Graphic Design Tutorials

Image optimization basics for websites

One of the largest components of a page are images. If there are too many un-optimized images on a page, the page loading will suffer. Here are a couple of quick wins for optimizing the images on your site.

The first and most important is to name and describe your images correctly. Google Image search accounts for 25% of web traffic to most sites and proper naming could result in a lot of traffic. First, rename your images to describe the content. Next, use title and alt text tags to name and describe the image again. Proper alt-tags help when a page hasn’t loaded, and the user sees only the bounding box of the image.

Next, ensure that your images are optimized for the page. Many designers throw in the largest image they have and set the image size in the page, without resizing the image. Resize and optimize images for the exact size you need them. There is a lot of freeware online that will allow and suggest the best ways to resize and optimize images for smaller file sizes. Smaller files mean faster load times, which is great for users and to rank better for Google Page Speed.

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