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In this article, we will discuss advanced image SEO.
We’ll look at 10 steps to reduce the impact of Image on website performance.
There are many business categories in which it is necessary to use more images such as wedding photography.
But if the photographer shows more and more photos on his website, then what mantra will he show by reciting it?
So let’s see these steps but before that, we will see how you have to know the issue of your image SEO.
One of the best tools that are free of charge is GT Matrix.
GTMetrix analyzes the images of your website very closely, not only telling the problems but also their solutions.
So, let’s start
10 Steps of Advanced Image SEO
1. Re-Size Well Optimize
The first step to optimizing images is to reduce their size not MB size but ko pixel size.
You can resize the images through this, but if you already resize the images correctly, then you can avoid an extra error.
What is the right image size for you?
If you want to take a screenshot of this screen, you can use this thing.
Images have to be kept in the size of 16X16 pixels.
Sliders have to keep it in 1800X400 pixel size.
Can keep in featured 250X250.
And the blog post which is there should be 680 pixels wide.
So you resize the images of your website according to this size chart.
2. Lazy load images
Lazy load means to load the images only when they are needed.
By the way, WordPress has now started loading images lazily, so for this, you do not need to use any plugin.
But still, the issue of lazy loading of images may come to your website.
See, there are two ways to show images on a website.
One is to show the images in a normal way, and the other is to use the images in the background.
In the native lazy load option, this background image is not lazy load.
So the issue with lazy load in your website remains the same and the error keeps appearing.
But why does this happen?
When you display images normally on a web page, you use image src.
As soon as the browser sees the image src, it starts loading the images from that URL.
The lazy load plugin or script changes this src to data src.
So in the browser, it is not known that there is an image here but as soon as the user scrolls the page and this data src element comes into the viewport.
In the same way again your script or plugin changes this data in src.
And the browser starts showing the image by downloading it.
It is not even clear that the image src is not used in the background image, so lazy load doesn’t work properly.
So to solve this we use a different plugin that manipulates this background image smartly.
Or in WordPress, if you search for a background image lazy load then you will find many plugins which are free to use.
3. Encode Effectively
Encoding images effectively here we are talking about kb or MB.
Even though the image is 500 megapixels, it can be unnecessarily heavy.
What can be the solution for this, you can compress pictures one by one manually.
There are many free online tools yet Google has launched its own online tool squoosh app.
You don’t even need Photoshop, you can manage images by going to photopea.com
If you are a WordPress user then you have a lot of options and if you want to resize hundreds or thousands of images on your website then you can resize the images only through Python.
4. Use Images CDN
By loading the images through CDN, you can remove a lot of loading time from your server and increase the performance of the website.
5. Avoid redirects
Look at http://abc com/ and https://www.abc.com/ both are different URLs.
So if your website is running on HTTPS version but image URLs use HTTP, then images will appear on your website but images will come from a long way.
In such a situation, the speed of the website will be affected, its solution is to use only one particular URL format.
If your website is running in https://.www then its images should also contain https://www.
If the images are running on only http://www then the URL should also contain only http://www.
And if your website runs without SSL then using an SSL certificate first is more important.
How to solve this issue don’t worry that is very simple.
If your website is custom coded then you can use find and replace commands.
6. Use CSS image sprites
Whenever many icons appear on your website at once, no matter how much you have reduced the size of these icons, it still affects the performance.
Because it’s 10 kilobytes to load 15 icons, the total weight will be only 150 kilobytes.
But the website will have to process 15 requests.
CSS sprites combine 15 items into one, so only one request has to be handled on your website.
Again in WordPress, you will get many plugins to generate and in the custom-coded website.
7. Avoid embedding –
Images should not be embedded in your website from the other site, it is not just about the size but it is an extra request.
If you have to load the image from any third-party site then you can download it and upload it directly to your site.
8. Delete EXIF data –
Exif data is also called metadata whenever you click the image, it contains all the information like location, camera action, and focal distance which the visitor of your website does not need.
So you can easily remove it safely, most of the image optimization plugins or scripts automatically delete the data.
But if it is still visible in your images, then make sure that you have turned on the setting related to EXIF data in the image operation plugin that you have used in WordPress.
9. Disable hotlinking –
Disable the embedding images option for your website, but other people are embedding images, so that website is consuming bandwidth and your server is loading up.
The result of this is that your website is getting slow.
You can stop hotlinking by changing it in the WordPress plugin or you should use the .htaccess file.
10. Add image dimension –
It is important to have the right size of the image in CSS, this makes the browser guesswork and this means that your CLS score does not deteriorate.
In WordPress, most builders automatically add this value, but in the custom-developed website, you have to see all the images.
And you have to pay attention to whether the specification which should be given to the width or height in an image has not been missed.
If it is so, then it should be fine.
Thankfully this issue doesn’t come up in WordPress until you start coding the images manually by yourself.
Conclusion
So this is it, by covering 10 points for advanced image SEO, you can be sure that the website will not be slow because of your image.
And because of this, the page experience of the website will not be down.
If you have a problem with image SEO please comment below and share this information with your friends.
