Hawaii SEO – Image Resizing Tips for Your Website Photos
In Image Titling Tips for Your Website Photos, I focused on giving your images the right file name and alt text. For this post, I will elaborate more on importance of resizing your photos and the various tools you can use to resize them.
IMAGE RESIZING FOR SEO
RESIZE IMAGES
Speed is an important aspect of a website. In fact, I have talked about this on Ways to Speed Up Your WordPress Site. Images can really affect website speed especially if you add multiple images in one page. So, resizing images is essential if you want to improve website speed and SEO.
Each image can contribute to the slowing down of your website. That is why it is crucial to habitually resize the images to the dimensions you want. The topic on image editing won’t be complete without mentioning the popular Adobe Photoshop.
However, I will not solely focus on that tool since it is not a free app to use. I will mention free alternative to your editing journey. One tool you can use is Pixlr, which is an online editing tool. Yes, it’s online so there’s no need for you to download bulky apps.
Once you hop over to their website, you have two options: Pixlr X and Pixlr E.
The Pixlr X is best suited for beginners since it is easy to use and it can do quick edits. Meanwhile, Pixlr E is designed for advanced editing and more detailed editing. However, both tools support image format like .PSD, .JPEG, .PNG, and many more.
Let’s just stick to the basic editor for the purpose of this tutorial. So, go ahead and launch Pixlr X. Once you have your image ready, the image size will be shown at the bottom left of the screen. For instance, the image I used is 1200 x 800px.
Now, I will have to resize it to a smaller size. Go to the properties option (P), then choose resize image. Preferably, you have to change the image width to the width of your post area, and the height will adjust with the given width. After, don’t forget to click OK.
That’s it. You have learned how to resize an image.
REDUCE THE IMAGE FILE SIZE
Resizing an image is not enough. The next logical step to do is reduce the file size. How can do you this? Go back to the Pixlr X example. Once you made the necessary changes on the image, you have to click on the save button, which is on the bottom portion of the window.
On the save dialog box, you are asked to give a file name, choose a file type, and select the quality. To reduce the image file size in Pixlr X, just drag the bar down to 59 or lower. This would be on the category of MED quality image.
The lower quality you choose, the more pixelated the photo will be. So, strive to maintain a balance light file size and still have a good quality.
For WordPress users, you’re in luck because there is a tool that can help you with image compression and image SEO optimization. WP Smush is an all-in-one plugin that can compress your images,and eventually improve your Google Page Speed.