The most beautiful websites aren’t just homes for the best high-quality content and aesthetically organized web design layouts but also for uniquely beautiful and HD images. As a website owner, you must know how important it is to tailor your content for search engine optimization and your pictures. Image optimization plays a vital role in ensuring the success of your website. And while many tend to overlook that fact, we are here to help you learn about the basics of the topic and give you some tips on how to optimize images.
What is Image Optimization and Why is it Important?
Image optimization refers to the process being done to enhance SEO of the images you put on your website. It involves ensuring that the photos are in the correct format, dimensions, and sizes while ensuring that they remain to be in the highest quality they are supposed to be. It also calls for properly describing and captioning each image you put on your website. It is important to optimize images because it can significantly affect your page speed. An average site visitor gives a website at least 3 seconds to load before moving on to another site. This would then not make for a good user experience. Your site can lose visitors and even customers if the images take a long time to load or are not correctly positioned. Bottom line is that you would waste your high-quality images if you are not optimizing them accordingly. In addition, you should keep in mind that SEO ranking is also affected by how you optimize your images. Thus, image optimization is essential for your website.
10 Tips on How to Optimize Images on Your Website
1. Hyphens Over Underscores
While there is no proper explanation for this method, it is a well-known fact that Google would prefer that you use hyphens over underscores. This tip is focused on how you name the files and images you upload on your website. This is not the most essential tip, but it is helpful for your image optimization needs as Google crawls through the file names of the images you use on your website. So don’t just use hyphens to separate each word; also make sure that your file names are smart, relevant, and keyword-rich.
2. Simply Crystal Clear Descriptions
Image taken from Strikingly User’s Website
Our second tip is also concerned with how you describe your images in connection with our first tip. Your web images speak volumes for your website, your business, and your brand identity. Here, image optimization comes in the form of making sure that your pictures are appropriately captioned. You must be clear and precise with your descriptions. It need not always be extravagant and too wordy. Most of the time, it is best just to give your site visitors a slight nudge using a simple description and then let the images speak for themselves.
3. SEO-friendly Alt Tags
Alt-tags, or alternative tags or text, refer to the text that substitutes (or acts as an alternative) if your web images fail to load properly. Site visitors do not usually see it - you prefer it not to be seen because it is not a good image for your website. Image optimization, in this case, involves taking advantage of the fact that these alt tags are used as a basis for the ranking of your images on Google and even your overall website search engine ranking. Similar to our first two tips, you do this by being strategic in what you put in as your alt tag. It can also be wise to include the serial number or model number of the product you’re displaying if you have any. And without seeming too wordy or desperate, you could also use a relevant word in your alt tags.
4. Right Format Type
You can be the most beautiful girl in the land, but it wouldn’t matter to the prince if the shoe doesn't fit you, right? This notion also applies to image optimization. In your attempts to optimize images from your website, anyone that you have, it is essential to always keep in mind what file format would be most appropriate for them. While there are many file formats you can use, four types are most typically used: JPEG, PNG, GIF, TIFF. Usually, JPEG is the most common type used because you typically don’t need to do an image compression of your web images. They remain high-quality while also being the smallest in sizes. On the other hand, PNG is best used when the images have text and/or transparent background. PNG files are typically larger than JPEG. GIF is the best format type for animations. You typically also don't need to do an image compression, but it is usually not a good fit for still images. TIFF is the format type that is not as commonly used in image optimization as the first three. This is because while the quality of these kinds of files and images are highly beyond comparison to the first three, it also takes up a lot of space and data.
5. The Perfect Views and Angles
Image taken from Strikingly User’s Website
If your website is home to your brand and blogs, then this image optimization tip is a good one for you. Online stores have become prevalent in today’s time. Therefore, there are a lot of business owners that have established their business websites. If you are one of those, you must understand the importance of properly displaying and arranging your products that would best appeal to your visitors and convert them into your customers. Part of the process to optimize images is to take advantage of how your website can hold multiple pictures. Meaning, it is a good idea for you to showcase your products from different views and angles. Without losing sight of the previous tips, you can optimize your web images by providing various images to cover whichever side your customers would like to see. Take a look at this website by a Strikingly user, Isa Catepillan, and how she displays her dresses in a 360 degrees perspective.
6. Small but Incredible Images
Image compression and image resizing are essential for your web images, as the images you put on your website affect your page speed. Furthermore, larger images take up more data and can take up longer time to load. Thus, the most important aspect of image optimization is ensuring that your photos are reduced to just the correct file size and that their quality stays intact. You have to know the maximum file size that your website can handle, so you avoid the mistake of uploading images blindly. Ensure that the images you put on your website are suitable and appropriate for what it requires and what is necessary to ensure your success.
7. Originally Creative Images
Like the other content of your website, it is also essential to be original and smart about your images. It pays if you have your own camera and the skills to use it because then, you truly make sure that your web images are fresh and innovative. Keeping in mind the previous tips we have given you, you’d want to consider how unique the images you would be putting out are. Search engines like Google value original content. Part of image optimization is to control how much you stand out using the images you put on your website.
8. Just the Right Combination of Images
Image taken from Strikingly User’s Website
In connection with our previous tip, it will matter less if your images are HD and original if it is not appropriately positioned. Most people make the mistake of making too much of a fuss when they layout their web images. This is where image optimization comes in. You should know how to properly use and organize the images you have on your website. The right combination of a few images makes more of an impact than many images just splashed on the screen. It is important to note how your images look together. You can use a background image for your website but make sure that it does not clash and overpower the other images you are showcasing. Be creative and, at the same time, organized when putting your web images together. Customers are more likely to stay on your website if they like what they see.
9. Mobile-Friendly Photos
Image taken from Strikingly Product
Not everyone who will use your website uses their laptops or desktop computers. Mobile devices are not hard to come by nowadays. If you want to keep up with the times, you have to make sure that your website is mobile-friendly. Optimization of your mobile website can make a big difference for your business and brand. It can lead to a high bounce rate or significantly increase your SEO ranking and user engagement. The best way to optimize images to be mobile-friendly is to make sure that your photos are responsive. Images are scaling the size of the site it is currently being displayed on and adjusting accordingly. This image optimization technique would ensure that your images still look good no matter what device your site visitors are using.
10. See For Yourself
Image taken from Strikingly Product
Double-check, triple-check, and quadruple check! Our last tip for you about image optimization is always to preview your site. Before you release it out to the world, you’d want to make sure that it is exactly what you envisioned and tried to execute. You should preview your site and see for yourself if it works the way you hoped it would. We know that you are excited to share it with the world but it is vital that you check for yourself the page speed, the layout, how it looks, if all the buttons are working correctly, and if all the images are captioned correctly. You do not want to send out an untrained agent in the field, right? Don’t let your website and your web images go before you get a chance to reexamine them yourself.
Web Image Formats You Can Upload to Strikingly
Strikingly is a website builder that allows you to create beautiful websites. As far as images go, they can host your desire to showcase your web images in its gallery section. You can also use them with captions and descriptions perfectly placed beneath or beside them. Websites made by Strikingly can host a wide range of image sizes. Ranging from a background image of 1600x900px to small icons of at least 100px. These image specifications are not truly exact because Strikingly also helps you in image optimization and optimize images according to a wide range of screen sizes. They allow you to upload these images in three different image file formats: JPG, PNG, and GIF.
Of course, Strikingly won’t leave you hanging in adding alt tags and descriptions to your web images. You can add alt text to your images by going to your site editor, hovering over the image you’d like to add it to, and clicking edit. In doing so, it would show you different options you can do to your images. Below is a button, “Add Alt text”. Click it to add relevant and smart alt text.
Image taken from Strikingly Product
You can also add a title and description to your Gallery images. Take advantage of this image optimization opportunity by providing keyword-rich and original captions for your images. Like the steps for alt text, you just have to find your gallery in your site editor and hover over the image you want to edit. By clicking edit, you are once again shown options on what to do with your images. The “Add Title” and “Add description” buttons are right below the image itself. Click it and beautifully describe your images.
Image taken from Strikingly Product
Image optimization is not often given enough focus. Some people just carelessly splash their web images onto their website. But now that you have some background knowledge about image optimization and some tips on how to optimize images, you can get ahead of the game! You have a chance to make a real difference for you and your website, do not waste it. Sign up with Strikingly now and let them help you make the most of the images on your website.
