Image reflects the overall information of an object, either it is a person, place, thing, a website or a blog. In Digital Marketing it have a special importance. Learn all aspects of image optimization.

1. Image Optimization: Why and How
Image reflects the overall information of an object; either it is a person, place, thing, a website or a blog.
Photographs or images are one of the most important part of any website. It cover about a half of its
weight in average. Images always play an important role to drive traffic to the website, they draw people
attention before any text, link or anything else. They not only drive extra traffic to our website, but provide
it with a whole new type of back links many SEO professional often overlook means high quality and
relevant backlinks.
Now, if images are so important for a website or blog then there are other side effects too. Some common
bad practices to upload images in websites or blogs are:
 Heavy Images means max size images are uploaded to the website. (Camera images are generally
of 1 to 5 MB in sizes).
 Name of image is generally ignored on the time of uploading.
 Alt tags are also ignored at that time.
 Nobody cares about file format too.
These practices are generally known as Un-optimization and those images are known as un-optimized
images. Now the result will be:
o Increase in load time of a website.
o Affect position on search engines.
o Refuse visitors from such a website.
These are the strong reason for image optimization. As number of mobile or tablet users are increasing on
internet which means certain limitation in data transfer & slower downloading speed, which is another a
good reason for a proper optimization. Now the main question is how? But before that we have to
understand the criteria of an optimized image.
 Image should be of good quality but minimal size.
 Proper file naming and alt tag on it.
Search engines are unable to understand or we can say that it cannot “see” what is on image, that’s why
further optimisation is required to make sure it will appear in search results. Image file name should be
descriptive to tell search engines about the image. And also it helps them to index these images properly.
And “Alt” text is important for screen readers. It is a description that show in a place where the image
would originally show.
There are many online and offline tools are available for image optimization.
Some of the online tools are:
 Yahoo! Smush it
 Tiny PNG (For PNG images)
 Rebbit (Especially for creating collage)
Some of the Offline tools are:
 Adobe Photoshop
 M.S. Paint
 Microsoft Office Picture Manager
 Coral Draw
There are some guidelines also for image optimization on Social Medias like Facebook, twitter, Google +,
Linkedin, Pinterest, Instagram, SlideShare and so on. Here are some of the guidelines for them:

2. Facebook
 Profile image’s least resolution should be 180 X 180 px.
 Recommended resolution of cover image is 851 X 315 px (399 X 150 px least resolution size).
Twitter
 Profile image’s least resolution should be 81 X 81 px, size should must be up to 2 MB.
 Recommended resolution of cover or header image is 1252 X 626 px, size should must be up to 5
MB.
Google +
 Profile image’s least resolution should be 250 X 250 px.
 Recommended resolution of cover image is 1080 X 608 px, min. resolution should be 480 X 270 px
and max. resolution should be 2120 X 1192 px.
LinkedIn
 Horizontal Logo should be 100 X 60 px up to 2 MB and square
Logo should be 50 X 50 px up to 2 MB in size.
 Recommended resolution of cover image is 646 X 220 px.
SlideShare
 Profile image’s least resolution should be 96 X 96 px.
 Recommended resolution of cover image or channel header
is 960 X 100 px up to 800 KB. (PRO)
Pinterest
 Profile image’s least resolution should be 165 X 165 px.
Instagram
 Profile image’s least resolution should be 110 X 110 px.
Note: Generally for Profile image resolution should be in square for all Social Medias and if you are
designing a logo for your website, then it should be in PNG format and in transparent form.