Ensure that the images on your site are performing at their best. Read through tips from a SEO expert with over 10+ years of running SEO content for Jokaroom.
Image Compression Is the Key to Page Speed
Images are often the most time-consuming elements on a page. A heavy image can slow down your website by making it take longer to load and use more data from your mobile device’s limited data allowance than necessary. In many cases, an optimized image can be reduced in size by as much as 80% without compromising quality.
Image size matters. It affects page speed, user experience and SEO. To ensure that you’re keeping your website optimized for search engines, keep these tips in mind when uploading images:
- Images should generally be less than 1 MB in file size. If they aren’t, they may force a long load time on users who visit your site from mobile devices like smartphones or tablets.
- Use the correct image dimensions for each intended use case — don’t just crop an image down to fit a certain space because it might look better.
Image Attributes: Alts
The most important image attributes are the alt text, title, description and keywords. The alt text is the text that appears in the browser when an image is not available. The title attribute should contain a brief description of what you want your visitors to know about this image; this is also used by search engines as a way to index images.
The description attribute gives you space to write more details about what you want your visitors to know about this image (it can be up to 255 characters long). Finally, keywords help search engine bots understand what an image depicts so it can be properly categorized and ranked against other images on similar topics.
The file name should contain no spaces or special characters such as underscores (_) or hyphens (-). This makes it easy for browsers like Google Chrome and Firefox to differentiate between words in your file names from words within your content so they can properly display them when users click on links within those documents; otherwise they will appear blank due to their auto suggest feature.
When it comes to optimizing your alt text, one of the most important things you can do is make sure that it’s written in an active voice. This means that the subject of each sentence is doing something (and not being described or acted upon).
Another good practice is writing your alt text in sentence case rather than title case — that means no capital letters at all.
For instance: “jokaroom casino offers welcome bonus” versus: “welcome bonus is given by jokaroom casino”.
Also keep in mind that alt attributes should be visible on all devices, so make sure there’s nothing within them that would cause CSS styling to hide them off-screen or behind other content.
Eliminate Image Cumulative Layout Shift
You may have heard of image cumulative layout shifts. It’s a problem that can negatively impact your SEO and make it more difficult to rank on Google. But don’t worry: It’s also one of the easiest problems to fix.
Image cumulative layout shift happens when multiple images on a page compete for attention. This makes it hard for Google’s search crawlers to determine which image is most important — and whether or not they should be displayed in the SERPs at all. If you want to improve your rankings, you’ll need to eliminate this issue so that search engines can properly index your website’s pages and understand what each page contains.
Correct File Formats
When it comes to the formatting of your photos and images, keep in mind the things:
- JPEG is the most common file format for photos and other images. It’s a lossy image format that compresses files, which results in some reduction of quality. Some degree of this reduction is generally acceptable for most types of graphics work because the eye cannot tell that any detail has been lost. This makes it the best choice when saving an image for printing purposes or displaying on screen at small sizes (less than 250 pixels per inch). However, if you want to preserve maximum quality or will be editing your photos extensively, JPEG may not be right for you.
- GIF is the most common file format for animated images — it can contain up to 256 colors and supports animation loops with limited file sizes (typically under 100KB). GIFs are still very popular on social media platforms like Tumblr and Reddit, but they’re also often used as placeholders while browsing through pages due to their small size.
Don’t Overdo With Using Stock Images — Create Unique Images
You want to create visual content that matches your topic, but you might not be able to afford high-quality images. You can make great-looking images by using stock photos that other people have taken or created. There are many websites where you can get free stock photos, like unsplash.com or pexels.com.
However, at Jokaroom, we advise you to take your own photos with a smartphone if you need something specific for an article about gardening or cooking.
Compress Images Appropriately
Compression is one of the most important factors that affect image quality and performance. When it comes to compression formats, there are two types: lossless and lossy.
Lossless compression techniques retain all the data in images and reduce only their size without affecting their quality.
Lossy techniques introduce distortions during the process of compressing an image so that less space is used for storage or transmission over networks like the Internet. This means you can save precious resources like bandwidth but at a cost of quality degradation — therefore, lossy files will be visually different from their original counterparts when viewed at 100% scale on screens with wide viewing angles such as smartphones or tablets .
Cache Images in the Browser
There are a few ways to cache pictures in the browser. One is to use a CDN, which stands for Content Delivery Network. It stores your pictures on multiple servers around the world and delivers them from the closest possible source.
Another way is to use services like Cloudinary and Imgix, which allow you to upload your images directly from WordPress via their respective APIs. These services will automatically resize and cache your images by default, so you don’t have to worry about anything after uploading them.
Pertinency
Images should be relevant to the text, so use them to illustrate points, support arguments and explain key concepts. Your images should also be visually appealing and easy to understand, navigate and read. If an image is too large, it may cause problems with loading speeds or make the website cumbersome to navigate on mobile devices.
Summary
Remember that a good image is worth a thousand words, but if you want to be truly successful with your content, then it needs to be the right image. Follow the expert tips for 2022 to do the job well.