How to Optimize an Image for The Web to Get a High Score On Google?
Image optimization is defined as getting your image files in the best possible shape without compromising quality before uploading them on your website to get multiple benefits. It helps improve the load time of your site, enhancing user experience and potentially higher search engine rankings.
Moreover, it reduces the bandwidth required to load an image, leading to lower hosting costs and reducing the users’ data usage. As a result, your site runs fast, which enhances your chances of getting a higher ranking, as page speed is an important ranking factor.
This blog post will enlighten you on how to optimize a picture to get a high score on Google.
Ways to Optimize an Image to Get a High Score On Google
Image optimization is a critical aspect of website design and development that needs to be done perfectly to get viable outcomes against your images. Following are some of the standard practices to optimize an image.
Select Right Format
The selection of format for image optimization is a critical factor in ensuring that images are optimized for web use. When choosing a format for your pictures, it’s important to consider the content of the image and the intended use. JPEG is generally the better choice if the image is a photograph, as it offers smaller file sizes and good image quality. If the image has a transparent background or requires high levels of detail, PNG is the better choice, as it offers lossless compression and support for many colours.
Ultimately, the format selection will depend on your project’s specific requirements and the type of image that will fulfil the user’s need. The key is choosing a format that offers the best file size, image quality, and compatibility per your needs.
Optimize the Image size
Optimizing image size is an important aspect of image optimization for higher ranking on Google. By reducing image size without sacrificing quality, you can reduce the page load time, which is crucial in determining search engine ranking. You can reduce image size using online image compressors. They allow you to compress multiple files in one shot. In addition, you can compress an image to specific sizes if you need to use them for different purposes on your site. For example, you can compress JPEG to 50KB, 100 KB, 200 KB, 500 KB, and many more.
Moreover, you can make your image file responsive to serve that in an appropriate size for different screen sizes and devices. You can use a free image editor to make these adjustments quickly and easily. As a result of all these practices, you will get your image in the best possible size, which can positively impact user experience and your Google search engine ranking.
Get Your image in Appropriate Resolution.
Picking the appropriate Resolution for an image is crucial in image optimization as it affects the file size and quality of the picture. If the Resolution is too high, the file size will be larger, leading to slow page load times and increased bandwidth usage. On the other hand, if the Resolution is too low, the image will get distorted.
The appropriate Resolution depends on the intended use of the image.
For example, if the image will be displayed in a blog post, 72-96 dpi is usually sufficient, with your photo converted into 50 KB. However, if you have to use the same file as a website banner, then your image file should be 150 dpi. Choosing the proper Resolution can strike a balance between image quality and file size, improving your website’s user experience and performance.
Add Alt Text to Your Image
Adding alt text to an image is another aspect of image optimization as it provides a text description of the image for visually impaired users and search engines. It helps to make your website more accessible and improves its search engine optimization (SEO). As SEO is one of the most important strategies to drive traffic to website so you have to take care of it. For search engines, alt text acts as a textual representation of an image, allowing search engines to understand the image’s content and improving your website’s visibility in search results.
In addition to improving accessibility and SEO, alt text also helps to ensure that your images have meaning even if they cannot be loaded, such as in cases of slow network connections or broken image links. Therefore, adding descriptive and relevant alt text to your images is a vital part of image optimization to impact your website’s SEO and user experience positively.
Include the image in Your Sitemap
Including an image in your sitemap can help with image optimization by providing search engines with information about the images on your website. For example, the sitemap can include details such as the image file name, the image’s location, and a picture description. This information can help search engines understand the context and relevance of the photos on your site, improving its visibility in image search results.
However, it will be best to remember that simply including an image in a sitemap does not guarantee improved search engine visibility or ranking. Other factors, such as image size, format, and website structure, also play a role in image search optimization.
