Use the Squoosh free online tool to optimize images for your website
One of the fastest and easiest ways to speed up your website is compressing all the images on it.
And to make your life easier, Google has launched the Squoosh free image compression tool. It is necessary to optimize images on any site for the site to load faster and rank better.
Today the Drudesk web support agency will analyze how to optimize images correctly, how to use the Squoosh, and how to compress images without significant resources. Let's deal with all these issues together.
What is the Squoosh?
Squoosh is an image optimization and compression tool developed by Google. The service appeared in 2018 but was recently updated to a better version. Perhaps the best thing about it is that it shows a 1:1 visual comparison of the image before and after compression. It is а free tool. Squoosh allows you to use the advanced options provided by other image compressors.
You can use the Squoosh either in your browser window or download it to your computer. It reduces image weight without significant loss in image quality and thus speeds up your site's loading speed.
Benefits of using the Squoosh free online tool
There are many advantages to using the Squoosh to compress your images on your website. In many ways, it is better than other, similar tools. Below are the main benefits in favor of the Squoosh image compression tool.
Top 7 benefits of using the Squoosh
- The tool has settings for adjusting the compression quality which allows you to change codecs and track changes right in the browser.
- It is completely free and has no restrictions on its use.
- The tool allows you to compress and create many image formats at once.
- It includes the Squoosh evaluator that allows you to see the changes
- The visual fidelity of an image is assessed using a specific metric.
- It allows you to compare, in real-time, the image as it is compressed and uncompressed.
- It uses drag-and-drop image files.
How to compress images with Squoosh?
Words don't mean much until you try it for yourself, so here’s a short guide on the right way to compress images with the Squoosh.
1. Go to the official website of the tool
2. Using drag-and-drop or the file selector to load the image that you want to change
3. Compress the images to the desired size or change file formats. All image data and dimensions are displayed in the lower right corner
4. Check if everything looks the way you want it to
5. Click the Download button to download the compressed images to your PC
Why is it important to optimize images for websites?
Search algorithms have begun to take into account the site's page load speed when ranking. Therefore, image optimization directly affects the ranking of pages in search results.
In 2021, the search engine looks, especially at the metric Largest Contentful Paint.
The Largest Contentful Paint metric takes into account the speed at which content is shown on the first screen, and the rendering speed depends on the size of your images. If the images are not optimized, then the Largest Contentful Paint value will be high.
You need to focus on the following indicators:
- 2.5 sec - good
- 4.0 sec - bad
The Squoosh supports such image compression formats as:
- BMP
- GIF
- JP2
- JPEG
- MozJPEG
- PNG
- TIFF
- WebP
- To sum up, it is vitally important to compress images on your site because it affects the loading speed.
All users on the Internet prefer sites that load in no more than 5 seconds. Otherwise, they just leave the site. Compressing the image on your site is one of the main steps that will help increase the loading speed.
Optimize your website with the Squoosh
Everyone likes fast loading sites, but unfortunately, due to the increase in data on sites, such loading is rare.
The Squoosh image compression tool from Google allows you to compress images right in the browser using various codecs.
Side-by-side comparison of different types of compression using the preview slider helps you find a balance between file size and image quality. Compressing image files is a simple and reliable way to improve your website loading speed situation.
Seek help from our Drupal web developers to optimize your site, improve your search engine rankings and increase conversions.