Images are a powerful tool that enhances visual impact and engages viewers; therefore, optimizing images for maximum effect is important. This comprehensive guide has tips and tricks to help you get the most out of your images. That’s from choosing the right file format to compressing and resizing them for optimal performance.
This article will also help you create visually impressive images for higher performance. With image optimization, you'll be able to draw in viewers and increase engagement across your website or online presence. Read on to learn more about image optimization.
What Is Image Optimization?
Image optimization is a technique that allows you to get the most out of your images. This process ensures your images are correctly sized, optimized for speed, and visually appealing.
Image optimization is crucial for ensuring that your images perform well on your website and social media accounts. That’s because non-optimized images are often large, which can cause your website to load slowly.
Additionally, if you're using social media accounts, non-optimized images can cause an increase in data usage. This can lead to the flagging of your account.
Tips and Tricks to Optimize Images for Your Website or Blog
Image taken from Strikingly Product
Image optimization is crucial for anyone that wants their web page to work seamlessly. There are several ways to optimize images, but here are the ten best ways.
1. Choose the Right File Format
The first step in creating visually appealing images is to choose the right file format, or else you'll end up with visually unappealing images.
A wrong image file format can lead to improper display or blurry images. Popular image formats include JPEGs, vectors, GIFs, PNG, and raster.
Generally, the JPEGs and PNGs file formats are the best for SEO. JPEGs, which is Joint Photographic Expert Group, is the most popular and displays well on almost all devices.
However, JPEGs utilize lossy compression, which leads to data loss during compression. This makes this file format less ideal for a professional photography website. As mentioned, JPEGs work particularly fine with blogs.
PNG is another popular file format that displays on several device types. Unlike JPEG, it uses lossless compression, meaning it doesn't lose data. PNG also supports different elements, such as the transparent background. But their files are usually much larger than JPEG.
2. Compress Your Images
Image optimization doesn’t stop at choosing the right file format. You also want to have images that are optimized for speed. You can do a few things to ensure the opening and loading of images are as quick as possible.
You can achieve this by using small-sized images. This means that you’ll choose images that are small in size and have lower resolutions. You can also remove any unnecessary metadata, such as comments and edits from the images. These techniques will help reduce your images' overall file size without affecting quality.
The images you pick should also have a high compression rate. The compression rate measures how quickly one can save an image to a computer. The higher the compression rate, the quicker you save an image to a computer.
However, ensure you compress the images without affecting their quality. You can use any of the many tools to compress your web images, such as Adobe Photoshop and Canva.
3. Write High-quality Image Names and Descriptions
The image names and descriptions are other crucial aspects of web image optimization. This is because it allows you to provide context and information about the web image, which will help to increase engagement and improve click-through rates.
When choosing web image names, there are a few factors that you should keep in mind. Ensure that the image name is short and sweet but provides context and information about the image.
The naming and description of the image should also be consistent with the branding and style of your website. It's important to note that the web image name and description are not for keyword optimization. Instead, these aspects of the image are to provide more information about the web image.
4. Add Descriptive Alt Text
You should ensure that the web image has descriptive alt text. Alt text is the text that displays when the image isn't available.
It's a backup text if the image isn't loading or someone can't see it due to visual impairment. The alt text describes the image and provides context.
The alt text should be short and informative; three to four letters are enough. The alt text also acts as a description, so it should be accurate. It can also help boost the image's click-through rate and enhance user experience.
5. Ensure the Images are Mobile Friendly
The mobile experience is critical when optimizing images for visual appeal. Essentially, you want to ensure that your images are optimized for mobile and that people can easily view them, regardless of device.
First, you need to consider the file size of your images; the images you choose should be below 1 MB. The other thing to look at is the file type of the image. There are various image format types, such as JPEG, PNG, or GIF.
JPEG is ideal for photos, PNG for images with lots of colors, and GIF for images with many animated parts like flames, explosions, etc.
Lastly, you should check out the image compression. Ensure your images are compressed for easy viewing on a mobile device.
6. Optimize Image File Names
The file name of an image is another aspect of image optimization you should consider. The file name should be consistent with the image name and description. Additionally, make sure the name is as descriptive as possible. But also note that the file names have a character limit of 60-62 characters.
The file name should be unique and not contain any special characters. Generally, search engines also do recognize an image using the file name. Therefore, ensure that the file name is relevant to the web image. Overall, the file name should be short, sweet, and descriptive while also being unique.
7. Consider the Product Angles and Image Dimensions
It's best to show several angles of a product on your webpage. For example, if it's a car, you shouldn't only show one shot of the vehicle. Suppose you are planning to sell it and want to make the sale quickly. In that case, it's best to show shots of:
- The interior
- Exterior
- Engine
- Rims
- Rear
Make sure to create interesting and high-quality alt attributes for every product shot.
8. Take Note of Decorative Images
Generally, websites have various decorative images such as borders, buttons, and background images. In other words, any non-product-related image is under the decorative web image.
The decorative images are known to add an aesthetic appeal to a website, but they can cause slow load times. Therefore, you should be keen when selecting decorative images for your website.
9. Use Image Optimization Programs and Tools
There are many image optimization programs and tools. Some are free, while others are premium. Some programs will give you the tools to use in image optimization, while others will work for you.
The most popular image optimization tools include Affinity Photo, Adobe Photoshop, Gimp, etc. Pick one that fits your budget and meets your needs.
10. Take Note of Compression Size and Quality
There are several compression rates; each has unique effects on the image. The low compression rate produces the highest quality images, but they're usually larger. The high compression rate, on the other hand, produces very low-quality images which are smaller in size.
Lastly, there’s the medium compression rate which makes good-quality images. The file size of images that have undergone a medium compression rate is usually around 151 kb. This file size is acceptable as a high-resolution photo.
The Image Formats Supported by Strikingly Website
The Strikingly website builder is a powerful tool that helps individuals and businesses to create websites. You'll love the websites made by strikingly since they support almost all popular image format types. These are PNG, JPG, and GIF.
Additionally, adding an image to a Strikingly website is so easy. Click the "Add Image" button while in the edit mode. It'll ask you to add images from your computer, drag your file or type the link address to upload the image directly from the web. However, note that Strikingly offers various plans, and each plan has its storage limit.
- VIP plan- 10 GB
- Pro Plan- 3 GB
- Limited Plan-1 GB
How to Add Alt-Text (Alt-Tag) to Images Uploaded on Your Strikingly Website
Image taken from Strikingly Product
The image alt text is essential because it can help you get a better search engine rank. Note that search engines can't read images; the alt tag is the label that search engines read. Therefore, if you don't include an alt text in your image, the search engines won't see it.
Tips on How to Create a Good Alt Text
Creating an alt text is simple, but you should ensure it's great to get a better rank. Here are several tips that will guide you to creating the best alt text for your images.
- The alt text length should be less than 125 characters
- Use phrases that are unique, specific, and descriptive
- Avoid keyword stuffing or irrelevant keywords
- Use keywords that relate to your website
Adding Alt Text to Gallery Images
Image taken from Strikingly Product
1. Open "Gallery" from your site editor
2. Go to the image and then click "Edit."
3. Click “Add Title” (Put the alt text)
4. Go to “Add Description” (Put the image description)
5. Click on “Save”
Image taken from Strikingly Product
Adding Alt Text to Individual Images
1. Identify the image you want to edit
2. Go to the image and click "edit."
3. Click on “Add Alt Text” (Type the alt text)
4. Click “Save”
Conclusion
In today's digital age, visuals are more important than ever. Whether creating a website, designing an advertisement, or developing social media content, images are key to engaging with your audience. But to make sure your visual content stands out, you must optimize images for maximum impact. This article has all the information you need to optimize images.
