Uploading Images to WordPress – Best Practices

Uploading images to your WordPress blogs is something we often overlook – even me. It’s hard to find the time to blog as it is, and when we do the last thing on our minds is properly optimising the images. That being said, a properly added image will improve your SEO (Search engine optimisation) and your UX (user experience).

You need to begin with choosing a high-quality image, and it’s very important that this image is optimised for web and isn’t too large. If you’re downloading stock images, or have paid a photographer, the images you’ll be receiving will be massive – ready to be printed out on a stand at a corporate event. An image of this size will cause loading problems so you’ll need to make it smaller in photoshop or with a compression website like optimizilla.com. If it’s too late, and you’ve already uploaded a bunch of large image files then a plugin like Smush Image Compression.

Large images will make your website slow. I’ve had clients try and fight me on this one, in particular the ones who are photographers an videographers but trust me, a fast website should be your priority over image quality. Nobody is going to see your fantastic images if they take 2 minutes to load!

Optimise your images for SEO.

At present, Google is still very dependent on text to understand the content of your website, which is why blogging is king when it comes to improving your SEO. So you need to tell search engines what your image is about in a few ways:

Here you have your title, caption, alt text and description.

• Title. Should be inline with your content.
• Caption. This will help people skim-read your content.
• Alt title. This will show up when people have image blockers etc. But Search Engines also see it.
• Description. People will see this when image searching, it may entice them to click on the website and find out more.

Filling in these boxes with your chosen keywords is going to help people find your website, and help search engines understand your website better. Generally, Google likes it when your images are cohesive with your content, it’s the sign of a good web page.