Tips on How to Optimize Your Images for Web and Performance

The expansion of interfaces and internet connections is creating more critical challenges regarding website speed and page load times. Regardless of whether you want to improve your user experience or optimize natural referencing, it’s important that you manage your picture files carefully. The issue that we are asked by many of our clients will be answered together: How can photographs be optimized on the Internet?

There are two directions in which efforts must be made for improving the picture: optimizing the weight of your photos and making the information supplied to the search engine robots relevant.

These many components are linked together. It is vital to reflect on your whole image optimization and to implement procedures and techniques that harmonize your business operations. There are a variety of free SEO tools, whether something needs squeezing or speed testing. Although they do not replace expensive suites, they save you important time and knowledge.

What does image optimization mean?

What is image optimization? Optimizing online pictures entails creating high-quality photos in the right format, dimensions, size, and resolution while minimizing image size without sacrificing image quality. Image optimization may be accomplished in a variety of methods, including resizing, storing to your computer, and compressing the size for best usage.

There are three major reasons to optimizing your media files:

• We want our photos to load as soon as possible.
• We want search engine robots to be able to easily discover our photos.
• We want our photos to be attractive for as long as possible.

The optimization balance is the balance between these three points. It is the investigation of its three components that will result in your product photos being optimized and therefore appropriate for the web. In brief, we strive for the greatest visual depiction of them while ensuring that they do not compromise the user experience while being easily accessible.

So, what are the advantages of image optimization tips? The value of pictures in connecting people to your products is widely understood. This is because if your website takes more than 3 seconds to load, users are significantly more likely to quit, increasing your bounce rate and, as a result, affecting your conversions.

Did you realize that optimizing one’s images may help your Google ranking? Improving your images is synonymous with optimizing your user journey. A pleased user helps you to achieve your objectives more quickly!

• Page load speed

The length of time it takes to fully show a web page is referred to as page load speed. Websites that load in 2 seconds or less convert the best. So, if you reduce 50% of the said load of the images you have as an example, you’ll boost the loading time of your website by the same proportion, which is an essential element of SEO strategy.

• Improving SEO Ranking

While the figures aren’t accurate, Google claims that hundreds of millions of users use Google Images every day to visually discover and study web content. Image search, according to Moz, accounts for 27% of all inquiries generated by the top ten US web search providers. In reality, Google changed the “View Image” option from Image Search to “Visit [Page]” approximately a year ago. As a consequence, analytics tools began to report an increase in the number of sessions focused exclusively on image search, as well as greater exposure of host page content (instead of random image files without context). Aside from content and improving the user experience, pictures are once again a significant source of traffic and should not be overlooked.

• Storage savings

The storage area is another minor element. In fact, a host is given a specific amount of storage space. Who says storage is a constraint? Compressing your pictures to make the most use of your hosting space will not only save you time but will also save you money in the long run. As a result, optimized pictures not only do not clog your server but also allow you to add more information to your website.

How to Optimize Images for Web and Performance

The optimal balance between the smallest file size and acceptable image quality is the key to effective online image optimization.

The three most essential factors in image optimization are:

1. Image file type (JPEG vs PNG vs GIF)
2. Compression (a greater compression rate results in smaller file size).
3. Image measurements (height and width)

You may minimize the size of your image by up to 80% by using the proper mix of the three.

Let’s take a closer look at each of them.

• Image file format

For most website owners, the only three image file types that are truly significant are JPEG, PNG, and GIF. Choosing the correct file type is critical in image optimization. To keep things simple, choose JPEGs for photographs or images with a lot of colors, PNGs for basic images or when you require transparent images, and GIFs for only moving graphics.

For those who are unfamiliar with the distinctions in file types, the PNG image format is decompressed, which means it is a higher-quality picture. The disadvantage is that the files are significantly bigger. JPEG, on the other hand, is a compressed file format that marginally sacrifices image quality in order to dramatically reduce file size. GIF, on the other hand, only employs 256 colors with lossless compression, making it the ideal choice for moving pictures.

• Compression

The next stage involves compression, which itself is essential for optimizing the image. Image compression comes in a variety of kinds and degrees. Depending on the image compression technique used, the parameters for every element will differ. Image compression capabilities are included in most image editing software, including Adobe Photoshop, GIMP, On1 Photo, Affinity Photo, and others.

You may also save photos properly and then use a web application to compress them, such as TinyPNG or JPEG Mini. Although a little time-consuming, both of these ways allow you to compress pictures before submitting them to WordPress.

• Image dimensions

When you import a photo from your phone or digital camera, the resolution is usually extremely good, and the files are rather huge (height and width). These pictures typically have a resolution of 300 DPI and dimensions of 2000 pixels or more. These high-resolution images are suitable for use in print or desktop printing. They are not appropriate for use on websites.

Reducing the file size to a more acceptable level can cut image file size substantially. You may simply resize the photos on your computer by utilizing image editing software. We optimized a photo with an original file size of 1.8MB, a resolution of 300 DPI, and an image size of 4900 3200 pixels, for example. We used the JPEG format for better compression and increased the size to 1200 795 pixels. The file size of the image has been decreased to 103KB. This is 94% less than the original file size.

Image optimization tools and programs

The majority of the photo editing software has image optimization and compression options, as we discussed previously. In addition to picture editing, there are numerous sophisticated programs to optimize photos free of charge for the Web (with just a few clicks).

We recommend using these image resizers to optimize pictures, especially when you are perfectionist, before uploading to WordPress. This procedure saves you space on the disk and assures the quickest quality image since you personally check your image.

• Adobe Photoshop

Adobe Photoshop is premium software with a feature to save images optimized for the web. Simply open your image and click on the “File” Save for Web “option.

A new dialog box will be opened. You may set several picture formats on the right. You will see several quality options for the JPEG format. You may also see a file size on the lower left when you choose your selections..

• Removal.AI

Do you need to rapidly isolate the subject of a photograph from its background? The Removal.AI program can remove the background from an image and give a reduced rendition of the photo’s topic.

At first sight, the tool appears to be quite powerful, but it rapidly shows its limitations. At the moment, Removal.AI cannot trim an image if the subject is not a human. The technology recognizes the forms of people rather than objects or animals in the foreground.

If you are one of those professionals for whom the tricks of photo editing remain a mystery, Removal.AI can be the first solution, which is free, to save you hours of clipping. The operation is very simple: just load a file or enter the URL of an image, and the tool automatically removes the background, leaving the subject of the image on a transparent background. You can then download the file in PNG format.

• GIMP

GIMP is a fair and open replacement for Adobe Photoshop. It may be used to web-optimize your photographs. The disadvantage is that it is more difficult to utilize than some of the other options on this list.

To begin, open your image in GIMP and then click File »Export from the menu. The Save File dialog box will appear as a result. Give your file a new name and then click the Export option.

The picture export choices will be displayed as a result of this. You may choose the compression level for JPEG files to minimize file size. Finally, save the optimized picture file by clicking the export option.

• TinyPNG

TinyPNG is a free online application that utilizes intelligent lossy compression to decrease the size of your PNG files. You only need to go to their website and submit your photos (drag and drop).

They will compress the image and provide you with a link to download it. TinyJPG, their sibling site, may be used to compress JPEG pictures.

They also offer an Adobe Photoshop plugin that we utilize as part of our image editing process since it combines the best of TinyPNG and TinyJPG in Photoshop.

For developers, they provide an API for automatically converting pictures, and for beginners, they have a WordPress plugin that can do it for you (more on that later).

Final thoughts and best practices for image optimization

If you aren’t already storing web-optimized photos, you should start immediately. Using the right image resizer will make a significant impact on the speed of your site, and your users will appreciate it. Not to mention that quicker websites are better for SEO, and you will most likely witness an improvement in your search engine ranks.

It is essential to focus on the different factors listed in this article to optimize the performance of your site or to raise your ranks on Google Images.

You may examine the effect of picture weight on your site’s online performance. There are various free programs available for evaluating a variety of technological components in real-time. GTmetrix and Dareboost are the most prevalent. Remember to check your site or a few focused pages on a regular basis, and optimize your pictures as needed.