How to Optimize Website Images

I will go straight to the point with the tools I use, why you should change your images from png to webp, why you should compress them.

One thing: having heavy images published on the website, does not help at all, and there are several reasons for that, lets start with the first reason.

Site Speed.

While the content may be good in your website, or you have good quality backlinks pointing back to your website, the page speed may be the reason why the web is performing bad in search results and I do not blame search engines like Google, that are not referring your website.

I read when I first started SEO that google is on a mission to serve good quality results to the people that are searching for informations and if your website does not satisfy this statement then Good luck with your website.

Also having a websites that loads slowly will also increase the bounce rate in your website, for you if you are reading this short article, bounce rate means, the percentage of people that visit your website but leave without clicking on it, so people leave your website because it does not serve the users, and one of the reasons is because your website loads so slow, especially if your website is not mobile optimized then you are cooked, people do not wanna wait an eternity for a landing page to load, so they will stare at you screen and say: you know i am going back to another search result.

That is why I have also seen some google ads campaign fail, not because the targeting was wrong, but the page took ages to load, so know you know why you need that your website should be also for page speed optimized.

So back to the question: How to Optimize Website Images, this is easy and I do not know make it so complicated.

First thing you need to do, before you even publish live an image, you need to make sure that the image is a webP version, this is a way better version than PNG, has the same quality that people can even tell the difference between a png and a webP.

Short tricks to better SEO Image Results

Webp is almost supported by all modern browsers and it is developed by Google, this is a next gen format.

To convert a PNG image to Webp, you use tools like imageconverter, or just go to Google search and type: PNG to Webp converter, and the first three results gets the job done.

You open the first search results, click convert and drag and drop your png and wait a few seconds, and the webp version, will be ready to be downloaded.

Click convert and yep, here you have the webp version, but WAIT DO NOT DEPLOY YET, we are not done yet.

You go to another tool to compress it, so go to tinypng.com (yep I am not affiliated with them, no worries, but It is a useful tool 😂), you go and drag and drop your webp version, click compress and a new zip file will be ready to be downloaded, click on the zip file and open the new compressed image and here you have, but still we are not done, sometimes people upload the images without changing the name of the file, for example you download the the image and image name is like: image203.png.

You click on the zipped image you just compressed and edit the file name to something that represents the image, if it is a black cat you just name it: black-cat.png, also it is a good idea to use (-), to separate the name, not just type blackcat.png, so remember use (-), it does not mean, that this is a huge optimization technique, but it helps a little bit, so the more you optimize the image the better the results, are the little things that add up in the long run.

Then you are ready to upload the image, but after you upload, do not forget also to add an ALT TEXT, an alt text is a short code that you add to the image source, that helps you with search results and also for people that use screen readers or people that can not see, then also lets say if the internet fails and image does not load properly then the alt text displays, so for example I can say, ah so the image was one of a black cat.

For this you can use alt text box in wordpress, if you are using wordpress to upload images, but also in the code is easy to add, like alt text = “black cat”.

So to summary: change the png to webp, compress it, rename the file name and add the alt text.

These are all you need to perform good in image search and also will give you a little boost in search results and online visibility.

If you have more questions, feel free to contact me on this email: kastriot@kastriottanaj.com or on linkedin: Kastriot Tanaj, then I can see how I can help you.