When putting together a solid marketing strategy, don’t forget to add images to your website. We cannot deny the importance of photos in the here and now. According to statistics, articles with photos attract a lot more views than those posted without pictures. Without a doubt, images are quite attractive and will make your website full of color. In this article, we’re going to talk about some common mistakes you need to avoid when hosting images on your website. Read on to find out more.
#1: Reduce Image Size
Most visitors don’t wait more than 3 seconds for the images to load onto their laptop or desktop computer. And they don’t wait more than 5 seconds when using their cell phones. So if your images take longer than 5 seconds to launch on these devices, you may be losing a lot of potential customers.
So you need to reduce the size of the images to a maximum of 700 KB. This allows images to load much faster regardless of the device used.
#2: Rename the files
Make sure you don’t underestimate the importance of renaming your files. Keeping the default name for your images is not a good idea. In terms of search engine optimization, you may want to add your primary keywords to the names of the photos.
Aside from that, you might want to write a description and include your primary keywords for proper optimization. If you don’t follow this procedure, search engine crawlers will not index your images in the database.
#3: Add descriptions
As with photos, don’t forget to take the alt tags into account. First and foremost, they are text alternatives to photos. If you want your websites to rank higher in the major search engines, make sure you add a meaningful description.
Description should be in English for all photos. And don’t make the mistake of adding too many keywords or phrases as it will hurt your search engine rankings.
#4: Use the correct file extension.
Make sure your website contains the right type of image files. Nowadays, you can create images in various formats to meet your needs. However, the most common extension nowadays is JPG, JPEG and PNG. The PNG is an ideal choice if you want your photos to maintain quality no matter how many times you edit and save them.
#5: Don’t use distorted images
Image distortion is another common problem that you may face when editing images. Make sure your images are not stretched. You should always work with the original version of the photos you want. In Photoshop, you can use the preview feature to compare different versions of the photos.
In short, we recommend you avoid these five common mistakes when hosting images on your website.
