Seo:Image Optimizer Page Speed
Image optimization should be part of every SEO strategy, as it enhances user experience, increases page speed, and boosts ranking opportunities.
Google takes page load speed very seriously and uses it as a ranking factor to assess search visibility.
Optimizing images also helps decrease website bandwidth consumption, making a shared hosting plan more cost-effective for those that use images on their site.
Adaptive image sizing
Adaptive image sizing is one of the key techniques for optimizing images and speeding up site loads, helping reduce bounce rate, increase conversions, and boost rankings in search engines.
Every website uses images, so it is imperative that they are sized correctly. Failure to do so may slow page load times for mobile users and lead to page load errors that impact conversion rates negatively.
Use the img tag’s srcset and sizes attributes to specify various display sizes for specific media conditions. The former takes a comma-separated list of image URLs with their sizes, while sizes specifies device-pixel ratio (DPR) measurements in pixels or ems.
If your image has a fixed size but requires different viewing experiences on different devices, this feature can be especially helpful. The browser will select and load an alternative that best fits each device’s pixel ratio instead of loading its original copy. This approach may prove especially effective for websites serving fixed-size images to multiple devices simultaneously.
An effective approach is to utilize client hints to inform browsers what size of image should be presented to users, thus helping avoid layout changes and paint time delays while keeping costs to a minimum. Unfortunately, this method can also be difficult for authors and maintainers to manage.
Lazy loading can also help your website save space; by telling the browser not to download all images immediately, but only serving them when needed by visitors, this strategy saves your website from having to download them all at once and reduces website download time significantly.
Adaptive smart cropping is an excellent way to optimize your images, automatically cropping them to fit the device they’re being served on for optimal viewing experience and longer engagement on your website. Your visitors will have an enhanced viewing experience thanks to this functionality, leading them to stay longer on your site and experience.
Resizing images
Images are an integral component of websites, but they can also be an enormous source of slow page loads. HTTP Archive estimates that 64% of an average website’s size comes from images; optimizing these files is therefore key if you want your site to load quickly.
Image resizing before uploading them to your website is an efficient and effective way to ensure they meet the appropriate dimensions, reducing file sizes and improving page speed, both essential components for conversion.
Tiny PNG or Image Smaller offer free web-based compression tools, while Sketch, Preview or GIMP offer software-based options that can further optimize images to reduce their resource requirements and thereby impacting page speed. By doing this, your images will become smaller and less resource intensive – essential steps towards speedier pages!
Google suggests resizing images before uploading, particularly for mobile, to increase the Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) metric which is one of the Core Web Vitals metrics and increase Overall Load Time (OLT) of your website, keeping visitors on your page longer. This can help improve CLS scores as well as the Overall Load Time (OLT).
One way to reduce image file sizes and improve performance is by selecting an image format with superior compression than JPEG or PNG, such as WebP-enabled browsers that use up to 40% less data compared to their JPEG or PNG counterparts, according to Google.
Use Imagify’s free WordPress plugin Imagify to convert your images to WebP format for better optimization, and see its impact on page speed before paying for it.
Search engines use ALT tags as a key factor when ranking images; visitors who hover over an image will see these as they hover, so adding them with just a few clicks of a button into your image description or title is easy and useful.
Additionally, SEO plugins will often automatically add ALT tags to images that aren’t your own such as stock photos. This can be especially beneficial if using an image not created by yourself but still wants ALT tags added automatically.
ALT text optimization
Image Alt Text (ALT TxT) should be an integral component of your SEO strategy, not only because it improves the experience for visually impaired visitors but also to help search engines better comprehend your images and rank them appropriately.
Best practice requires making sure your alt text is as descriptive as possible, using keywords when they make sense and don’t interfere with the message of your page. A general guideline suggests no longer than 125 characters for alt text length as screen readers (assistive technologies that assist visually impaired people) will stop reading it after this threshold has been reached.
One reason alt text is so crucial for SEO is that it helps Google understand what the images on your page represent and their relevance to its content – this has the power to dramatically boost how well your page ranks in search engine results pages.
Another key benefit for SEO lies in optimizing images for Google Image Search, increasing their exposure and thus increasing the chances of ranking highly for relevant search queries and driving more visitors to your website.
Also, high-quality ALT text can serve as anchor text for external links, increasing page authority and search engine results pages rankings. Furthermore, Google has stated that it uses ALT texts as one factor to determine image relevance to particular search queries.
ALT text should be an integral component of your SEO strategy and web design, to maximize search rankings while simultaneously improving speed and user experience. Optimizing it to the highest standard ensures maximum benefits to both sides – improved speed and user experience while improving search rankings.
As a great starting point to improve your ALT text, take a look at your most visited web pages and assess their image optimization. This shouldn’t take very long and will give an indication as to whether they need work or are optimized successfully.
Image sitemap
Image optimization is one of the key tenets of SEO, impacting page speed, organic traffic from Google Images, and user experience. However, its implementation can be challenging.
If you need a helping hand getting started with SEO for images, here are a few helpful SEO tips:
Image Sitemap Simplified An image sitemap is an XML sitemap that lists all of your website images in an organized fashion, making it easier for search engines to index them and increase your rankings on search engine result pages (SERPs). Creating one can lead to improved SEO rankings as it makes your images easily discoverable by search engines and can lead to higher SERPs rankings.
Image sitemaps help Google understand the visual content on your site, particularly if you utilize JavaScript to draw images. They also serve to index any images that might otherwise prove difficult for them to crawl – like those users access via JavaScript forms.
Image sitemaps can be created manually or with an automated sitemap generator such as Netpeak Spider. An automatic sitemap generator should generally be preferred if your website features many images.
Customize File Naming
Each image on your website should have a keyword-rich filename that relates directly to its purpose; don’t simply copy and paste its original source’s file name directly as this could negatively impact search rankings.
Optimize Image File Size
Optimize image files should be smaller than their actual display sizes in order to reduce page load times, which will improve site usability. Resizing images before uploading them may help accomplish this objective, or they can be adjusted depending on their context on a page.
Add alternative text to images Alt text provides a description of an image when it cannot be rendered by browsers; this feature can help visually impaired visitors read it more easily. Optimizing images requires including this crucial feature to ensure optimal performance for visitors viewing visually impaired pages.
Utilizing the srcset attribute on images is an essential SEO tip for images. This feature enables you to serve various image sizes on different screen configurations (such as mobile phones ) without degrading image quality.