How to Optimize Images in WordPress For SEO? (And Boost Your Page Speed)

Image optimization plays a very big role in improving website Speed. Having too many large sized image files in your content will slow down your page speed. Hence it is critical to compress the images and then add them to your content. This would reduce the size of the image files and make your website load faster. If you optimize images in wordpress not only you could improve the page speed but it can also impact the SEO rankings of your website.

Now in this post let us get to understand how to optimize images in wordpress and do fine with your rankings and page speed.

1.Optimize Images in WordPress by Compressing it Using Tools/Plugins

You can use tools like TinyPNG to compress the image file size. 

TinyPNG would reduce the image file size without compromising on the quality of the image. 

Especially when you are creating featured images or taking screenshots for your blog posts the file size might probably in the range of 400kb-650kb. This is actually a very big image size. 

If you have such large images then it will slow down the web page speed. Because just imagine that every time your website page loads it needs to load all those heavy image files and this would start putting more burden on the server.

So once you upload the file inside the tool, it will begin the compression process. And after that, you can easily download the compressed images which will have the same original quality.

There won’t be any change in the image dimensions or adverse effect of the image resolution if you use TinyPNG for compression.

The tool is also supported by the wordpress platform and there is a plugin relating to the same.

Another alternative choice for image compression will be to use the WP smush plugin for your wordpress blog. This is also another very popular and effective plugin to compress and optimize images in wordpress.

2.Lazy Load Images

The technique in lazy loading is that your website images would be loaded and displayed individually one after the other when a visitor scrolls across the particular image.

So rather than loading all the images together, the lazy load feature will make a particular image load and display only when a user is viewing it at a certain point of time while reading the content.

This would significantly improve the speed of the website. Because it takes a lot lesser time to load only one specific image of a post at a time rather than loading the entire 10 images of a blog post together. Hence it leads to better speed performance.

You can use the wordpress plugins like BJ Lazy load or W3total cache to implement the lazy load feature. Those two plugins will support the lazy load feature.

3.Optimize images in WordPress by Adding Keywords and Related Phrases in the Alt tags

Image Alt tags play a big role in SEO rankings. Google tries to relate the image tags with the topic of your content.

So in other words the image alt tags act as a relevancy signal for Google.

You must add your target keywords and related terms naturally for the image alt tags.

Try to keep the alt tag short and relevant to the topic described in the images/content.

The image alt tags will be displayed to the user when the image wasn’t able to load properly. Sometimes this could happen due to technical issues.

You can actually add the alt tags to the images directly from your post editor itself. So that is not a complicated task.

Also, you must Style your Images properly. Write the image caption, headings, and add the image link. To every image that you upload on the website.

4.Ensure that your Images Have Good Resolution and Fit into your Content

Image resolution matters a lot. You should optimize images in wordpress by enhancing the resolution of your images.

Because when a user visits the website and finds a lot of images to be very small or breaking the screen then it will lead to a bad user experience.

That would have an adverse impact on your SEO.

So while designing the images for your blog/website you must consider the screen width and height ratio aspect as well. If you could properly design a website that fits into your content body then it would give a fantastic user experience for your blog readers.

5.Pick the Unoptimized Images from GTmetrix

Gtmetrix tool will give you better insights about the images that are having a large size and do not contain the alt tag. 

Such types of images are not actually good from an SEO point of view.

By using Gtmextrix you could identify each and every image which is not properly optimized for SEO.

You just have to enter your page URL and run for a test to get the results in GTmetrix.

In the image optimization reports, it will show you all the unoptimized images of your website. 

Gtmetrix reports would also suggest the solution (like losslessly compressing) to fix those images.

You can work with those images, optimize them, and improve SEO performance.

6. Do not Redirect Image URL

Adding too many image redirects can actually slow down your website speed. 

So it is better to avoid that practice.

In case if there are any image redirects on your website then you must modify the links and enter the exact URL associated with the images.

Image redirect might arise due to broken image ur links or changes in the destination path of the image.

You will need to solve the redirect issue by entering the proper URL link of the associated image which is the correct one.

7. Include the Target Keyword in the Image File Name

When you create an image and save it on your device just ensure that the file name would contain the target keyword naturally wherever suitable.

Because many recent studies are indicating that Google would also look into the file name associated with the images to determine the relevancy and SEO ranking of the content.

So by adding your focus keywords and related phrases in the image file name you would get an upper hand in ranking your content.

Conclusion:

I hope you got some great tips about optimizing images for a wordpress website.

By practically applying these image optimization ideas your website speed and SEO rankings would improve further.

If you like this article then please do share it with others on social media.

Thanks