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Best WordPress Image Optimization Method For Bloggers

What’s your best WordPress image optimization method? I ask this question because image optimization is one of the most important aspects of making your site load faster.

best wordpress image optimization method

I realize that many bloggers don’t pay “that” much attention when it comes to their blog images. What they do is – upload the image to their media library, optimize it for search engine by filling the Alt + description and the rest, then they publish the post. But truly, they don’t know that reduction of image size also plays a major role in speeding up a blog site and as well as giving your image a better chance for search engine visibility.

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Why do we need our site to be fast? A faster blog site makes it easy for search engine crawlers to better index our site, high ranking and it also allows our visitors to move freely without stress or fear of data consumption. Nobody wants to visit a slow blog, or do you?

The truth is, not paying attention to your blog’s images will only make your blog site slower than normal. But how can you optimize your image so it won’t affect your blog speed? In a little while, I will be sharing with you how I reduce my images size to produce a better result 🙂 .

What are the major things that slow down a site?

I have done some good researches on what slows down a blog site and what majorly causes a site to slow (According to experts) are:

Host providers (server)

Plugins (too much of it or heavy weights)

Scripts (Your theme and most times your plugins)

Images

Trying to speed up your blog? Then reading “How To Speed Up Your WordPress Blog With W3 Total Cache (W3TC)” will surely help 🙂

How I reduce my blog images before publishing my post

Before I publish any of my posts, I make sure I reduce the size of my image but still try to maintain the quality of the image as best as I can. This is how I do it…

Firstly, I’ll take the image to Photoshop for editing and reducing or enlarging the width and height to my preferred taste.

Then I’ll simply save the image, but instead of pressing CTRL + S button I’ll simply click on “File” >>>> Scroll down to “save for web & Devices…”.

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In the new pop-up panel, you can easily optimize your blog image without hurting its quality… looks awesome right? yeah I know!

Look: You can see the size of the image; know the loading speed of the image as well, just by using the optimization option in Photoshop.

After using photoshop to give my image the first step of optimization, now it’s time to upload the light weight image to my blog post 🙂

Remember: If you do not have Photoshop to optimize your image, some free photo editors will do the job for you just fine.

Now, after uploading the image to the prepared blog post, it is time to optimize it even more using Yahoo’s own smush it.

For those blogger who’ve not been using or heard about smush it, here it goes:

According to smush.it official site, it uses optimization techniques specific to image format to remove unnecessary bytes from image files. Now tell me, who wouldn’t opt-in for a plugin as this, eh?

If you do not have the smush.it plugin, you can download it here…. But if you’ve already got the plugin installed, go to your media library, there, you will see the smush it button by the right hand side of the image you want to optimize. Click the button and wait for it to load. After loading, the image will be reduced to its minimal + and making your blog speed increases…

Note: I am not telling you that optimizing your image alone will speed up your blog a great deal, no, no mister! But it will indeed affect the speed of your blog by some good percentage.

If you’ve not smush your previous images before, you can simply click the “bulk smush.it” located at your “media library” to optimize all your images without you stressing yourself that much.

Let’s talk:

How many of you use the above method before publishing your next post? You don’t use it? Tell me, which method do you use other than the ones mentioned above? Please do drop your comments using the comment box below… remember that your comment is going to help the next man reading this post.

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40 Comments

  1. Hi Babanature,

    Good to know something before you wrote about it 🙂

    Yes, I optimize my images the same way too. Doing it up on Photoshop and them using SmushIT further. I guess because I don’t limit mine to just 1-2 pictures as I like to use 3-4 of them due to the length of the post, I need to use it and reduce the size and it’s been working well so far.

    Images are important for any blog, and you need to make sure you do it the right way or else it can increase your load time too.

    Thanks for sharing. Have a nice week ahead 🙂

    1. Hello Harleena,
      Feels good knowing that you also follow the above process 🙂 . . .
      Many bloggers out there don’t give a darn about their images and informing them how its been done is just the right way. At least some bloggers have grab the info, right? 🙂

      Thank you so very much for stopping by and dropping your wonderful comment as always. Do have a good weekend ahead…

  2. Images are really important for blogs and it should be optimized for traffic and also good exposure from visitors. your tips are really useful to implement.

    Thanks

    1. That’s right Samir, it is only a well optimized image that will hep the improvement of traffic in your image section and speed up your blog 🙂
      The above tips will surely help bloggers achieve that speed…

  3. Hi Baba,
    Interesting info. Most of the blogs are very slow to load their post. I can’t find the reason for this loading time. By reading this post, i found the real problem. Yes, images in the blog get more time to load. Actually am using photoshop to shrink my images. Here i got to know the plugin smush.it, i downloaded immediately after reading. I didn’t use this before, i think this will be very useful. Anyway thanks for sharing this man. Keep posting like this, hope to see you back.

    1. Hello Nirmal,
      Yes, the images we use on our blog also determine the speed of our blog post. An optimize image is an added advantage of speeding up our blog and improving our search visibility.

      I am sure that you’re going to find the smush it plugin great to use 🙂
      Thank for stopping by and contributing to the post. Do have a wonderful weekend

  4. Best images optimization tips ever read! I work on a tech blog and I generally use lot of images in to so I’d have to optimize images to get better results.

    1. Hello Vicky
      Thanks for those big words, it was indeed appreciated 🙂
      I am sure that the above tips will help your images and speed up your blog as well. Do try em out and tell me how it goes.
      Thanks for stopping by. Do have a nice weekend ahead

  5. It has been awesome reading the post, image optimization is one great thing.
    What of BJ Lazy load?

    1. Hello Nehemiah,
      I haven’t used BJ Lazy load, but i’ll definitely test run it and see how it goes.
      Thanks for the comment and do have a great weekend ahead 🙂

      1. Hi Babanature,

        Whenever you take a try of BJ lazy Load keep us inform hows your experience with having it. Love to know about the positive response of BJ lazy Load. 🙂

        Thanks!!
        Bhavesh Patel

  6. A nice article. I’m glad that this subject get more and more attention, because page speed, in the mobile devices era, is important.

    However, most of the time, save for web is not enough. You still have a couple of extra bytes in the image, that you can get rid of, using smush.it or similar (I recomment my own app, imgoptimize, which I created to support ALL web images)

    1. Hello Raul,
      Image can beautify our contents but as great as it can be, it can also cause the speed of your blog. Optimizing our blog is just the best option any wise blogger would take.

      Image do play a great role in our blog and it’s time to take it seriously 🙂 .
      Thanks for the comment and do have a nice weekend ahead…

  7. Hi Babanature, You’re right, optimizing images is extremely important for blogs, but many people skip that important step.

    Smush.It is a good solution, but I have had it kill some of my images when I’ve done repeated bulk smushes.

    Now I optimize my images with PicMonkey first before I put them on my blog.

    On Wednesday I published a review of the Galaxy S5 and wanted to include photos taken with the phone on my blog. The phone has a special feature called Selective Focus that makes the image files huge (23+ mb). I didn’t want to compress the images and perhaps alter the quality of the photos, so I created a Flickr album and uploaded the images there and linked to the album in my blog post.

    I also included a gallery of some compressed images in the blog post to give people an idea of the quality of the camera.

    Thanks for this excellent article, Babanature!

    1. Hello Carolyn,
      I’ve been using smush it for a long time now and i’ll say that it has never given me any problems. But as the old saying goes “A method can not work exactly the same way for two people” 🙂

      I haven’t tried Pic monkey but your method sounds awesome as well. 🙂
      Thanks for stopping by and dropping your wonderful comment. Do have a beautiful weekend ahead…

  8. HI Babanature; Wonderful tips to minimize the image load by first resizing it in a photo editor software. Otherwise many bloggers just shorten the image in image uploading software of the CPanel of their blog. It may apparently resized but weight wise it won’t be reduced and put load on your blog. It is also advised to save your image in PNG or Jpeg to keep it as much lighter as possible to least add the burden.

    1. Hello Mi,
      Nice tip you also shared with us. But the thing is, by reducing the picture size alone wont do the trick, changing the format do work as well but won’t have much effect as when you save it as web image. Hope you understand?

      Your tips here are noted.
      Thanks for stopping by and dropping your wonderful comment, do have a wonderful weekend ahead…

  9. This is one of the important step to make your blog speedy i was using plugin to optimize my blog images .. but all the tips you have given about image optimization is completely awesome great to read

    1. Good to know that you are using a plugin to optimize your images before publication.
      I am curious to know the plugin you’re using to optimize your images. If you have the time, do reply?

      Till then, do have a blessed weekend

  10. Wow this one is a amazing post to learn for “Best WordPress Image Optimization Method” These all are the great ways to learn Good & Better way to optimize Image.

    1. Yeah they are Monika,
      This post is going to help a long way if apply as it is 🙂
      Thanks for stopping by and dropping a comment. Have a good weekend

  11. Hey Babanature,

    I can honestly say that I don’t decrease the size of my images to lower the load time for my blog. It was something that I’ve been overlooking for a long time, but I’m glad I came across this blog. I’m not a big photoshop user but I’ll definitely check out the smush.it plugin and other programs. Thanks for sharing this valuable post! I hope you have a great week ahead!

    1. Hello Sherman,
      It good you saw the post on time. Most of the slow blogs you see today are caused by either the javascript or the images or even both. If you can successfully takecare of your javascript , your blog will still run slow because you’ve not done one essential part which is optimizing our images 🙂

      I am sure the post will be useful if you carryout the steps.
      Thanks for the comment and do have a wonderful week ahead…

  12. I use paint editor to resize my images so far. Thanks for this post it gives me many alternatives to get better optimization in the future

    1. Hello Okto,
      Image is one of the main source of a slow blog and it is good to make our blog as fast as possible. Because we know that human and search engine loves a fast blog, right?

      Thanks for stopping by and dropping your comment. Do have a wonderful weekend

  13. Hi Babanature,

    Such an informative post.
    We all know that there are many reasons which can increase the loading time of our blog. In which images play a greater role. I have noticed at my blogs that whenever I visit at them then at certain blog posts there images don’t load at once with the written content. They take more time which sometimes annoy us.

    It’s always advised that bloggers should include optimized images to their blog so that images get loaded whenever any visitor visit our blog. You have explained it in a better way. Use of photoshop is really effective.

    Thanks for sharing this post with us.
    Have a great weekend. 🙂

    ~Ravi

    1. Hello Ravi,
      You know, many bloggers do not pay much attention to their blog images because they don’t feel that images plays a huge role on the fastness of a blog.
      Photoshop and smush it plays a big role in optimizing our blog. Believe you me, search engine will love you more if your blog is fast.

      Thanks for stopping by and dropping your wonderful comment. Do have a nice weekend ahead…

  14. Hey bro,
    Thanks for bringing this point up.
    If you run a speed test through gtmetrix.com, you discover that images are playing a big part in slowing down our blogs. I use smushit on my blog and I like the fact that it can really reduce the image file size without compromising its quality.

    There is a beautiful part of gtmetrix.com. I can optimize your images really good. All you should do is download the optimized version and replaced the one on your blog. You see instant speed boost in doing this.

    Do have a wonderful weekend man

    1. Hey Enstine,
      Ah… it’s good to know that you also use the Smush it plugin as well, and it feels good using it, doesn’t it!

      Your contribution is well note. Thanks for the contribution and do have a wonderful weekend

  15. Hello Babanature,

    You shared nice tips how to optimize picture in WordPress. But I do this in other way. I add picture in photobucket or Picasa. Then add link in my site. I think it is better solution.

    anyway Happy Blogging 🙂

    1. Hello Ahsan,
      Good to share with us the tips you use to optimize your blog images. But still i will like you to run a test on the images and see how optimize it is 🙂

      Thanks for your lovely contribution one today’s topic. Do have a wonderful weekend

  16. Hi Babanature,

    I wrote about this last year myself because you know me, I prefer to take these measures without a plugin in.

    I learned about this probably back in 2012 and then had to install the SmushIt plugin in order to compress all of the images I already had on my blog. From there I started doing it before I uploaded them so at first I was using Punypng and then I used the SmushIt site. Sometimes I’ll use them both to see if they’re reduce them any more but normally they won’t. I don’t use Photoshop so this is the route that I usually go.

    This is just one more thing I wasn’t aware of at the time plus I use the LazyLoad plugin so that it’s not draining resources directly from my blog when the posts load. Hey, I’m trying to do all I can to speed up the load time because we know how harmful that can be to us right!

    Thanks for sharing this because I’m sure there are plenty of others who aren’t familiar with this yet. Babanature saves the day!

    Enjoy your weekend and thanks again.

    ~Adrienne

    1. Hello Adrienne,
      AHH… i did remember 🙂

      To tell you the truth, i have only used the smush it plugin, but i am about to try the lazy load plug and see which is the best.
      Thanks for the wonderful comment as always 🙂
      have yourself a blessed week…

  17. Well whenever I upload an image to the post I always check in my PC and then use photoshop to decrease the size of the image. I’ll surely try “smush.it” and lets see how it goes.

    Thanks for the detailed article.

    1. Hello Rajkumar,
      Photoshop is one great way to compress an image without loosing its quality. I am sure you are doing a good job with it.

      Thanks for stopping by and dropping your comment. Do have a wonderful week ahead…

  18. Nice post, now that optimization tools take in high consideration image compression, it’s a must have. With CDN this is so far the best effective speed gain.
    What I’m searching now is to have both image compression and dynamic resizing in HTML5 using “picture” element. I found that this service that may develop it in a future version, not sure as the plugin need to intercept the output content.

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