Image optimization is something that anyone with a website should be concerned about. There are image analysis tools that help you to get a better understanding of the performance of your images, and it is highly recommended that you use these. These tools help you to fully understand how your images are impacting the performance of your website. But before you delve into the images on your website, let’s find out more about image optimization and why it is so important.
What is image optimization?
Optimizing the images on your website is the process of providing premium quality images that are in the correct resolution, size, dimension, and format while ensuring that their file size is kept as small as possible. There are a number of different ways that images can be optimised. There are a lot of tools on the web that you can use. When you combine this with a Content Delivery Network (CDN), you should notice that your website performs a lot further.
Why does image optimization matter?
There are a number of different reasons why you should optimize images for your website. This includes the following…
- Enhance user engagement – You are going to provide a better user experience once you optimize your website. This is because your website is going to perform better. It will be easier and quicker to use. If a user is on their mobile phone and your website loads quickly, they are going to spend more time on your website.
- Improve the page load speed of your website – Page load speed refers to how many seconds it takes for your website to load completely. The longer your website takes to load, the higher your bounce rate is going to be, and this will have a negative impact on your search engine ranking. A lot of reports and studies have shown that users expect websites to load within two seconds, so this should always be your aim first and foremost.
- Enhance your search engine ranking – This links to the former point, as Google does not like slow websites! It is clear that websites that are quick to load are going to rank higher than slow websites. Of course, there are a lot of other factors that are taken into account as well, but this is one of them, and it is an important one.
- Increase your conversion rate – Once your search engine ranking has got better, this means that you could get more conversions because you have a greater chance of capturing more users. Page load speed is directly linked to conversions and SEO ranking.
Important image optimisation tips
Finally, we’ll leave you with a few image optimization tips. This includes choosing the right format, creating unique images, compressing your images, and being aware of copyright. You should also make sure you customise your image file names, write SEO-friendly ALT text, add images to your sitemap, make your images mobile-friendly, define your dimensions, and create your page title and description effectively. Don’t forget to think about the image file structure!
As you can see, there are many reasons why image optimisation is important. If you want your website to perform effectively and you want to achieve a good ranking on Google and the other major search engines, you need to make sure that your images are optimised.
Written by:
Scott Weathers
