In this fast-growing digital world, it can be observed that content plays a crucial role in the success of any website. A major mistake made by people is that they only pay attention to optimizing textual content, as they consider it the ultimate source of climbing up the position in search engine result pages. Undoubtedly, textual content has a significant role in the success of a website; however, it doesn’t mean that you don’t need to pay heed to the visual content. Just like the text, you also need to ensure optimum optimization of images on your site. Images that are too heavy in size or have unsuitable dimensions can affect the performance of your website. It can burden your pages and take away all traffic from your site. If you want to prevent yourself from such a nuisance, then you should know how to optimize images for the web. In this blog, we will highlight the main factors you should focus on to optimize images in the best manner. So, let’s get started without any further delay!
Get the Images in the Right Format
Over the web, the most common file formats being used to post images are JPG, PNG, and GIF. However, not all of them could be right for you to upload pictures on your website. First of all, it depends upon the kind of website you are running. Secondly, you should know the optimal size of the images that won’t overburden your server or affect the load speed of your web pages. If we talk about the standard image format for the web, without any second thought, it is JPG. This format is preferred over the web due to its ability to store images in compressed sizes while maintaining their quality.
If you want to upload animations or decorative images, then GIF is the format you can rely on. However, they aren’t suitable for large product images, as their sizes can increase, and you won’t be able to reduce them. You can get your images in the preferred format with the help of image converters available over the web, such as JPG to PNG, PNG to JPG, GIF to JPG, etc. These tools can greatly assist in this regard, as they allow you to convert files without facing any intricacies.
Reduce the Size of Images
The size of images plays a major role in the performance of your website; hence, you need to reduce the size of images in the optimization process before uploading them. Reducing the size of images is important because they add up a burden on the website, which affects its loading time. If your site’s loading time increases, you’ll have to face the issue of a higher bounce-back rate. The higher bounce-back rate results in deteriorating SEO efforts on a website and declines in its ranking on search engine result pages.
Many people are afraid of reducing the size of images, as they think that the quality of images can be significantly affected. It could be true in some techniques you use; however, you can compress image online using an image compressor, which will help you maintain the quality of images while reducing their size. You can easily access this tool over the web and get your hands on a reduced-size image within no time.
Bring the Images to the Right Dimensions
Another important thing you need to take care of while optimizing images for the web is to bring them in the right dimensions. Due to the selection of wrong dimensions for images, the user experience can significantly get affected. If the users open your web page and feel that the image you have uploaded in it is going beyond the screen dimensions and resolutions, they won’t spend any further time and leave your site. It’s something that you won’t desire to happen in any case; therefore, you should make use of the right tools to get images in the right dimensions. Using an image resizer can come in handy to tackle this situation, as this tool provides the users with an option to set the new height and width pixels per their requirements.
Optimize Image Alt Attributes
While optimizing images for the web, many people miss out on choosing the right alt attributes. Alt attributes are the textual representation of the image you upload on your website, and it is displayed when a browser doesn’t correctly render the visual. You need to optimize image alt attributes, as they have a significant role in adding SEO value to your website. Besides the textual content on your site, your images can also get ranked on SERP if you select the right set of keywords. If you are running an eCommerce store, then it is inevitable for you to include alt attributes against the products’ images in order to get them ranked in the image search results of Google and other search engines.
