Best Image Optimization Tips

If you have an online eCommerce store or you are running a blog or website. You should be knowing the correct image optimization techniques. These techniques will not only help in site load time but also will help in improving your website rank on Google. In turn, it will increase traffic to your website.

What is Image Optimization?

Image optimization means reducing the file size as low as possible such that it does not impact on the quality of the image. Optimization techniques now also includes Image SEO. This means your image will rank higher on various search engines like Google.com, Bing.com, Yahoo.com, Ask.com, Baidu.com etc.

Here you will get the answers to the below Questions.

• Why do my images do not appear in the Google image search? What can I do so that my images appear in the search?
• What is the use of alt attributes of an image?
• What is the difference between JPEG, JPG, PNG images? Whichh format should I use and When?

How to optimize images for your online websites?

1. Choose the right file size.
2. Choose your image dimensions properly
3. Reduce the file size of your images.
4. Name your images in a descriptive simple language.
5. Use alt attribute carefully.
6. Image sitemaps
7. Test run your images
8. Never use decorative images

1. Choose the right file size.

Don’t use the largest image and shrink the dimensions according to your usage. This will increase your page load time.

Instead, make it a smaller image and provide the option to view a larger image in a pop-up or on a separate webpage.

2. Choose your image dimensions properly

Choose the correct size for each place of your image. e.g. a Facebook cover picture is required of one size, the WordPress image size is of another size.

Choosing the correct dimension would make the image appear properly and hence gain user experiance.

3. Reduce the file size of your images

• Nearly 50% of consumers won’t even wait 3 seconds for an ee-commercesite to load.
• Amazon found that if their pages were to slow down by just one second, they would lose $1.6 billion a year.
• Google uses page load time as a ranking factor in their algorithm.

So, if you have images that loads slowly and take over 15 seconds to load? Well, you can say your customer goodbye!

4. Name your images in a descriptive simple language.

It is really easy to click lots of images and keep the images name whatever your camera assigns them. But to work on the image SEO, you must use relevant text to save the image. Creating keyword rich descriptive name for image would help in SEO.

Search engine not only crawl the website text but also images file names.

e.g.

You could use the generic name for the image above as assigned by the camera by default (DCIM090901.jpg).

Now think how would your customer search your products on your website. In this example car shopper would search for the below terms:

• Nexon Car XZ
• Nexon Car India
• White Nexon XZ India

Thus, you must use one of the similar names which is helpful for a customer when he searches for that product.

5. Use alt attribute carefully.

Alt are text alternatives when your browser can’t render the images properly. They are too used to add SEO value to a website. Using alt attributes is the best way for ecommerce products to show up in Google image and web search.

6. Image sitemaps

Helps Google discover images they might otherwise not find

7. Never use decorative images

Decorative images can add a lot of visual appeal to a webpage. Hoever, they can result in a large file size and slow load times. Therefore, you might want to consider taking a closer look at your decorative images so they won’t impair your website’s ability to convert visitors into customers.

8. Test run your images

Test you webpages to check the load time. Do your A/B testing to check customer behavior and find out which is the better for the webpage.