How To Easily Optimize Images For SEO in WordPress ?

One good picture has all the power in it that easily draws a positive impact on users and proficient to drive more user engagement.

Site’s having more informative visual media content produces more engagement with your site’s readers.

Visuals are the driving force for any online business or we can say that relevant informative visuals and eye-catching graphics are the only factors that instantly grab the user’s attention and have more control over the audience in order to enhance user retention on site.

Agree?

But what will you do, After landing on your site if your site’s visitors are finding difficulties while navigating your site due to page load time?

For site owners, this is a serious matter of concern 🙂.

After optimizing your site fully for search engines but even then, your site’s visitors lack interest on your site because of higher page load time.

Then guys… There’s something missing that you might forget in optimization.

And there’s the highest possibility that your site may not be fully optimized for your site’s media content that has larger file sizes.

So here, You need to optimize your images so that users are not gonna lose interest while visiting your site.

Now, Follow below explained simple steps to optimize your images for search engines so that your WordPress image optimization gets improved.

Let’s start…

#1 Right Image Format

JPEG or JPG, GIF, and PNG are the most usable image formats for the websites.

JPEG or JPG image format is the Joint Photographic Experts Group. This is a standard image format for saving image files by using a lossy compression method.
PNG stands for Portable Network Graphics, is an uncompressed image format, and is broadly used for animated images. These images are high-quality images with bigger file sizes.

JPEG images are the standard choice among all photographers and all ordinary users While PNG Images are widely used with transparent background and used in making logos and graphics.

#2 Resize Image Dimensions

Proper image dimensions make your images look attractive and your blog looks classy.

In WordPress, When uploading images, you can directly resize your images through WordPress Media Library.

To make your site become lightweight, You need to minimize your image’s dimensions so that it reduces page load time.

Resizing image dimensions generally recommends image dimension exactly equal to the blog’s width for better look or you can choose to use it as small according to your use.

#3 Use Compressed Images

Larger image file sizes directly affect the page speed so here there is a necessity to reduce those image sizes.

Compressed & optimized images are the reduced version of its original file.

In the process of WordPress image optimization, Image compression plays an important role in increasing page speed.

Image compression is the minimization process of the original image file size without sacrificing its image quality.

For your ease, There are countless tools and plugins available on the web to compress images.

When we begin image compression process, commonly, we all used 2 methods for image compression.

The first method is Lossy Compression and the second method is Lossless compression.

Lossy compression includes the loss of data information. It reduces data information to reduce the file size that’s why image quality is also slightly degraded.

After compression, Also the process is non-reversible, meaning you can’t recover your compressed images.

The biggest advantage of Lossy compression is that it produces a higher image compression rate.

Lossy image compression technique is used to compress JPEG images.

Lossless compression reduces the image file size without degrading its image quality. That’s why it slightly reduces image file size and retains image quality.

The Lossless image compression technique is used to compress PNG and Gif’s.

#4 Right Image File Path

Google actually ranks up those sites faster that have well-optimized image files paths.

For example:

If you are somebody, running an e-commerce website having multiple products, then you need to optimize your file path.

You need to categorize your all products into relevant subfolders instead of uploading all product images in a single folder.

Optimize your folders and their subfolders with your core keywords, likewise you categories your blogs with breadcrumbs structure.

#5 Rename Image Filename

In order to improve WordPress image optimization, An image needs to be rename before uploading because an inappropriate image filename may cause harmful SEO impacts on your site.

You need to make your image’s filename informative like your blog. You should always rename your filename with your targeted keywords so Google crawler will better understand your images and their blog content.

Example of Non-optimize image:

Your image filename is 111000678.jpg … pretty cool and might be suitable & readable for you personally…

But what about Google crawlers? Do you ever think, how Google crawlers will read this image whenever crawling your site…?

So here, renaming your image filename with your targeted keywords plays an important role in the image Optimization process.

To optimize WordPress images, this is an essential SEO factor that needs to be well optimized.

Example of optimized image for search engines:

Now, Image filename: wordpress-image-seo.jpg is a well-optimized image for search engines.

Now, Analyse which image filename is more descriptive, readable, and relevant to your blog content.

#6 Write Keyword-focused Alt Text

Alternative text describes your image and is used to make your images more readable for both users and search engines.

Do you know, Why use alt text in WordPress image optimization?

You might have noticed, whenever your internet becomes slow or you see some technical issues via server while image fetching and your images are not fully loaded, then here’s Alt text appears to extend user retention on the site.

Through alt text, users and search engines both get informed of what image is all about.

Use below explained HTML syntax to add alt text in your images.

Also Read, 12 Best Free Keywords Research Tools To Choose Right Keyword.

#7 Use Responsive Images

The best thing about responsive images is, that they’re fully optimized and scalable to all devices whenever open in a computer, laptop, tablet, and smartphones.

Responsive images are used to reach a wider audience therefore image optimization for smartphone users should be your highest priority.

Responsive images respond according to the device size’s dimensions means it automatically scales their size for their respective mobile screen resolutions…

When your image is not optimized for mobile-first indexing, then it shows its negative impact on the site and directly increases your site’s bounce rate which is definitely not a good signal for search engine results pages and your site’s ranking will also be degraded.

So, To well optimize your site for images, make sure all images are responsive too.

#8 Use Images Sitemap For Better Crawling

Google Image Sitemaps retrieve images more quickly in Google image search. That’s why they are also important.

Crawling and indexing for your images improved through images sitemaps.

XML Sitemaps are recommended by Google to only those websites that have rich media content and have larger numbers of web pages.

According to the Google guidelines, If you have a smaller website having 500 pages or less number of pages in it, then you don’t need to create a separate XML sitemap for images.

If you want to rank your images in Google image search engine result pages, then you have 2 methods, In the first method, you can update your current XML sitemap with image files…

In the second method, Just create a separate XML sitemap to list your all image files information.

To create XML sitemaps, you can easily create it by third party websites.

Benefits of Image Optimization

Faster website speed.
Less storage load on server.
Your keywords ranking will improve.
Mobile-first indexing will be improved.
Your site’s bounce rate will decrease and user retention increases.

Pro Tip for WordPress Image Optimization

To check how many images in your site have larger file sizes, then you can use these powerful tools, these tools easily identifies large images and then give you suggestions to optimize them first.

Also Read, 10 Amazing WordPress Plugins to Optimize Images For Faster Web Speed.