How To Optimize Images In WordPress?

In today’s article we will talk about the importance of optimizing images in WordPress to speed up and improve loading times, thus achieving a more positive user experience.

We know the importance of images on web pages, and it is thanks to them that a more visual and attractive content can be created. Combining the text with images allows the user not to tire of reading the information and has greater interest in the web page, thus facilitating the conversion. In addition, this helps SEO positioning, since it improves the user experience and makes the content of the website better structured.

To do this, you have to choose the most appropriate images for each website, and we are not only talking about the theme itself, but about the quality that these should have. It is necessary that the images that are inserted have a good quality, so that a secure and reliable website feel is transmitted, without weighing them too much, that is why we emphasize optimizing images in WordPress.

In this article we will explain how to optimize images in WordPress and create a better strategy.

Why do you need to optimize your images for WordPress?

Optimizing images in WordPress is necessary and can help your website a lot, because if they are not optimized, you will experience really high load times, also having problems with bandwidth.

But what will we achieve by optimizing images in WordPress?

• Faster loading speed allowing to improve the user experience. A site in which the loading time is slow will result in the user spending less time on it and having a higher bounce rate.
• The web page will take up less space on the server because you will not occupy the storage limits of the web hosting. This makes the site lighter and more efficient by taking away space and weight.
• It will improve the positioning of the web in search engines, because Google robots will crawl all web sites, positioning in a better way those that have optimized images. To understand it in another way, it positions it better thanks to the fact that it has a shorter loading time. This will make the web have much more user traffic.

Think of all those users who browse with the mobile device, do not forget that more than 50% of web traffic is made from these devices. How can a mobile phone with 2G or 3G load an image of several megabytes? It would take forever, which is why optimizing images in WordPress is important.

5 methods to optimize images for WordPress

The purpose of optimizing images in WordPress is to achieve a smaller size without sacrificing image quality. There are many ways to work this, so it is important to know all the existing possibilities to work the images.

Choose the correct file format

To optimize images in WordPress we must take all aspects into account, and the selection of the format is more relevant than it may seem a priori.

The most common formats for images are JPEG and PNG, although the Webp format, specific to web pages, is increasingly used.

JPEG is a format used for images that have a smaller total file size, that provide robust image quality, or that can be resized without loss of quality.

PNG is a type of file that is used for vectors, logos, or smaller images. These are used less frequently because they have a larger file size. The most common is that the logo of a website, for example, goes in this format or in .svg, since they are ideal for optimizing images in WordPress, especially if they are small.

In addition to all these types of formats, you can find different ones, but they are not recommended when creating images for a website.

Compress your images

This process allows you to find a balance between compression quality and image size. If the compression is minimal, you will get a large file size and with a higher quality, while, if the compression level is high, the size of the image will be smaller, but with a lower quality. The trick is to find a balance between both parts, thus achieving low weight and high quality.

In order to optimize images in WordPress with this process, there are different tools or plugins that allow you to achieve a good result.

DIY-type tools

These types of tools offer greater control when configuring the optimization, so it is a good option if you work with photo programs such as Photoshop.

• Adobe Photoshop: contains its own tool for image compression.
• Gimp: is a free alternative that contains a learning curve with great optimization.
• Affinity Photo – This contains built-in image compression features.
• NET – This is an editor for Windows users.

Automatic optimization tools

Through this route, images can be automatically optimized, thus avoiding wasting time when using certain programs.

• JPEGmimi
• TinyPNG
• Imageoptim
• OptiPNG
• Trimage

Image compression plugins

When developing a WordPress website we have all kinds of plugins, and in this case, we can find plugins to optimize images in WordPress while they are loaded or that reduce the size of those that are in the media library.

• Imagify: it is one of the best valued plugins, with guarantees and with a great option for the future. It allows to reduce the weight of the images in just one click.

Among the options offered by this plugin you can find three types of modalities (normal, aggressive or ultra optimization).

• WP Smush.it: offers the possibility to optimize images in WordPress in a simple and fast way with functions such as image compression without quality loss, compress images in PNG, JPG or GIF format, detect if the image size is not correct and resizes it or postpones the loading of images.
• Optimizador.io: this only takes care of reducing the weight of the images. Image compression is done on your server, but is done in the background on Webempresa’s servers.
• Imsanity: the function of this plugin is to resize the images and adapt them to a smaller size than the original.
• ShortPixel Image Optimizer: handles different image formats allowing to compress up to 100 images per month.
• EWWW Image Optimizer: it is an interesting plugin because it minimizes images with the perfect compression function, which compresses the weight of the image without the need for quality loss.

Resize images for optimal viewing

If you size the images correctly you will be able to adjust it and deal with an image smaller than the original one, thus optimizing the images in WordPress.

To understand this better, if we need a 300 × 300 pixel image and we load a higher image, WordPress will reduce the image to display it in the best way, causing it to increase the bandwidth and take longer to load. For this, it is necessary to take into account the dimensions that the image must have to size the one that is consistent with it.

Make sure the images are well cropped

By setting images that are well cropped, you will get a better fit to the website. WordPress has an editor that allows you to crop images from the desktop, so in case an image on the web needs to be cropped, you will have to delete it to reload it. This is because if many edits are made to the desktop, all these versions will be saved, increasing both the server load and the overall size of the site.

Following all these steps when optimizing and loading the images in WordPress will be of great help to be able to have a website with visually pleasing images that fit the theme of the web.

Being able to optimize images in WordPress will allow Google to positively value the content of the web and achieve a better position in the results, thus obtaining a better visibility of the business in the online environment.

Optimizing images in WordPress is essential in any digital marketing strategy, since as we have seen, it affects both web positioning and user experience.

We trust that this article on how to optimize images in WordPress and its importance has been useful for you to continue optimizing your website. As we always wait for you in the comments, where you can tell us some extra trick to optimize images in WordPress, we read you!