Some factors to consider when choosing photos or images for your blog

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It may seem that everything has already been said on this topic, but as you will see in this post, this is far from the case. Moreover, it is almost certain that you are notably wasting its potential. You just have to take a closer look at any blog or website to see that virtually all of them (including ours…) either barely use images or don’t do what they should with their images.

Using images on your website will do you great

If you have a blog or a web page, images are a necessary and essential resource to keep the attention of the public and avoid boring them. In addition, using images significantly improves the aesthetics of the site and has collateral benefits that are not at all obvious, but very important, such as, for example, the fact of improving the positioning of the page if you know how to use the potential that images have for SEO.

So the first technique, or first advice, should really be the advice that you actually use photos and images in your blog, at least 2 or 3 in each post, and that you dedicate those 10-15 minutes that it will take you to read this post to learn how to do it right.

However, a high resolution image, for example, “bareback” from your mobile, is a brutal detriment in the optimization of your page, a difference that in many cases is easily a factor greater than 10, passing, for example, from an image of 1Mbyte (very excessive) in weight to 100Kbytes (very reasonable).

One thing that I see that practically all bloggers do wrong is not using the most appropriate image format according to the use to which they want to put that image. There are three main formats that represent practically 100% of the formats used on the web and that are the JPG, PNG and GIF formats. For example, for a screenshot, the JPG format is not a good option. The PNG format is better adapted to give results with a better balance of size / quality.

Optimizing an image does not only consist in reducing its dimensions, but also in applying intelligent algorithms to (e.g. to achieve optimal sharpness of reduced images), choosing the appropriate format as I have mentioned above and reducing its color palette. Good specialized tools are essential for this. Personally, my favorite is FastStone Photo Resizer, although it is also a very good RIOT (Radical Image Optimization Tool) alternative. But if I want to remove background of my image and replace it with something else, there’s nothing better than Slazzer.

After all, the most important thing is that you understand that a website that does not use images or uses them badly is unmatched by one that does it well and, as I said, there are few that really do it well. So take advantage of it because this fact is a great opportunity to stand out from others in your niche.