The images you use on the WordPress website play a key role in loading the website, and the role of search engine optimization (SEO) on the website is less.
According to the HTTP archive, the average webpage file size is about 50% of the image, and the average page uses up to 26 images! Finding a method of optimizing and narrowing these images can bring great benefits to the loading time of your website.
But this is not only speed -optimized image, but also helps you get more traffic. More than 20% of the US network search occurs on Google’s picture search, so optimizing pictures on the WordPress website for ranking is a good way to attract more people.
In this article, we will show you how to optimize all aspects of WordPress image. We will introduce nine key techniques to help you optimize the performance, SEO, accessability and general user experience of website images.
Let us dig deep!
How to optimize images on WordPress: 9 Performance Tips
We will start by focusing on letting your photos loading faster on WordPress. We will then turn to more attention to SEO and accessible skills.
1. Compressed image to reduce file size
Image compression allows you to reduce the file size of the image without changing the image size, making it accelerate the loading time and optimized image of the website and optimize the image. A good way.
You have two compression options:
No loss – The file size decreases slightly, and the image quality is zero.
Damage – The size of the file is greatly reduced. The quality may change very small, but unless you use positive damage compression algorithms, people’s eyes usually cannot see it.
Understand more information about damage and lossless compression.
Damage compression is the best choice for most websites and blogs. The exception is a vital photographer or other visual artist.
It is necessary to easily compress the image on the WordPress website, you can use a free Imagify plug -in. Imagify will automatically compress your new image uploaded to the site, and it can also allow you to optimize existing images in batches.
You will be able to select from three compression levels -Wea -loss and two loss options:
]
How big is the difference? We took 326 KB’s uncomfortable JPEG images and optimized it with the loss of Imagify. After imagified compression images, the
file size decreased by 77% to 74 KB.
2. Adjust the image size to further reduce the size of the file Most websites only have 700-1,000 pixel width content areas. For example, the content area you are reading on the blog is only ~ 750 pixels ( on the desktop ).
If the size you uploaded is obviously wider than the website content area, you will not get any benefits in the quality of the picture, but it will greatly increase the size of the picture file.
Under the same conditions, 3,000 pixel width images have larger file size than images with 1,000 pixel width
.
For this reason, you always want to adjust the image size of the WordPress site to you size of. If the content area of \u200b\u200byour blog is 750 pixel width, this means that you should adjust the image size to 750 pixels ( or if you want to provide high -quality images for the RETINA screen, you can double it. To 1,500 pixels ). To automatically adjust the image size when you upload the image to the WordPress website, you can use the same Imagify plug -in above. Like compression,
You can also use imagify batch adjustment to all existing images on the size of the site
:
How big is the difference?
We adjust the 3,000 pixel width JPEG image to 1,500 pixels. The size of the original file is 1.325 MB, but after adjusting the size, it will be reduced to 633 kb (further reduced to 408.7 kb after using imagify compression).
If you want Please check our complete guide to how to compress and adjust the size of the image in batches.
3. Select the correct image format to obtain the best quality and image size Another important performance considerations are the file format of the image. For images, the two most common formats are: png
-This is useful for images without many colors, such as interface screenshots. It also allows transparency, which is useful in some cases, such as logo or icon. However, the size of the file of color images may become very large, so you don’t want to use PNG for photos.
JPEG
– This format is most suitable for color images, such as sunset photos or other photos. For these cases, it usually causes the file size to be much smaller than PNG. However, JPEG
does not support transparency like PNG, so you may not want to use it for logo and icons.
SVG- If you want to use a vector graphics, you should use this format. It is very suitable for the logo, icons and other types of graphics made of vector. If you have no logo, please check the free logo of Turbologo. This is a simple way to create a professional -level visual effect. It looks great at any resolution and can be customized within a few seconds. Unless you are satisfied with the new logo, you will not pay.
In short, you will want to use JPEG for photos or other realistic color images, and PNG may be a screenshot screenshot, icon, text with more texts or other images that need transparency in the interface screen screen, or other images that need transparency. Good choice. SVG is most suitable for vector graphics.
For smaller file size, you can also consider using modern image file formats, such as webp. Webp is a new format from Google, which provides file size than JPEG and PNG are less formats, but the quality is the same -you can learn more about WebP here.
On average,
Converted to WebP can reduce the size of JPEG image by 25-34%, and reduce the size of PNG images by 26%. Webp also has the best part of JPEG and PNG -you can use it for photos without large files, but it still supports transparency as PNG images. In 2021, all mainstream browsers support WebP images, which means that you can safely convert the image to a webp format to achieve the size of these files.
if you want All new images and existing images are converted to a webp format
, and these images are provided to the browser to support webp visits:
]
WordPress will also add core support for webp images to WordPress 5.8, which will be released at the end of July 2021. This means that you will be able to upload WebP images directly to your media library and include them in your content, just like PNG or JPEG images. Before WordPress 5.8, WordPress media libraries were not allowed to upload . 4. Use delay loading to improve the initial page load time
Delayed loading allows you to delay the image outside the visitor (also known as \”below the first screen,\” also \”below the first screen \”).
Initially, your website will only load the image required to show some of the pages. Once someone starts to roll down, your server will load each image as needed. You can speed up the initial page of the website by loading some images on WordPress on WordPress. WordPress 5.5 now supports the delayed loading attribute of this machine, which means that your image will automatically use delay loading in the browser that support it. However, there is a question -not with webp imagesAt the same time, not all mainstream browsers support this attribute!
Apple’s Safari browser does not support the delayed load on MACOS or iOS. Other browser and other browsers such as Opera Mobile and UC Browser also lack support. At present, only about 71% of Internet users have browsers that support native delay loading.
If you want to ensure that all visitors can benefit from the delay loading, you can use a delay to delay the delay Load such a free plug -in. Alternatively, many performance plugins also include delay loading functions, such as WP Rocket.
5. Define the size of the image to avoid layout shift With the help of Google’s new Core Web Vitals program, Google focuses on Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) as an indicator for website administrators. In essence, when your website is \”jump\” when loading, CLS will occur. This is a problem because it can cause a bad user experience. If you are not careful, this may happen after the text content on your website. When the image is loaded, it pushes a text to cause CLS. A method to avoid problems and improve Cumulative Layout Shift is to define the size of the image in the site code. In this way, even if the image has not been loaded, the visitors’ browsers will know that the space is retained to avoid CLS.
Fortunately, WordPress can help you do this.
If you insert an image through the WordPress editor, WordPress will automatically define the correct image size for you. The same is true of most pages of construct plug -ins.
However, if you use images elsewhere, such as manually adding them by code, be sure to set up image size to avoid problems with CLS. If you don’t like to specify the image size directly in the code, you can use a free plug -in, such as specifying missing image dimensions. Alternatively, WP Rocket also provides a feature to help you perform this operation in the \” media \” tab that you set. 6. Use content delivery network (CDN) to speed up global loading time This is a reward point because it is not suitable for all websites. However, if you have a global audience, CDN can speed up the time loading time by shortening the distance between the visitors and the files they need to .
CDN is only a large global server network. If WordPress is configured to use one, you can cache the image on each server on the network.
Then, when someone visits your site, their browser can images from the recent CDN position without ing them directly from the server at your site. By reducing physical distances, image files will be loaded faster, which will usually speed up your website speed.
If your budget is limited, you can find a free image CDN, such as the Jetpack site accelerator function supported by WordPress.com’s server network.
Or, for a more flexible choice, you can use paid CDN services, for example:
Rocket CDN
Key CDN
Rabbit CDN
For paid CDN, you can use CDN Enabler or WP Rocket and other plugins to integrate them with your WordPress website.
7. Use related file names to improve the optimization of image search engine Now we will start to turn to more attention to SEO’s WordPress image optimization skills -starting from the actual file name of the image.
Before uploading the image to WordPress, you need to ensure that the file name of each image is related to the content of the image.
For example, assuming you want to upload a snow mountain image. Do not use a random file name like
66fsddfs651.jpeg
, but should be used as descriptive file names like
snowy-mountain.jpeg
.
With the relevant file name, your picture will have a better opportunity to rank in Google picture search, because Google has additional context to describe the picture.
8. Set image replacement text to improve SEO and accessible
Image replacement text helps to provide additional information about images for search engines. It also helps your website easier to access, because it can help using screen readersThe visitors understand the image. To add an alternative text to the image in WordPress editor, you can choose an image block and use the replacement in block settings text field:
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You can also consider using title and explanation text, which is two other methods of adding text based on the context of the image.
9. Create XML image site map to improve SEO
If you want to focus on the pictures of your website in the Google picture search, you can consider creating a special XML picture site site map. This type of site map is like listing all the posts on your website and the XML site map on the page, but it contains a list of all the images of your website.
Plugins such as Yoast SEO and RANK MATH will automatically insert images in the site map. This is why you may want to use their XML site map function instead of the built -in site map function added by WordPress in version 5.5.
Do you want to know more about SEO image optimization? Find the top 12 image SEO techniques to increase natural traffic in our special article.
Immediately began to optimize your WordPress image
Almost every WordPress website uses images, so it is important to understand how to optimize these images to get the best website.
Performance should be one of the biggest problems, because the image accounted for almost half of the size of the average web file, which means that they will have a great impact on your loading time.
First, make sure you use the correct format for the type of image created. You can then use Imagify to automatically compress and adjust the image size when uploading the image to WordPress. If you want to use a newer webp format, Imagify can also help you automatically convert the image of the site into a webp.
In order to further improve performance, you can implement strategies such as delay loading. If you have a global audience, you can also use CDN. Once the performance of the image is optimized, you also need to ensure that the relevant file name is used and adds the alternative text to optimize the SEO and accessability of the image.
Do you have any questions about how to optimize the image on WordPress?
How big is the difference? We took 326 KB’s uncomfortable JPEG images and optimized it with the loss of Imagify. After imagified compression images, the 
on the desktop ). 
text field: 