Library Optimization and Best Plugins for Image SEO in WordPress

Your WordPress Library is a valuable asset for your blog or website. It contains all of the images, videos, and other media files that you use on your site. But did you know that you can boost your rankings and improve the user experience of your visitors?

Optimizing your WordPress Library for search engines is one of the best things you can do to improve your website’s SEO. By reducing image size without losing its quality, and adding descriptive alt text and file name you can improve your search engine rankings, increase user engagement, and improve the loading speed of images.

Why is optimizing the WordPress Library Important for Search Engines

Optimizing the WordPress media library is very important for maintaining an online presence for your business or your blog or website. This library, home to pictures, videos, and more, might seem like just storage, but it holds a powerful tool for improving how easily a website can be found online. So you should compress the images and also convert them to webp format as recommended by Google, also add alt texts to all images to boost image rankings on Google.

• Less Stress on Server: Optimized Images can reduce the stress on web servers, allowing them to efficiently deliver content to users. This optimization can be achieved by compressing images without compromising their quality and choosing appropriate file formats like Webp. It will ultimately lead to fast page speed.
• Image Rankings: Renaming image files before uploading them to the media library to include relevant keywords and alt text can boost SEO. Search engines not only crawl text but also consider file names and alt text to understand the context of the content. This optimization technique can help or improve image rankings on Google.
• Improve User Experience: Most of the times Images are responsible for hampering page speed. Compressing images and media files within the library ensures faster page loading times. Users tend to abandon sites that take too long to load, which adversely affects bounce rates and, ultimately SEO rankings. By compressing images and converting to webp the user experience improves, encouraging visitors to stay longer on the site.

Must have Plugins for Image SEO

1. EWWW

If you’re looking to convert both existing and new images to the WebP format on your WordPress website while ensuring optimal performance, EWWW emerges as the top choice among image optimization plugins. The WebP file format, known for its efficiency in enhancing page load speed, is effectively integrated into this plugin. If sluggish page loading is an issue caused by unoptimized images, EWWW is a particularly valuable solution, offering a convenient bulk image optimization feature.

EWWW not only transforms images into the WebP format but also excels in various image compression techniques. The plugin provides additional features such as lazy loading, automatic scaling, and more to enhance overall website performance.

EWW offers both paid and free plans which can go upto $70 per year. If you have a very large website and thousands of images then this may be a great deal.

• Pros – Bulk image optimization, Lazy Loading, Automatic resizing or scaling, Converting images to webp
• Cons – You will need paid version for accessing premium features, Cannot remove image metadata

2. Imsanity

Imsanity is a free plugin for WordPress that helps make images smaller without losing quality. It’s great because it resizes and compresses images automatically when you upload them. Normally, it’s better to do this before uploading, but not everyone knows how. It works with JPG, PNG, and GIF files and can replace the original image.

This plugin allows resizing of an image, change of format to jpg and compressing the image while uploading. Resizing adjusts the image dimensions, while compression eliminates unnecessary data to shrink file sizes. Implementing these actions enhances website loading speed, particularly on slower internet connections or mobile devices.

• Pros – Resizing and converting images on upload to jpg, Bulk resize images, Compressing jpg image quality, Resize single image from WordPress Media Gallary, Its Free
• Cons – Webp conversion not possible, Bulk conversion to jpg not possible, Cannot remove image metadata

3. Optimole

Optimole is a top-notch plugin for making WordPress images load faster. Optimole offers various compression options, allowing users to configure the optimization process to their specific needs. You can also use their CDN service in which your images will be delivered from a CDN ie. from a different domain.

Optimole provides comprehensive tracking and monitoring features for seeing the optimization efforts. Users can access optimization statistics at any time, gaining insights into the performance of their media files.

Finally, Optimole offers flexibility in compression levels with options including Auto, High, Medium, and Low. This allows users to fine-tune the balance between image quality and file size based on their specific preferences and requirements.

• Pros – Lazy Loading & Scaling Images, Serving Images through a CDN, Stripping Image Metadata, Avif & Webp Conversion
• Cons – Cannot convert images in wordpress media library, Cannot bulk convert images in wordpress media library, It is paid

4. Smush

Smush is a great tool for enhancing user experience through image optimization and used by millions of users. It can optimize or compress, resize an image and serve them in next-gen formats like WebP without loosing quality.

It is considered as the best Image optimizer with 1 million users globally. it is widely used for file compression, picture optimisation, lazy loading, bulk optimization and many other things.

The plugin automatically converts images to WebP and allows users to compress images even when the plugin is closed. The ‘Configs’ feature enables users to save preferred settings and apply them across different sites, streamlining the optimization process.

Smush also works with many popular themes, page builders, and media plugins in WordPress, making it a great fit for different setups. No matter if you’re using WP All Import, WP Offload Media, WP Retina 2x, or other similar tools, Smush is there to help. It spots images that might affect how quickly your site loads on Google and includes a feature that only loads the pictures you’re looking at, making your pages faster. The built-in lazy loading further enhances page speed by serving only the images being viewed, delaying others further down the page.

• Pros – Automatic Compression and resize on Image upload, remove Image metadata, Image resizing, Bulk Image compression, Lazy Loading, Webp conversion, Serve Images through CDN
• Cons – To access premium features it is paid

5. Imagify

Imagify is a popular WordPress plugin used for optimizing images on websites. It’s designed to help reduce the file size of images without compromising their quality, which can improve website performance by reducing loading times and ultimately increasing page speed. It is a reliable and effective plugin for image optimization in WordPress.

• Pros – Resizing images on Upload, Bulk optimizing Images, Webp conversion, Removing Image’s metadata
• Cons – It is paid for optimizing unlimited images only 20MB is free, Lazy Loading not supported

6. ImageSEO

ImageSEO stands out as the best WordPress plugin designed for image SEO and library optimization for inserting alt text in images and can even altering filenames.

Most of the other plugins just paste the title in alt text of your images. But ImageSEO solves this problem by using AI, Facial Recognition and then slapping the alt text into those images.

Search Engines like Google don’t like it when you stuff keywords everywhere, including your images. That’s where ImageSEO solves this problem. It doesn’t just talk, it helps search engines actually understand what’s going on in your pictures.

ImageSEO uses Facial Recognition, Artificial Intelligence, and Machine Learning to check out your images. Then, it takes all that data and puts it to work, filling in your image alt text and filenames. It plays really well with WooCommerce, especially for those online shops. ImageSEO fixes that by adding some SEO magic to your product images.

• Pros – Automatically fill out ALT Texts when you upload an image, Automatically rename your files when you upload a media, Fill Images alt text by Bulk optimization
• Cons – It is not an Image compression plugin like Smush, Optimole, Imsanity etc, It is paid for premium features

Conclusion

Optimizing images within the library isn’t only about compressing and converting file formats; it’s about ensuring that every image speaks the language of search engines. The addition of descriptive alt text and strategic file names doesn’t just assist in SEO but also improves user engagement and loading speeds.

Plugins like EWWW, Imsanity, Optimole, Smush, Imagify, and ImageSEO each bring their unique strengths to the table, offering a range of features that cater to different optimization needs. Whether it’s bulk image compression, WebP conversion, lazy loading, or AI-driven image analysis for SEO, these plugins serve as a great tool in your optimization efforts.