When it comes to managing a website, great-looking videos and photography are planned out for weeks but often slapped onto the website without a second thought. How you organise, name and create your images can have a large positive impact on rankings and user experience for very little extra effort once you know what you’re doing.

If you’re working with images on your site, here are a few simple yet effective optimisation strategies to ensure your pages remain snappy and search-engine friendly.

Choose the Right Image Name from the Start

Renaming images before uploading them to your website is more important than you might think. An image file with a generic name like “IMG_1234” is not only unhelpful for finding a file on your computer, but it’s also a missed opportunity to add a little context to your site’s content.

How Should You Correctly Name Your Files?

To correctly name your files to be SEO-friendly, you’ll want to use descriptive file names with keywords that accurately describe what’s in the image. Separate words with hyphens so both humans and search engines can easily interpret them. For example, instead of a file named “photo1.png”, a more SEO-friendly alternative would be something like: “digital-marketing-agency-team-collaborating.jpg”.

This also helps Google and other search engines understand what the image is about, making it easier for your website to show up in relevant searches.

Optimise Image Size Without Sacrificing Quality

Site speed is a major ranking factor, and oversized images are one of the most common culprits of sluggish websites. The good news is that there are several free tools available to resize and optimise your images.

 

How to optimise images for the Web (with links to popular tools)

Choose the right image format for your website

Stick to JPEG for most images, as it typically offers the best balance of quality and file size. Use PNG only if the image requires transparency, and consider switching to WebP if you’re after modern, lightweight formats that retain quality. One of the most popular tools for wordpress websites is Imagify

Use Online Optimisation Tools

Tools like Squoosh (for single images) and Caesium (for bulk images) can significantly reduce file sizes without losing visible quality. If you’re working in Canva, the process is even easier: export your image as a JPEG and set the quality slider to around 50%. You’ll notice a massive decrease in file size without a huge dip in visual quality.

Set Size Limits

Aim to keep hero images under 250KB and smaller images, like thumbnails, under 100KB. This ensures your site remains lightweight and fast-loading, regardless of how many images are on a page.

Use responsive images

Ensure images adjust seamlessly to different screen sizes and resolutions for a better user experience.

You Should Use Alt Text for Better Accessibility and SEO

A picture tells a thousand words to your website visitors, but you should spell it out for search engines.

Why is Alt Text important?

Alt text serves multiple purposes: it helps search engines understand your images, and it provides context for visually impaired users using screen readers. By crafting clear and descriptive alt text, you not only enhance your SEO but also improve the accessibility of your site.

What makes good alt text?

It should describe what’s in the image and its purpose in the context of the page. Think of it like a caption that captures the essence of the image in a few words. For example, if you have an image showing two of your team members working on an SEO strategy, your alt text could be: “Two digital marketing specialists collaborating on an SEO strategy at a Perth-based agency.”

Sitemaps for Images

Why it’s important to create an image sitemap
Image sitemaps help search engines identify and index images, which is particularly useful for sites with interactive elements like galleries or pop-ups.

Lazy Loading Images

Implementing lazy loading for images is a powerful way to optimise website performance by ensuring that images are only loaded when they are about to appear on the user’s screen. This reduces initial page load times, conserves bandwidth, and creates a smoother browsing experience for your customers.

Prioritise critical images

Focus on loading essential images quickly, especially those visible at the top of the page, to ensure your customers land with visible content.

Remove unnecessary images

Removing unnecessary images is essential for optimising website performance and enhancing user experience. Images that do not add meaningful value to your content can increase page loading times, clutter your design, and detract from your core message, and so, it’s important to eliminate any images that don’t add value to your content.

Why Does Image Optimisation Matter for SEO?

Unoptimised images can drag down your page speed, and if your site is slow, visitors might leave before it even loads. Not only do you lose that user, but if this is repeated it will send a signal to search engines that your site might not be offering a good user experience, potentially pushing your rankings down. In addition to this, properly named images and descriptive alt text contribute to your site’s relevance in search queries. They can also appear in Google Image searches, giving you another way to drive traffic to your site.

Keep It Simple, Keep It Optimised

These image optimisation tips are designed to keep your site performing at its best without requiring complex technical skills. With just a little extra effort in naming, formatting, and compressing your images, you can create a faster, more user-friendly website that also ranks better in search engines.

So next time you upload a new image to your site, take a moment to optimise it—it’s worth the time investment! If you’d like assistance optimising your site, want to understand if it’s technically sound, or just want to know if it’s easy for users to navigate, get in touch with us!

Cam Dobie

SEO Specialist