One of the most important things to do on any website is to optimise images. This helps with the website loading speed, SEO and resource using and is one of the things that is most neglected by those building a new website.
How you can do this will depend on how you are building your website as certain software such as WordPress have a range of specialist plugins to help do this, however, you should always follow the basics below for each image on your website:
- Use the correct image dimensions for where they will be placed on your web page. If you have an image section that needs a 400×400 pixel image, there is no need to use a 2000×2000 pixel image. Use a free image resize tool to resize your images to fit correctly.
- Once your image is the correct size, use an image compression tool. There are various free tools available such as TinyPNG and this will reduce the file size of your image by up to 80%.
- Use the correct file format. If you are using an image with a white background on a page that also has a white background then make sure you use a JPG file rather than PNG as JPG images have a much smaller file size. Only use PNG images when a transparent background is required.
Using these tips will help you trim down on your web pages size and help increase the loading speed which in turn helps with SEO.
