
Image Optimisation Service
Image optimisation is important, for appering in image based searches and for on-site page load times. An important factor to consider when weighing the SEO value of your site.
Using large images affects the user experience and image SEO, and it will cause Google to penalise your website ranking.
Low quality images will appear fuzzy, which will make your site look less polished and likely cause disengagement of users.
Our best-practice approach to image optimisation
- Images resized for viewpoints
- The use of image ‘Titles’ and ‘Alt’ Tags
- Image types and the next-gen formats
- Image meta stripping
Optimised Images Resized For Viewpoints
Images can have a huge impact on loading times, A large responcive image 1920 x 1080 (HD) displayed as a thumbnail still has to load the complete large image file. Three or four of these types of oversized images will vastly increase your page time. Appreciate the fact that 40% of users will abandon a site if it takes longer than 3 seconds to load!
Amazon did tests that showed they would lose $1.6 BILLION every year if they slowed down by just one second. Correct Image formatting is essential!
Image Alt and Title Tags
What is an image Alt Text?
Alt text (alternative text), also known as “alt attributes”, “alt descriptions”, are used within HTML to describe the appearance and function of an image on a page.
1. Adding alternative text to photos is first and foremost a principle of web accessibility. Visually impaired users using screen readers will be read an alt attribute to better understand an on-page image. Rule of thumb, improved accessibility = improved SEO
2. Alt tags will be displayed in place of an image if an image file cannot be loaded.
3. Alt tags provide better image context/descriptions to search engine crawlers, helping them to index an image properly.
EXAMPLE GOOD ALT BAD ALT

Poor alt text:
<img src=”bird.jpg” alt=”” />
Okay alt text:
<img src=”bird.jpg” alt=”cockerel” />
Better alt text:
<img src=”bird.jpg” alt=”cockerel crowing” />
Best alt text:
<img src=”bird.jpg” alt=”Red-crested cockerel crowing” />
Image Title’s
Image title attribute doesn’t (at present) have any impact on keyword rankings because search engines don’t crawl them. Having said that, image titles are displayed when your mouse hovers over an image in some browsers so it does improve user experience and accessibility.
Image Types and Next Gen Images
For images, the right format doesn’t exist; it depends on the kind of image and how you want to use it. As a rule of thumb
- JPEG’s for larger photos or illustrations: it will give you good results in terms of colors and clarity with a relatively small file size;
- PNG if you need to preserve background transparency, however PNG’s tend to be much larger file sizes so work best with smaller pictures and icons
- GIF’s set to 256 colours, this older format is usually preserved for short animation, aka the animated gif.
Next-Gen Image Formats
WebP is a modern image format that provides superior lossless and lossy compression for images on the web. Using WebP, webmasters and web developers can create smaller, richer images that make the web faster.
WebP lossless images are 26% smaller in size compared to PNGs. WebP lossy images are 25-34% smaller than comparable JPEG images at equivalent SSIM quality index.
Lossless WebP supports transparency (also known as alpha channel) at a cost of just 22% additional bytes. For cases when lossy RGB compression is acceptable, lossy WebP also supports transparency, typically providing 3× smaller file sizes compared to PNG.
Source: Developers Google
Stripping Meta Data From Images
Most images hold metadata stored within a file, which may include when the file was created and last edited.
Image files actually contain several file types within them. Different types of metadata are stored in different types of files. For example, in addition to visual data, JPEG images might also contain:
- EXIF files, which hold information about the camera settings and manufacturer
- IPTC files, which hold user-added metadata
- 8BIM files, which are added by Photoshop
- ICC files, which contain information about embedded color profiles
Recommended image meta stripping tools
- For Mac based O/S : ImageOptim
- For PC’s: Gimp
EXIF files alone can include dozens of specific details such as when the picture was taken, the shutter speed used and whether the flash was enabled. Most of this information isn’t necessary for a browser to render the image, so it can be disposed of without worries.
External reference articles & resources
- Keycdn article on image metadata
- Passion digital article on how to check image traffic in google analytics
- Kinsta article on how to optimie images for web and performance
- Dexecure article on impact of metadata on image performance
- Bitcatcha article on Amazon loss of sales per additional second of load time
- ImageOptim: Image compression tool
- Gimp: Image compression tool
- Google: Next Gen image formats
SEO Hampshire
Technical Search Engine Optimisation for images, based in Hampshire.
With over 20 years of experience working within Media, Analysis & Web Development. Our sister site is called BoodleBobs
Image Optimisation
Image optimisation, the process of reducing the file size of your images without sacrificing quality ensuring page load times remain low. It's also about machine interpretation of what an image via setting descriptive alt tagsAssociated LSI Terms
image optimizer download, best image optimizer, google image optimizer tool, image compressor, resize an image, jpeg optimizer, reduce image size in kb, image optimizer wordpress
SEO Freelancer, imaage optimisation
Services For Technical SEO Optimisation
- Drupal website design
- Creation & registrations of sitemaps
- Custom 404 error page setup and optimisation
- Header tags optimisation
- Image optimisation
- Link & URL optimisation
- Link redirection
- Meta tags optimisation
- Mobile site optimisation
- Server optimisation
- Site maintenance & patches
- Structured data universal SEO
- Webserver hosting
- WordPress website design
Recommended Web Hosting Siteground
Why do we use Siteground as our hosting partner? Click the image to see the SEO scores and server stability following migration to Siteground.