Images can make or break your website. Images that look beautiful, crystal clear and sharp can lead to a better user experience. Moreover, according to Google’s Panda algorithm, images are one of the top ranking factors in search engine results.
Therefore, keeping your images clean and well-optimized is essential for success with search engines and online marketing initiatives. Image optimization has several benefits to users, website owners and Google as an algorithm. It optimizes the image file size without degrading its quality or causing visible artifacts in visual perception.
With an optimized image file size, it makes more sense for the human eye when looking at images on the page. It also makes it easier for crawlers like Googlebot to index websites with images that are tagged as relevant content rather than irrelevant code. In this article, you will learn what exactly is image optimization?
You will discover some important steps you need to take to get started with this process and end up with a higher-quality image file size–optimized image files in no time!
What is Image Optimization?
An image is a computer file that contains an image of a visual representation. Images are commonly associated with photos, paintings, drawings, cartoons, computer graphics, and other visual representations such as maps. To be considered an image, the content of the image file must be a computer file. The image file formats that can be used for SEO include png, jpg, gif, and other non-animated formats.
When optimizing an image for SEO, you should consider the following factors.
- Image Type – Choose which type of image you use for your site. Images of websites, images of products for sale, or images of product demonstrations offer more value to your visitors than images of food, holiday celebrations, sunsets, or landscapes.
- File Size – Reduce the file size of your images. The smaller the file size, the better it makes the image file crawl by a search engine like Google.
- Image Format – Choose a format that is non-animated and will result to a smaller image file size.
- Image Alignment – You may have noticed that some images are misaligned. If so, try aligning them properly.
- Image Resizing – Resizing an image may result to degradation of its quality. When you resize an image, use an algorithm that is related to the resolution of the image file and will make it appear sharp on the page.
Why is image optimization important?
Having the best-looking website or product is not enough if the content is not at least readable. But without images, how would we show our products or explain our services?
In fact, according to research, images make up 60% of the total website load time. Images also enhance user experience and impact of content by adding clarity, depth and context. Image optimization not only helps you improve your online presence, but also improves the ranking of the images in search results. Images are one of the ranking factors in search engine results.
Therefore, keeping your images clean and well optimized is essential for success with search engines and online marketing initiatives.
Image File Formats for Image SEO
There are several image file formats available for use in web development. Most of the modern browsers support several file formats such as png, gif, jpg, and bmp. However, for better image optimization, you may choose to use the non-animated formats, such as png, jpg, gif, and web-friendly formats that are best for the web such as webm.
The animated or non-animated formats for image SEO have different effects on image rank in the SERPs. For example, a small image in an article with large font size is best for page rank in a long vertical article and may get a little boost for image rank in images.
Identify Your Image Type and Size Requirements
Once you’re aware of the key factors that determine your image optimization success, it’s time to identify your image type and size requirements. Web developers use different image types for different purposes. In general, the most popular image types are gif, png, and jpg.
You may also consider choosing other formats like webp if your images are best suited for the web. These image types are associated with different file sizes. Large image file types like gif and png result to relatively large image file sizes. On the other hand, small image file types like jpg and webp result to relatively small image file sizes.
The image type and size requirements vary according to a variety of factors. The most common factors determining image file size requirements are the:
- The visual clarity of the image
- The page layout and design
- The text length in the article
- The user experience in reading the article
- The number of images in the article
Find and Use a Good Tool for Image SEO
When it comes to image optimization, there are several image optimization tools available online. However, image optimization is an art. Therefore, you need to follow the steps below and use a good image optimization tool.
- Browse through the image optimization results of different tools and make a decision based on the following factors
- The size and type of images used on your site – The number and layout of images on your site – Your user experience when accessing your site and how the images load on the page
- The overall design and visual clarity of your site– The image optimization results of different tools differ greatly. Therefore, it’s essential to use the tool that provides you with the best results.
Image optimization is an art and it’s important to use a tool that will guide you through the process. Some Useful Post: Google Hummingbird Algorithm
Steps to Achieve Image Optimization
Now that you are aware of the key factors that determine your image optimization success and have identified your image type and size requirements, it’s time to start implementing the steps. Image file optimization is a process that involves a lot of work and time. Therefore, you need to follow a strict workflow to achieve image optimization.
You need to optimize the image files in four steps before you can start seeing a difference in your image file size.
– Define the goal and objective of image optimization – You need to define the goal and objective of image optimization and determine what you want to achieve with the optimization.
– Optimize the images with right tools – You need to use a right tool for image optimization and optimize the image files with the help of the tool.
– Optimize the image URLs with right parameters – You need to optimize the image URLs with the help of the correct parameters. You need to use the key factors to optimize the image URLs.
– Analyze the image rank with SEMrush – You need to analyze the image rank with the help of SEMrush. This will give you the best insights on your image optimization.
What are the benefits of image optimization?
Image optimization can enhance the user experience and impact of content. When an image is optimized, the content around it makes more sense. – Image optimization leads to higher-quality image rank in Google.
Optimized images get a “rich snippet” in Google’s search engine results, which are images that are visually prominent and help the user find what they want. – Image file size and rank are important factors in SEO and Web crawling.
An image is one of the top ranking factors in search engine results. Therefore, keeping your images clean and well-optimized is essential for success with search engines and online marketing initiatives.
Important steps to take before image optimization
– Before starting the image optimization, you need to know the key factors that determine your success. It’s essential to know your image type, file size, and format requirements.
For instance, you need to know the visual clarity of your images and the layout and design of your website. Moreover, you should also know about your user experience and the overall design and visual clarity of your site
– Define the goal and objective of image optimization
– Before you start implementing any image optimization workflow, you need to know what you want to achieve.
– Identify your image type and size requirements
– Before you start image optimization, you need to know what image type and size requirements your website has.
– Optimize the images with right tools – Before you start implementing any image optimization workflow, you need to know the right tools for the job.
– Optimize the image URLs with right parameters
– Before you start implementing any image optimization workflow, you need to know the right parameters for the job.
– Analyze the image rank with SEMrush
– Before you start implementing any image optimization workflow, you need your website’s image rank management in place with a tool like SEMrush.
The 3 Important Steps to Take when starting with image optimization
There are three key steps to take when you start with image optimization. These will help you get a better understanding of what image optimization is and how to apply it to your images.
These steps are:
– Select a method of image optimization – This is the first step. You need to decide on the method of image optimization you will be using to optimize your images. You can apply multiple methods of image optimization to an image to optimize it for different users or platforms.
For example, graphical user interface (GUI) or web browsers (e.g. desktop, web and mobile) can receive different image formats compared to image hosting servers like Google Cloud Storage or Amazon Web Services (AWS). Therefore, you need to choose the right image optimization method for the right audience.
– Apply image optimization
– The second step is to apply the chosen method of image optimization to your images. This optimization process will reduce the file size of your images while maintaining their quality. – Re-optimize images when necessary
– The final step is to re-optimize your images when necessary. This means that you need to re-optimize any images that have a chance to be indexed by a search engine. Image optimization software like ImageOptim can be used to re-optimize images on a daily basis. You can also use a website like ImageOptim to re-optimize all of your images.
Image Optimization For Web
Image optimization for web is the act of modifying images to improve the load time and page load time of a website. Image optimization is most effective when it is performed on the web server that stores images. Image hosting providers like Amazon Web Services (AWS) or Google Cloud Storage offer tools that allow you to perform image optimization for your website.
Depending on the hosting provider and product, you can use different image optimization software like AWS’s S3 Tools. Image hosting providers take care of the heavy lifting of storing and delivering your content. However, you need to take care of the optimization of your images to ensure that they are as small as possible. In other words, you need to optimize your images for the web.
Conclusion
Image optimization is one of the most important aspects of website development. Images affect first impressions greatly, whether you are on a search engine, social media, or news site. Having appealing images will certainly increase your chances of improving your conversion rate. Image optimization is the process of reducing image file size without losing much of the image quality.
It is a complex issue that requires a lot of knowledge and experience, which can only be attained by specialized professionals. Image optimization is an ongoing process. You can’t just stop after you achieve the best possible results. You need to keep optimizing to keep your images as small as possible, as well as to keep them as relevant as possible.