Did you know that the speed of your WordPress website is often be affected by image sizes and resolutions? You may wonder what the solution to this problem is – well, the answer to that query is a simple one. As a simple way to save time and resources without compromising on your image quality, image optimization is your saviour. Another benefit to optimising imagery on your website is that it scores you points on the SEO ladder. At a loss as to how to optimise images? Well, luckily for you, there are many WordPress plugins available to help you with this task. These 5 plugins will assist you in speeding up your site and offer a faster loading speed to your visitors which is always a fantastic plus point.
WP SMUSH
WP Smush is one of the most user-friendly image compression plugins available on WordPress. It has gained popularity mainly for being the fastest and best-performing plugin on WordPress. WP Smush has the ability to compress a myriad of image formats such as jpeg, png and gif (up to 32mb). You can either smush your images all at once in bulk or manually.
The way this plugin works is my clearing metadata out of and optimising jpeg files, as well as conversion of selected gif images to indexed PNGs and eliminating unused colours from all images that are indexed. Images uploaded can be instantly compressed with automated smushing. Smallest file size with high quality images can be obtained via WP Smush as it is compatible with WordPress Retina 2X and NextGen gallery. For all of these reasons, WP Smush is definitely a plugin you should be downloading and utilising.
EWWW Image Optimizer
EWWW Image Optimiser is yet another wonderful tool that you can download to help with your image sizes. As soon so you upload your images onto your WordPress site, this plugin automatically optimises them for you, making your life that much simpler. The best feature of this plugin, however, is its ability to convert images to the smallest size producing file formats. Yet another plugin you should not be missing out on!
SEO Friendly Images
Were you aware that TITLE and ALT attributes of any image you upload plays a crucial role in boosting your site’s SEO? Your images that don’t have TITLE and ALT are conferred the attributes by this SEO Friendly Images plugin, as per the set options. This way, along with increasing your website’s speed, the plugin also help boosts your website’s SEO. Win win!
BJ Lazy Load
BJ Lazy Load automatically serves hiDPI images to hiDPI screens and can cater to size optimised imagery. Even better, it can scale down images automatically on websites that have responsive designs. This saves you loading time as images appear as your viewers scroll down, instead of them having to wait for every image to load when they land on your homepage, reducing load time.
Imsanity
Imsanity is a plugin that in itself automatically resizes large images to much more sensible and efficient sizes for free. Images can be scaled by converting BMP files to jpeg images. One of the best features of this plugin however, is how it gives you the option of setting the maximum height, width and quality of your images. Perfect for those who really want to be in absolute control of what your viewers experience when they log on to your website.
