How to Optimize Images in WordPress
When it comes to blogging, one aspect that often gets overlooked is blog images optimization. While it might not be the most fun topic, it’s very important for improving site speed, SEO, and overall user experience. If you want your blog to engage readers without slowing down your site with high-quality images, learning how to properly optimize your blog images is a step you can’t afford to skip.
We’re sharing great specific information on blog image optimization in your WordPress blog:
Why Blog Images Optimization Matters
Optimizing blog images on your website is all about reducing the file size without sacrificing image quality. You want your blog images to look great while loading quickly to keep readers engaged. Here are a few reasons why image optimization is crucial:
Improves Site Speed: Large, unoptimized images can slow down your website. In an instant gratification culture, we want your webpage to load as quickly as possible.
Boosts SEO: Properly optimized images can help search engines understand your content and improve your search rankings.
Enhances Mobile Experience: Smaller, optimized images load faster on mobile devices, and a majority of your readers are likely reading your blog from their phones.
Saves Hosting Space: Compressed images take up less space on your hosting server, preventing potential storage issues down the road.
If you’re new to blogging, you can build some best practices into your routine now to optimize your blog images. But even if you’re already hundreds of posts in and you haven’t optimized yet, take a breath: you can still start to implement these best practices for your blog images.
Find High-Quality Images
If you’re wondering where you’re supposed to get your images, we have a few sources. The best option is to take your own photos. This is especially true for personal or niche topics like recipes or DIY projects.
If taking your own photos isn’t possible for you, here are some ideas:
Hire a Photographer: For professional headshots or specific brand imagery, hire a photographer to build a collection of brand photos you can pull from.
Use Stock Photography: There are plenty of free and paid stock photo websites, like Unsplash or Pexels, where you can find high-quality images. Just make sure you have the legal right to use them. Always save or screenshot the image license to protect yourself in the future.
Resize Your Blog Images First
Be careful not to upload huge images straight from your camera or phone. These oversized files can really slow down your site. Here’s how to prevent that:
Use Editing Software: Tools like Lightroom, Canva, or PicMonkey are perfect for resizing images before uploading. Photoshop is another option if you know how to use it.
Set Proper Dimensions: A good rule of thumb is to resize your images to a width of 1200 pixels. This way, your website doesn’t have to work overtime to downsize big blog images.
Adjust Resolution: For web images, set the resolution to 72 pixels per inch.
Keep Files Sizes Under 200 KB
To ensure fast loading times, your images should ideally be under 200 KB. Here are a few ways to keep your file sizes low:
Lower the Quality Setting: When exporting images, choose a quality setting like 70-80% quality.
Use File Compression Tools: Software like Lightroom lets you limit the maximum file size during export. Aim to keep each image under 200 KB.
Compress Blog Images with ShortPixel in WordPress
ShortPixel is a WordPress plugin that automatically compresses images after you upload them, so they’re perfectly optimized without losing quality. Here’s how to do it:
Install the ShortPixel Plugin: Follow the setup instructions and pick a setting (“Glossy” is good to balance quality and file size).
Upload Your Images: Once ShortPixel is installed, it will automatically optimize images as you upload them.
Use Alt Text for SEO and Accessibility
Don’t forget to add alt text to your images. Alt text helps search engines understand what your blog is about and makes your content accessible to visually impaired readers using screen readers. If you can, include keywords to boost SEO.
Monitor Your Progress and Adjust as Needed
If you’re already well into your blogging journey and haven’t optimized your blog images yet, It’s never too late to start. You can use tools like Google Analytics to track how your image optimization impacts page load times, bounce rates, and user engagement.
Learn How to Optimize Your Images: 8-Step Guide
We’ve created a free 8 Step Guide to Image Optimization to make optimizing your blog images even easier. This guide lays out all the steps you need to build high-quality images into your blogging routine, without slowing down your site.
In this episode, we covered:
- What image optimization is
- Why blog image optimization matters
- Where to find high-quality blog images
- What file size to look for in your images
- What software can help you resize your images
- Our favorite plugin in WordPress to automatically optimize your images
- How blog image optimization boosts your SEO
- A free step-by-step guide to image optimization
Links and resources mentioned in this episode:
We’re so glad we could share about how to optimize your blog images! What did you think of this episode?