9 Benefits of Image Optimization For SEO

Intro

Website content is far more engaging with the right images. This is why many of you have may have spent more time curating interesting imagery than creating written content. But there’s far more to consider than just the look of your site.

Image optimization is crucial for any content creator who wants their site to perform well. It offers numerous benefits to any online business and is a vital tool in your SEO arsenal. In the article below, we look at the 9 top benefits of image optimization for SEO.

Improved User Experience

The presence of images is sometimes even more important than the written content. And this is especially true in the world of social media. Appealing, quick-loading images help to attract and engage your users. Nowhere is image optimization more vital than on social media platforms.

Formatting images without knowing what you are doing is never a good idea. Image modifications often reduce the quality, which will have the opposite effect on visitors to your content than you’re hoping for. But with the right tools, this will not be a problem.

You can use a tool like ConvertFree to customize your images and make them more suitable for social media. Find the best image converter for your needs, as well as a host of online video converters. Photo sharing also becomes easier, thus improving your SEO rankings.

Less Storage Space On Server

When optimizing images, you need to strike a balance between file size and quality. High-quality images are essential for any website. But there’s another benefit to having smaller-sized images. They require less storage on your server, which saves you money and allows you to concentrate on other expenses.

The disk space is the amount of data that your web host allows. If your website contains many photos and media files, your site will need disk space equal to all these files combined. But the right combination of file format and compression type can reduce the size of your images up to 5 times.

Because optimized images are generally smaller than un-optimized ones, they require less space. And this means you can store images more cheaply, with less hardware and cloud storage. This benefit depends largely upon how many thumbnails you optimize, though.

Faster Back Ups

One of the best ways to ensure the safety of your website is to perform regular backups. It takes time to create engaging content, and you don’t want to have to start again from scratch in an emergency. Backups are a lifesaver in the case of a loss of data or a breach of security.

These issues can easily arise not only due to hacking, but also accidental deletion of content. Even migration to a new web host will necessitate a recent backup of your content. And that means everything, including your images. But no matter the situation, it shouldn’t take more than a few minutes to get that back up ready to go.

Optimized images make creating back-ups much faster, which means you can get your site back on track quickly and easily. Therefore, image optimization is not only essential for SEO, but also for your continuation in the event of a disaster or change of web host.

Higher Search Result Rankings

The ultimate aim is to rank higher on search engine result pages(SERPS), preferably on the first page. This can be achieved. The higher you rank on search engine results, the more visible your site will be. Image optimization helps with this too.

Relevant images provide search engines with additional contextual information for your site. But if they're not optimized, your images can hurt rather than help your SEO.

Search engines crawl and index the images on sites, and because large images slow things down, they can cause sites to rank lower in search results. Search engines also look for relevance when checking your images. These visual clues help them match the right content to a user’s search intent.

Decreased Bounce Rate

The bounce rate refers to users clicking on a site and leaving without any interaction. It is a metric that you cannot ignore when working to improve your site. High bounce rates are bad for business. Anything that can reduce this metric is essential to the success of your online business.

There are several reasons behind high bounce rates. But the main reason for high bounce rates is a slow loading page. Nothing puts users off more than slow-loading web pages. Most people are impatient and will look elsewhere if your content is slow to open.

Larger images take far more time to load than smaller ones. Most users are influenced by the images they see. And a long wait for them to load will lead to a loss of interest in your site. Image optimization can help to reduce the time it takes your web pages to load, and therefore improve retention.

More Traffic

Paying attention to image SEO will ultimately drive more traffic to your site. This is because by optimizing images, you are improving the speed, quality, and relevance of your content. This, in turn, affects the success with which your images (and therefore your site) are discovered, crawled, and indexed.

And to get more traffic to your site, you have to rank high on Google. But this is becoming more and more difficult to achieve. There are several things you can do to improve your ranking on Google though, and one of these is SEO, including specifically image-centered SEO.

Of course, image SEO will be of more value to some businesses than others. It all depends on how much imagery factors into users’ searches within your industry. If you are involved in any area of fashion, beauty, celebrity news, or travel, high-quality mages may have even more importance.

Less Bandwidth

Interestingly, images use up a large percentage of the world's bandwidth. Image optimization relates to all aspects of imagery. It involves adjusting web images to use the best resolution, format, and dimension while also keeping files small. One of the benefits of this is reduced bandwidth usage.

While an adequate amount of bandwidth is essential for the proper and smooth running of your website, too much can be a problem. If the bandwidth on your web hosting plan is exceeded, your site will shut down. And that will have a serious impact on your business.

Images that have the same resolution but are adapted to varying screen sizes are, however, not optimal. The time saved in loading can be negated by the extra bandwidth. Rather, choose an appropriate image format to save bandwidth.

There is usually no major difference between .png and .jpg images as far as quality is concerned. But image size increases considerably in JPEG format for images with little color variation. GIF images generally provide the most savings in bandwidth.

More Successful Thumbnail Pics

Image optimization is not just about the size of your images. Blurry and indistinct images are not going to attract users to your site. In fact, they will have a very negative effect. And this is especially relevant when you choose your thumbnail pics.

The goal of thumbnail pics is to increase the number of clicks on your site. Thumbnail images give online searchers their first impression of your product or service. Whether it's a tutorial video or a product image, the thumbnail image has a profound influence on the user’s decision to click on your site or not.

Users generally base their decision to click on a site on the relevance of the image in the thumbnail. But in a sea of relevant images, the highest quality one will always win. A high-resolution image creates a better thumbnail image.

Best For Assistive Technology

Image optimization is not only about what it can do for you. It also relates to helping others access your content. And we’d like to illustrate this with the example of assistive technology. While this technology is becoming popular with users across the board, those who stand to benefit the most are users with impairments and disabilities.

As more and more people enter the digital world, the number of seniors and people with disabilities online increases too. Assistive technology is used by many of these people, particularly those who are visually impaired.

It has been predicted that by 2024, there will be 8.4 billion units of digital voice assistants. Another popular assistive tool is a screen reader. A screen reader converts the text and images on a webpage into speech or braille. Image SEO also optimizes images for screen readers, which is helpful to impaired people who may otherwise struggle to use your website.