Compress Images for Faster Load Times - WordPress Tips, Tricks Every Serious Blogger Must Know
Compress Images for Faster Load Times
Images are one of the heaviest components of a webpage and if you’re not optimizing them, you’re hurting both your site’s performance AND your SEO.
Besides the fact that slow websites create a negative user experience.
To optimize your images, one of the most effective ways is to compress them. You can also make them smaller by using specific formats while also removing EXIF data.
There are many tools to compress your images without losing quality (or at worst, very little loss that's not even noticeable).
You can use online services, or else use specific programs that you'll need to install on your own machine.
For example, you can use one of the following programs:
- Adobe Photoshop (Paid)
- GIMP (Free)
Both of these programs have an option to save your image for the web or settings that will make images optimized for the web so that they have a smaller size and therefore, load faster.
You can also do similar image compression using online tools such as:
- TinyPNG
- JPEGMini
- Optimole
- EWWW Image Optimizer
These are either a WordPress plugin or an online service that you can use to compress your images before or as you upload them to WordPress.
While some might argue about the various features of each of these services or programs, it's always better to have any image compression tool or plugin rather than nothing.
We go into the merits of how to choose the best image compression plugin for WordPress or how to use Photoshop/GIMP to optimize your images for the web as these have been written countless times.
What’s important to know here is that you must optimize your images to improve your site’s performance and SEO.