• The best image format for the web
• How to stop losing traffic due to long loading time
• Become more visible on image search

We in the Snowfire support team get a lot of questions about images, loading times and how large an image should be to perform well on the web. Here are our recommendations:

3 quick SEO tips

1. Webp is the best format for web.

If high loading speeds are important for you, choose WebP as the image format for your website. JPG and PNG are also good choices for the web. If your choice is between JPG or PNG, use JPG for photos and PNG for logos. That’s because a JPG is better compressed and loads faster, whereas a PNG will retain more detail and allows for a transparent background. Read more about logo formats.   

2. Compress images to boost website speed

Long loading time limits for your website's incoming traffic. Did you know that the average visitor only stays on a landing page for about 4-8 seconds before clicking away? Heavy images will not have enough time to load properly, and when ready your potential customer may already be gone. 

Photos shot from a phone or bought from photo agencies are often stored in the highest quality. This makes them unnecessarily large for use on a website and will slow it down. Optimize your website and speed up your loading time by compressing these images. A good rule of thumb is to never use images larger than 1 MB. (Find 3 free image optimization tools further below)

3. Improve search results by proper naming

The naming of an image might be more important than you think, as it also makes you visible on image search - directing more traffic to your site. The one main key point is to name your images in a way that clearly describes what the image represents. Even better if the title also contains your best keyword. Avoid odd characters such as ”!”, ”?”, ”%”, ”#”  ”å”, ”ä”, ”ö”, Etc. A good filename may be named something like this: “samsung-tv-42-inch.jpg” or “levis-solid-crew-2-pack-sweatshirt-white.jpg”

Snowfire automatically converts your images to WebP

If you are using Snowfire Magnet as your platform, the only thing you need to keep in mind is to upload as small images as possible (max 1 MB).

Snowfire Magnet will automatically compress all your images, convert them to WebP and distribute them through a content delivery network for maximum global performance. 

4 free image optimization tools for compressing your images

1. TinyPNG

The best thing about TinyPNG, despite the name, is that it can handle both PNG and JPG. TinyPNG compresses JGP’s up to 60% och PNG up to 80% with no visual loss of quality. It’s quick to upload images from your browser and you can compress up to 20 images in one go.