Many, both big and small eCommerce businesses compete to get their shops displayed on the first page of the search engine results. Every SEO professional follows a standard that Google considers as the right way to rank. But why can’t just anyone achieve it?
As we know, results can be influenced by optimizing the ease of the use of the eCommerce site, loading speed, the relevance of content, conversions, and a variety of other criteria. But if there is one strategy that is commonly taken for granted, that is optimizing product images and the other types of images being used for the website.
The core web vitals are the recent, primary concern among many SEO professionals and webmasters. Core web vitals emphasizes the value of quality and delivering the best web user experience. These metrics are measured and need to be monitored in order to maintain good loading speed, interactivity, and visual stability. With Google giving more importance to these, the best action is to optimize and improve the factors that directly affect it; and one of which is the images.
In this article, we will give you several image optimization tips for eCommerce that will also help improve your rankings on Google pages.
1. Know the Required Image Sizes of Your ECommerce Platform
ECommerce platforms like WooCommerce, Shopify, BigCommerce, and Amazon, have recommended image file sizes and dimensions to maintain optimized thresholds. Let us thus examine the requirements on the collected product photo upload for all major eCommerce platforms.
Shopify
- Ideal Upload Size: 4472 × 4472 pixels up to 20 MB of file size.
- Sizes: 2056 x 2056 pixels recommended
- Zoom size minimum: 800 × 800 pixels
- Can be JPG, PNG, GIF, TIFF, BMP File Formats
WooCommerce
WooCommerce is just a WordPress plugin for your site. It has no platform for itself. It just turns your WordPress site into a website for eCommerce. Thus, for product pictures, there is no fixed set of guidelines. For the photo upload requirements, you need to check your WordPress theme directives.
- Lowest possible size to expand: depends on WordPress theme
- Size: 2056 pixels broadly recommended.
- File size is limited to 64 MB.
- Size of file recommended: 100KB
- Image framework: 85% of the frame should be completed by the product
- File format: JPEG, PNG, GIF or TIFF files can be uploaded.
BigCommerce
- Uploading size Maximum: BigCommerce declared nothing
- Sizes: 2056 x 2056 pixels recommended
- On the longest side, minimum size to zoom in is 1,000 pixels
- JPG is recommended for file types.
Magento
Magento is a platform that can be personalized too. It’s a kind of software that installs on your web server; you will have to do the Magento development services yourself, unlike Shopify and BigCommerce. But it doesn’t have to run WordPress, unlike WooCommerce. Thus, for product pictures, there is no fixed set of guidelines. For the photo upload requirements, you need to check your WordPress theme directives.
- Zoom in least size: it can be modified
- Size: 2056 pixels broadly recommended.
- Size of file recommended: 100 KB
- Image framework: the product should fill 85 percent of the area.
- File format:TIFF, GIF, PNG, or JPEG files can be uploaded.
Wix
- Upload maximum size: nothing Wix specified
- Size recommended: the longer side is 1200 pixels
- File formats: Nothing that Wix defines
2. Save Your Images Using the Correct Image Format
The 3 most common file formats for images on the web are .jpg, .png, and .gif. Here’s a quick summary of each image format and when you should use it.
gif: a format that can be animated which makes it the first choice for smileys or short videos, but its palette of only 256 colors limits its quality. Use this format for very small images or animated images.
jpg or .jpeg is a format using destructive compression which means that the image weight is reduced by removing data that is hardly visible to the naked eye. Use this format for displaying product photos, illustration images, etc.
Png: Because it provides lossless compression, this is the best image format compromise. The photos are somewhat heavier than that of a .jpg but retain their quality, making it an appropriate format. Also, use format should another image contains text or if you want a translucent backdrop.
3. Limit Your Image File Sizes
You can use tools to remove data hidden in your files that have no impact on the visual quality of the images. However, it is necessary to assess your compression rate and consider image resizer tools as well. Indeed, too high a compression can degrade the quality of your images.
There are two types of compressions:
Lossy or Lossy compression is a format in which some data is lost. You can greatly reduce the image, but the quality will be degraded.
Lossless or Lossless compression can reduce an image without losing quality but is suitable for larger files.
4. Set up a Standard Naming Convention to Organize and Rename Your Images
It is always clearer for you to work with images whose names are explicit: prefer “bushido-desk-mat-black.jpg” to “P123456.jpg”. It is the same for the search engines which will rely on these names in the context of image requests.
It will therefore always be more relevant to set up images with keywords composing their name. Be careful not to create names to lengthen, under penalty of being suspected of “stuffing” keywords. As in SEO, you always have to be measured and reasonable. Do not expect image SEO miracles for your pages, this recommendation has a very low impact on search engine algorithms.
The names of the images must not contain accented characters or special characters (é, à, ç, +, *, # …), which can be misinterpreted in certain technical contexts, resulting in an image not being displayed, which has a bad effect for the visitor but also in the eyes of search engine algorithms. So: “SEO.jpg” => “referencement.jpg”
5. Add ‘alt tags’ to Your Images
As a reminder, the “Alt” image tag in HTML or the description of the image in editors is a relatively important area for search engines to analyze the content of the page. This is also a quality criterion for SEO: a page that only contains images with an empty “Alt” tag will be rated less well than a page with “Alt” tags filled in. So taking care of the description of the images will be beneficial (a little) for your SEO.
This is an opportunity to simply describe the image in natural language, again without keyword stuffing.
If you are overloading with your Shopify Store SEO tasks, you could try SEO Booster app to reduce them. It helps you bulk add ALT tags to your images.
6. Submit an Image Sitemap on Google
A site map is really a document that offers extensive information to search engines about all pages, their connections, and their substance (images, videos, etc.). It enables Search engines like Google to scan a site more intelligently.
Each component in the checklist is immediately connected to the site’s related areas. Sitemaps are generally suggested for all websites, however tiny showcase locations only with very few links may be omitted. Large websites have every reason to establish one in order to increase the crawl of their pages by search engines. The sitemap also is suggested for websites with flaws in their underlying mesh. Some pages could be tough to locate due to the fact that they are rarely organically connected. The sitemap is especially beneficial for new sites with very few backlinks, which discourages Google from crawling the full site.
Be cautious: while it may be enticing to apply the shorthand sitemap = crawling all pages, that has mainly an oblique effect. It merely assists Google in finding the sites, but it’ll be the only arbiter of their value and the utility of indexing such. That said, by uploading an XML sitemap into Google Search, you are essentially telling Google whatever sites you regard to be high-quality. If they truly are, you have all the odds in your favor that they will appear inside the SERPs.
Please keep in mind that Google has not established a separate sitemap file type for photos, but it does accommodate images throughout the conventional Google sitemap format (in XML version).
7. Optimize Your Product Thumbnails
Insert bright and good-quality thumbnail images. There is nothing more annoying than a tiny thumbnail that barely helps identify a product.
When your customers are reviewing the products on your site, give them the ability to see them correctly, in a quality size and resolution. Don’t forget about mobile users! Viewing the correct size and good quality image gives them a better mobile experience.
8. Conduct A/B Testing on Your Product Images
A/B analysis is among the most successful methods for increasing conversion rates. Performing an A/B analysis is a highly valuable component in many business apps, and starting up a system is simple.
A / B analysis is delivering two copies of the very same material (for instance, a home page, call-to-action, or email) to 2 different audiences of similar size in an effort to evaluate the efficacy of each version.
Graphics, like words, play an essential role in online content. As a result, they are among the key aspects to be examined. Then that’s a matter of fine-tuning their size, brightness, and placement on the webpage.
9. Use a White Background for Your Product Images
The key to successful photos is to use a transparent background. The white background enhances your products and produces much better quality photos. It also helps to ensure that the white balance is in focus, which helps your product color to be better.
It is advisable to use a curved white background which allows a better rendering of the volumes. For small products, place the installation on a table, to have the flexibility and to be able to better adjust the brightness. You will find tables on the market specially designed for taking pictures. Otherwise, you can use any table that is stable and allows you to install your white background.
For larger products, things are a bit more complex in terms of photo editing. If you plan to take photos regularly, you can buy a white backdrop commercially. It will make your life easier. Otherwise, use a large sheet of white paper and find support for stabilization.
10. Use eCommerce Image Optimization Tools
You would not wish Google to despise your website, believe us. Luckily, you may minimize the dimensions of your photos to increase your website’s speed. One issue with lowering their size would be that their performance varies often. It’s not a terrible option provided you wouldn’t make them seem awful. There are several tricks and strategies that will help you to reduce the size of the photos on your page while still keeping them attractive enough even to exhibit confidently on your site. So, let’s examine how to minimize the dimensions of your photos without having them seem bad, as well as how to optimize images for online and speed.
Large pictures decelerate your websites, resulting in a less-than-ideal customer impression. Image optimization is the act of lowering image size by the use of plugins or scripts, which increases load time. eCommerce image optimization lossless and lossy reduction are both widely used techniques.
SEO Booster – A great Shopify SEO app has an easy-to-use app UI with a detailed tutorial. You may disregard SEO technical jargon since everything here is very plain. It saves you time and effort with SEO Auto capabilities, and it improves important SEO metrics such as organic traffic, Google searchability, website ranking and speed, and so on. With JSON-LD, your product rating, price, and stock amount display in Google search results. SEO keywords are given based on the most recent data. Furthermore, there are several great features: Auto Alt-Tags, AMP, and so forth.
Removal.AI – is a premium online tool for removing the background from an image. It is quite easy to use; simply upload the picture needed to the website. When it is processing, the service keeps your picture’s focus while eliminating anything in the background.
Kraken – This application optimizes and resizes picture uploads made using Kraken.io. There are lossless and clever lossy image optimization options available. JPEG, GIF, and PNG file formats are accepted. The largest file size allowed is 32 Megabytes. Also when we utilize the Kraken.io optimizing loss, their system does all in its power to guarantee that the outcomes are consistent of excellent quality.
Yoast SEO – is a free application that you may download on the WordPress site; however, we recommend upgrading to the Premium edition for additional choices. It can be used to assess the substance of your post and determine whether it satisfies the necessary requirements to be ranked naturally in browsers.
ImageOptim – ImageOptim optimizes pictures by determining the optimum compressing settings and eliminating extraneous data like comments and perception. It supports PNG, GIF, and JPEG files. It’s extremely simple to use; simply click and drag pictures or files into the interface to have them optimized on the run. You may use the ImageOptim desktop icon, the Finder interface (on Mac), or a terminal script to activate it.
ShortPixel – A freeware image reduction plugin that is simple to use, thorough, reliable, and regularly updated, and is maintained by the professional staff who built it. By optimizing any picture or PDF file on your site, you may improve the site’s SEO rating, visitor count, and, eventually, revenues. ShortPixel is indeed a small, easy-to-activate image reduction plugin that can condense all of your old pictures and Pdf files with a single click.
Start Applying these tips NOW
Small actions can be the source of good traffic which can bring you many customers. These are simple actions that don’t require a lot of work but can do a lot for you. Once the visitor is in your store, you just have to do your job of advising and offering suggestions to your customers to encourage them to buy. These tips remain basic and logical advice. Always keep a simple logic, visitors like simplicity and clarity. You can also try these tips and practices out on your end, don’t hesitate to venture!
>>>READ MORE: 8 EASY steps of SHOPIFY SEO optimization to TOP 1