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WP optimization: Why images slow your site & what to do about it

Images are a great way to complete your website content and provide amazing media for your viewers. You get them from great stock websites and insert them in a page. However, due to the number of reasons, images can slow down the website and make it difficult to use. Websites that provide free images usually offer heavy and not optimized files, which slow other websites down. As we already know, website speed is one of the top reasons why people use a website or not. Therefore, you need to do as much as you can, to make your pages fully optimized for a fast, yet interesting user experience. Here are the main reasons why images slow your site and what to do about it.

tablet on a table — Images are an important part of each website, so if you wonder
why images slow your site – think about the image optimization

Most common ways images slow your site

There is a number of reasons why a website is slow and difficult to use. Images are probably the most common one. Therefore, be sure to check if any (or all) the following things are true, and we will help you with the way to fix them.

Image size is too big – Image files need to be optimized before putting them on a website. Remember that stock websites usually offer high-quality, but very heavy image files. That’s why resizing the images is one of the first steps in SEO image optimization.
The wrong format – Actually, there’s no right or wrong format. However, there are formats that are more suitable for your website and are smaller in size. Avoid BMP and TIFF formats and stick to the more common ones – JPEG, GIF, and PNG.
Image cashing disabled – If you enable image cashing, a browser will remember image information and load them faster next time a page opens.
Texts in images – Regular text is quite easy to load compared to text graphic, so it’s one of the common reasons why images slow your site.

Why do you need a fast website?

Even though it looks like an easy question, many people are not aware of how important the load speed is. Nowadays, everything is about speedy and instant solutions. Consequently, users don’t want to wait for some pages to load – they will simply go to a similar, yet a faster website. So, if you don’t want to frustrate your users – you need to improve your website speed. Furthermore, a fast website has better SEO ranking and therefore make higher conversion rates. So, if you’re making money on your website, be sure to think about this.

laptop on a table — A fast website means happy users.

How to optimize your images for a faster load speed?

In the previous text, we explained some of the common problems with website speed – caused by poorly optimized images. Finally, we come to a solution on how to improve the website speed and therefore boost your SEO. Let’s see what you can do to increase the load speed of your website, in a couple of simple and easy steps.

Reduce the number of images

Images are a great way to make the page more interesting. However, too many images take more time to load and may be the reason why your website is slow. Try to reduce the number of images and use them only on logical and necessary places on your pages.

Resize

We’ve already talked about this. Image size is important. Be sure to reduce the size of your images, but without drastically damaging the quality. Your users still want to see high-quality images that are clear and colorful.

Extra tip: If you are taking images by yourself, check your camera settings. Set the image size to the desired one, so you don’t need to resize images when you need to upload them on your website. It saves a lot of time!

settings screen — Check the settings of your camera or phone, to get the best image size

Use text where possible

Very often, people use images with quotes or some other text on them. However, these take more time to load, compared to the regular text. The solution – use text instead, but style it so it stands out from the rest of the text on the page.

Use that CDN

Content Delivery Network is an amazing way to speed up your website, especially if you need to use a lot of images. CDN service hosts and serves various files, including images, JavaScript files, etc. It makes these files easier to get, and allows parallel downloads, which means your pages will load much faster.

Enable caching

Caching the images’ information helps a lot with future downloads. Be sure to use a caching plugin, which is the easiest way to solve this problem. Another solution is optimizing the .htacess file but requires a professional to do it.

Other image optimization tips

Image optimization doesn’t only affect load speed. If you use the images in the right way, they can for sure help the general quality of your website and move it higher on the SEO ranking list. A good-quality image optimization needs to include:

relevant images – Don’t add images randomly but choose them in accordance with the text. Images shouldn’t serve as decoration but to complete the page and give it better meaning.
alt tags – Alt tags describe images when they are not displayed for some reason, or when some people can’t see them.
appropriate captions – When you choose images that relevant to the text, you should also caption them in a way that actually tells why an image is a part of a text.

In the end

Image optimization is a simple way to improve (but also decrease) the website quality. You often wonder why images slow your site without thinking about these small details that are far from irrelevant. Optimizing your images correctly will give you a fast load and happy users, who will gladly come back and visit your website over and over.

August 21, 2019 Elizabeth J. Education No comments

Categories and Tags in WordPress? How to Use Them Properly

As any experienced content writer can tell you, simply writing good texts is not enough. In order to get some traffic on those texts, you need to know what SEO is and how to work with it. And you cannot talk about SEO without talking about categories and tags in WordPress. Categories and tags are, in fact, so important for content writing that properly using them can make the difference between your posts having high traffic, or having no traffic at all. So, without further ado, let’s look into what WordPress categories and tags are all about and how to use them.

July 14, 2019 Elizabeth J. Education No comments

Image optimization is an important part of both SEO and UX. When browsing your page, users usually scan the content visually. Titles, images, and emphasized elements are the first things they will notice, so having a picture to enrich your content is worth investing your time into. However, not any image will do the job. They need to be optimized in a proper way, following certain SEO image optimization tips so they don’t do more harm than good. Badly optimized, or unoptimized images can increase the loading time of your page and leave you without inpatient visitors. They are impatient, especially these days, and the average human attention span is not what it used to be.

July 9, 2019 Elizabeth J. Education No comments

SEO expertise is no longer something that only SEO professionals should possess. Search Engine Optimization is not the only discipline that strengthens your digital presence, but it certainly is an important one. Read the following article to find out what it takes to become an SEO expert.

June 25, 2019 Elizabeth J. Education No comments

The best free SEO tools to increase your rankings

SEO tools help you complete a set of tasks as fast as possible and with as close to perfection as you can get. Up until recently, there weren’t many free SEO tools that you could use. If you were working on a tight budget and needed to perform a limited set of tasks fast, you had to pay the full price. But now, there are dozens of free tools that you can and should use on a daily basis. You can, of course, purchase the whole tool if you figure out you need it but we think you can find your way like this too. Thus, here are some of the best free SEO tools to increase your rankings.

June 18, 2019 Elizabeth J. Education No comments

Outdated SEO techniques you should avoid

The potential of using SEO for improving both your search engine rankings and online presence is impressive. However, using the full potential of this powerful means is possible only if you follow the latest trends in this filed. This means that an SEO strategy which used to be effective some time ago, may not be sufficient to provide you with the credibility and reputation you expect. Thus, pay close attention to the following SEO techniques you should avoid. Then, you can focus on advanced SEO strategies instead, start using them and finally reach your goals easily.

1 – Offering quantity instead of quality is one of the outdated SEO techniques which is still in use

Traditionally, website owners used to concentrate on providing their readers with a vast number of texts. The primary aim of this strategy was to offer a variety of content, which, unfortunately, very often lacked the necessary quality. Nowadays, the situation has changed dramatically. The appearance of Google Panda has forced these website owners to stop using incompetent, low-quality content. Instead, readers should be able to find the content of genuine quality and value. Should you fail to meet this requirement and decide to prioritize quantity over quality, you are bound to be severely penalized by Google and also lose your high rank in search engines.

a silhouette of a woman holding the words high quality because one of the outdated SEO techniques is to offer vast number of texts with low quality — Offer high-quality content to your users instead of a vast number of texts which lack quality.

2 – Keyword stuffing

It happens very often that website owners cannot find the balance between the proper optimization and over-optimization of the content. Hence, try your best to steer clear from one of the most frequently used outdated SEO techniques – an evident abuse of the keywords you want to position for. The most promising approach and one of the SEO trends in 2019 is to use keywords naturally. The slightest keyword abuse instantly triggers Google Penguin and you can lose your favorable position on search engine results surprisingly fast.

3 – Spinning the existing content into a new one

Once a legitimate SEO technique, this is now a strategy considered to belong to the negative SEO sphere. The constant changes in technology and the new Google updates have made website owners improve their knowledge of SEO and explore the best ways on how to use it. If you hope to create quality content by simply applying rephrasing and using similar words, the results will be disappointing. As unbelievable as it may sound, no website owner will ever be able to trick the search engine and masquerade incompetence into prime-quality content. Hence, make a serious effort to offer expertise in your field to the readers and your presence on the first page of search engine results will not miss.

4 – Buying links is out of the question

It is essential to earn links toward your website. Those who have problems with this task easily get into the trap of using one of the outdated SEO strategies – buying links. As one of the link building mistakes you should avoid, there is no chance that this approach will provide you with online reputation and credibility you need to succeed in your niche. As soon as one of the Google updates identifies a vast number of low-quality sites which provide an immense number of links to your website for no logical reason, all you can expect is a penalty.

a man in the middle of a lot of links - buying links is one of the outdated SEO techniques you should avoid — As soon as one of the Google updates identifies a vast number of low-quality sites which provide an immense number of links to your website for no logical reason, all you can expect is a penalty.

5 – Overusing anchor texts is one of the outdated SEO techniques you should avoid

SEO updates now require quality linking structure for high rankings without exception. In order to achieve this, website owners have to provide optimized anchor texts that will lead to target landing pages and relevant blog posts. Earlier, it was possible and even advisable to use exact-match keyword phrases as much as you can. This practice used to guarantee favorable search engine rankings. Today, it is an outdated SEO technique that doesn’t bring any results. Instead, you should use varieties of anchor texts – branded, naked, page title, heading, etc. Only this way will you avoid activating Google Penguin and losing trustworthiness among your readers. Also, always bear in mind that these readers are who you write for. Do not write for search engines and expect success.

6 – Creating pages for all keyword variations

Earlier it was possible to rank high easily if you provided the content rich in keywords and keyword variations targeted by your brand. Then, the appearance of certain algorithms significantly changed this SEO practice. These algorithms are able to recognize that these variations of keywords are actually related to the same topic. Consequently, they started eliminating this strategy by introducing penalties. If you want to rank high in search engine results, you have to offer value related to your brand to your users, not just the variation of the same content. Moreover, if this one among the outdated SEO techniques hand continued to develop, we would now have considerable difficulties to navigate websites, since the content would be highly similar. At the bottom line, this would make the user experience very negative.

7 – Targeting exact-match search queries

One of the outdated SEO techniques is by all means targeting exact-match search engine queries in your strivings to rank as high as possible. The Google Knowledge Graph has completely eliminated this tactic as the one that leads to success, credibility, and online reputation. Concerning the number of variables that this practice entails, this was not a big surprise.

a woman working on a laptop and Google search engine on the screen — One of the outdated SEO techniques is by all means targeting exact-match search engine queries in your strivings to rank as high as possible.

8 – Exact-match domains

It used to be an excellent strategy to have keywords of high value in your URL. However, despite this fact, excessive use of this strategy soon caused bad user experience and Google eventually realized that exact-match domains do not mean success. Instead of using this outdated SEO technique, pay attention now to the SEO best practices you should know. Focus on performing your jor job impeccably and offer premium-quality services. Your high search engine results will be guaranteed.

Summary

The use of outdated SEO techniques is still present, unfortunately. They are followed by those who still have not realized that this is the wrong way to the top of the Google ladder. Hence, if you want to create a respectable brand, gain online credibility and reputation, following SEO trends is compulsory. Technology is ever-changing and we have to follow and master these changes. That is the only way to reach our goals.

June 11, 2019 Elizabeth J. Education No comments

How artificial intelligence is transforming SEO

Every website owner needs to understand one thing, SEO. The website’s success in search engines is dependent on how well it is optimized for Google. If your SEO is done good, you have a better chance to find yourself in the SERPs first page when someone is searching by your keyword. To have your page on the first page, you need to understand how SEO works and how to optimize it to affect your better ranking. SEO is changing constantly, so you have to be prepared to make those changes so that you stay on top of it.

June 10, 2019 Elizabeth J. Uncategorized No comments

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It is a term used to define any kind of optimization efforts toward your website which result in increased visibility in search engines. Search engine optimization requires content and link building strategy, as well as the patience to monitor your progress over several months. There is a difference between White Hat SEO and Black Hat SEO techniques. White Hat SEO targets your website content towards humans first and search engines second. Black Hat SEO focuses primarily on manipulating the search engine ranks to receive an increase in traffic. There are a couple of SEO best practices you should know so you can start with a successful basic optimization.

SEO best practices

These are the basic SEO best practices you should know:

Keyword research
Content writing
Images optimization
Link building
SEO-Friendly URLs
Video implementation

Keyword research

Search for relevant keywords is researching potential keywords you want to focus on in your content. Knowing which keywords you want to rank for will give a good start in your content strategy planning and a clear direction for the future steps you need to take. The best starting point is to find 3 or 4 relevant words you can use for a keyword and to target and focus on that keyword in your content. The next step is to include keywords in an H1 tag. The good practice is to place your main keyword at the beginning of the title. It is good enough to have your keyword once within the first paragraph and once more on another. One keyword per post is more than enough to start with. Add your keyword to the meta title and to the meta description.

Illustrated SEO specialist holding his knowledge on a screen.

Content writing

Make your content unique. It is a bad SEO strategy to write content for your website just for the purpose of ranking in the search engines. You will get penalized by the search engines for doing so. The first thing to do is to write a title for the article with your keyword inside. Then you can focus on the quality of your content. The better the quality of your content is, the more readers will be back for more. With the possibility of sharing it to others. Write an effective article without thinking too much about SEO. Write it as if you were speaking to another person. That way you are talking directly to readers. It is more natural. The optimal ranking length of your content should be somewhere between 1,000 – 2,000 words.

Images optimization

Visual aids, in general, are a good way to keep people’s attention span, and it’s the same thing with website content. It’s easier and faster for a human to process the visual representation than a plain text. When adding an image to your content, it is a good practice to change the file name before uploading it. Anything is better than generic names coming from free online sources. Adding an alternative text to your images is important for two main reasons. First, it helps visually impaired people to know what’s on a picture, and second, it helps you, allowing the search engines to read what the image is about. Another thing you don’t want to forget is to optimize the size of your images. It helps your page to load faster thus having more chance to hold on to a reader’s attention.

Link building

Link juice is an informal term used by many Search Engine Optimizers which refers to the amount of link authority a website possesses. In plain English, the more authority-websites links to your pages the greater the value of your pages are. Besides that, the good practice is to have at least one internal link to another page within your website. The anchor text, which is the text you are linking from, needs to be relevant to the page you are linking to. The goal of a link-building campaign is to make it appear as natural as possible. A link to another website, ideally a high authority site, is called external link. Have at least one in your content. Wikipedia is a good choice if you are not sure where to link to.

SEO-Friendly URLs

The most common mistakes made today is the lack of an SEO-friendly URL structure. Keep all your URLs not too long and make them easy to remember. Your URL should be understandable by both humans and search engines. Have the main keyword phrase inside it, with ideally positioned at the beginning of your URL. As your website is growing in content, a good thing to consider will be categorizing your URLs. When doing that don’t forget that search engines favor dashes over underscores. The reason for this is that underscores are considered ‘alpha characters’ and do not separate words, while dashes are separators.

Representation of many "Google" things in a browser.

Video implementation

Adding a video to your page will influence your rankings. Whatever you do on the internet today videos are everywhere. There are videos on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and that’s just a few well-known sites. Embedding a video relevant to your content is shown to be a good potential help by some studies.

Conclusion

Search engine optimization is an ever-changing playground that pushes the boundaries daily. Employees at Google, Yahoo and Bing are constantly improving their search engine results by analyzing what makes a website relevant to a particular keyword. Although search engines modify their algorithms all the time, they have not, and will not deviate from their original criteria and methodology ranking websites. Quality content and link building will always remain primary. While Search Engine Optimization can seem too complex at times, it truly is just a simple set of rules you will need to follow in order to improve your site rankings. So, start the journey by learning all SEO best practices you should know, and one day it will be a breeze to dig into more advanced SEO techniques.

June 5, 2019 Elizabeth J. Education No comments

Improve accessibility and boost your SEO

Improving your website’s accessibility brings various kinds of advantages for your business. The most important one is the increase in traffic to your website which also boosts your SEO. This means that people will be able to see your site on the list when they google a certain keyword. Moreover, accessibility also means making your site usable by everyone, regardless of their age, education or ability. So, if you learn how to incorporate different kinds of practices to improve accessibility, the results will surely follow. Here are some easy ways to do so:

Choose Your Colors Wisely

If you want to make sure that everyone is able to see and distinguish the colors easily, they need to contrast each other. People who are color-blind shouldn’t find it difficult to understand why certain text is in darker or lighter colors. Try using contrasting colors for texts and their backgrounds. If your foreground and background have sufficient contrast, you’re on the right path. If you’re putting the text and its background in different shades of the same color, avoid shades similar in saturation and hue. You can make sure that you’re color combinations are good by testing them with online tools. You can find many kinds of tools and see how effective your choices are when it comes to improving accessibility.

a color scheme which can be important if you want to improve accessibility on your website — Combine color schemes so that they are easily distinguishable

Improve Accessibility by Adding Alt Text

Alternative text is a very important part of every image you put on your website. You can notice it below the caption and is equally as beneficial when it comes to accessibility. Alt text is actually a replacement for the image if the site has trouble loading it. In that case, people can read the alt text that describes the picture. It will help you improve your SEO while also giving your guest some context in case of a missing picture. If you have a picture of a house, you can put “a house” as the alternative text. This counts as one of the advanced SEO strategies you should adopt.

Being one of the most important accessibility needs, alt text also provides context for the visually impaired people. Thanks to the screen reader tools, every user is able to understand the intended meaning and context.

Make All Content Easily Accessible

Easily accessible content on the website can sometimes be an issue in cases where there’s a lot of dynamic content. When used properly, some of its benefits are the following:

offers a user-friendly experience
it can help increase return visits and bounce rate
can be seamless without messing up the page

If you’re not familiar with the term, it means adaptive content that serves to deliver a satisfying experience online. So, in order to achieve this, dynamic content varies depending on the user’s data as well as the time of access. If used properly, it can attract a lot of people and make them want to revisit the website. However, try not to overdo it. Think of visually impaired people and their experience. The screen reader won’t be able to pick up on that additional content since it can only read the site as it is when it first loads. You can try to adapt it by announcing the shift so that all users can pick up on it.

an office with a desk, computer and a couple of pictures on the wall — Knowing how to use dynamic content can improve your SEO

In case you need professional advice concerning dynamic content or how to get higher ranking services, contact SEO Syntax. They specialize in all things website and content, so you’ll be receiving some important tips and information about this topic.

Don’t Forget to Use Headers

Headers are important because they help to structure all the content correctly and neatly. They improve the flow and the whole content will therefore be a lot simpler to understand. Screen readers can easily interpret your content and pages once you have clear headers. So, don’t forget to add some for your website. Just remember that H1 for example, should only be used for the page title and therefore, you need one per page. Then you have H2, used for subheadings and so on. Just don’t forget the order they go in and that is all.

Once you’ve added headers, they should do the following:

follow a logical order
no sections are skipped
accurately and precisely describe the content

Improve Accessibility by Making Your Site Keyboard-Friendly

somebody's hands typing on a laptop — Keyboard-friendly sites work without the use of a mouse

If your website can work without using a mouse then it really is accessible. Keyboard-only navigation is what most assistive technologies use nowadays so allowing this for your website is an important step.

The most common website navigation via keyboard is with the tab key. It jumps on the areas on a page that have “keyboard focus”. These can be buttons, links or forms. Moreover, people with disabilities rely on the keyboard navigation whereas some other uses just prefer keyboard over mouse. It is more efficient for many and therefore advisable that you allow it on your website to improve accessibility.

Avoid Automatic Navigation or Media

There’s nothing more annoying than automatically-playing music or video files when you first enter a website. Therefore, avoid putting these on your site since it is also an accessibility issue. Namely, the user has to figure out how to turn them off when using a keyboard to navigate. These files can be a source of confusion and fright caused by a sudden noise.

a person holding the back of his head sitting in front of a laptop, obviously annoyed — Unexpected media files on a site can cause annoyance among users

Now that you know how certain content can be harmful to your website’s reputation, choose and create content while having accessibility in mind. Paying attention to details and combining good design with content is the best way to go. Always think of ways to make your website even more accessible to all kinds of people visiting it. Your users will thank you and surely re-visit. That is how you know that you have done a great job of improving accessibility and boosting your SEO as well.

May 30, 2019 Elizabeth J. Education No comments

Make your business goals come true by accomplishing your SEO goals

Do you own your own business, but you don’t know how to reach your business goals? If you do, this article will prove to be very useful to you. Currently, many are more willing to own their own business, then work for somebody else. This is very admirable because if your business fails, you will feel the consequences the most. Rather than thinking about possible failure, let us discuss how can you prevent it. Even better, let us discuss how can you reach your business goals. For instance, consider SEO and start researching it.

May 29, 2019 Elizabeth J. Education No comments