engines.
As we have mentioned that ranking improves because of a faster loading page, so make sure you use optimized images for this purpose. We hope that this article would have helped you know about the image optimization for your site. Best of Luck
