Humans love visual content; there’s a high chance of remembering events if visual cues are involved rather than just words. For online marketers, you can use visuals such as images and videos to deliver content excitingly and engage readers.
But to make sure your images appear in Google Image Search, you need to maintain them in tip-top shape. Here, we look at two tools for optimizing images for search engines and suggest which one will best suit your needs. Read on to find out.
Optimole Vs. ShortPixel
SEO is so wide; some people even forget that image optimization is part of good SEO. Using Optimole and Shortpixel can achieve a better website performance. Optimole and Short Pixel are two popular tools used to optimize images for search engines. They are simple plugins that allow you to customize the process and make your images SEO-friendly fast. However, each tool has its own special features and advantages.
| Criteria | Short Pixel | Optimole |
|---|---|---|
| Free Plan | Yes | Yes |
| Monthly free image optimization | 100 | 1000 |
| Max file size | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Ease of use( out of 5 stars) | 5 | 5 |
| Performance rating( out of 5 stars) | 5 | 4.5 |
| Starting price | $4.99/month | $9.99/month |
Optimole
Optimole is a great image optimizer from Themeisle. It’s an all-in-one solution because not only does it work for WordPress, but other platforms too.
Besides images, videos are always great to attract, engage, and bring back visitors to your website. Embedding videos can also help your page to rank better in Google search. Thus, we’d like to share some methods on how to embed videos in WordPress and show you a few plugins that will help you with video embedding. Let’s get started.
How Optimole works?
It’s a lightweight solution, too, because the software is cloud-based, eliminating any load on your website. The plugin connects to the server via an API, allowing you to send images for processing on the fly. The server strips the images of EXIF data and replaces their URLs with its own. Optimole is available in the paid and free plan. The number of pictures you can optimize depends on the original size and the number of optimizations needed
Optimole Plugin features
- A second distinct dashboard – apart from the WordPress dashboard, there’s another dashboard on your account for posting monthly reports and optimization sizes.
- 3 different levels of compression quality – you can opt for High, Medium, or Low.
- Auto option – You can also choose to automate the image optimization task. The plugin will resize image dimensions to suit a visitor’s viewpoint and browsers perfectly. Everything runs in the background
- Free trial – Optimole includes a free plan to optimize images totaling up to 1GB in size. That means if you have images of average size 500kb, you can optimize 2000 of them free of charge.
- Built-in CDN and lazy loading – If you don’t want to use compression, Optimole offers CDN and lazy loading.
- Upgrades or downgrades image quality according to visitors internet speed
- No file size limit
Shortpixel
Shortpixel is another lightweight solution for optimizing WordPress images fast. It can be installed from your WordPress dashboard and doesn’t take more than a minute to sign-up and get your API key. Once you are set, you can start using the tool to chew off extra bytes from your website images.
How does Shortpixel work?
Features of Shortpixel
- Auto option – The plugin can automatically compress images in your media library without you even knowing because it does so in the background.
- Versatile – Shortpixel doesn’t only do JPEG but optimizes PNG and GIFS too. It also does PDFs and generates WebP versions of images as well.
- 2 different compression quality – Glossy optimization for high-quality images, fit for photographer professionals, and Lossy optimization for general users
- Built-in CDN and lazy loading – If you want to display WebP and also have lazy-load, you simply switch to the Shortpixel Adaptive plugin.
- No file size limits
Optimole vs Shortpixel: Plan comparison
Both Optimole and Shortpixel come with a free and paid plan. The image limit on Optimole free plan is 1GB, while for Shortpixel, you can optimize 100 images. Here’s a look at their paid plans.
Optimole paid plans
- Optimole’s paid plans start at $10.62/month for the Personal plan, and it includes 10GB images per month, 50GB bandwidth, and cloud-front CBD in 130 locations.
- Alternatively, you could pay for the Business plan for all the above features plus an extra 40GB images/month and 400GB of viewing bandwidth.
- The final plan is the Custom plan with 750GB images/month, unlimited bandwidth, CDN, and priority support at flexible pricing per month.
- No file size limits
Shortpixel paid plans
It starts with 100 free image credits, and you can buy extra credits as follows:
- $3.99/month for 5000 credits.
- $8.33/month for 16000 credits
- $24.99/month for 55,000 credits
- $220/month for 83.33 credits
- $350/month 2M+ credits (comes with 4 cores dedicated server and TB CDN traffic)
- $500/month 4M+ credits (comes with 8 cores dedicated server and TB CDN traffic)
- $1000/month 16M+ credits (comes with 24 cores dedicated server and TB CDN traffic)
Wrap-up -The best WordPress image optimizer for SEO
A good plugin for image optimization not only reduces images but keeps the visual quality. It should also be easy to use and loaded with a ton of features for versatility. Above all, it should be actively supported by a tech team
Both Shortpixel and Optimole meet the above requirements, but which one should you use? It depends on your budget and the level of versatility you want. If you want search engine image optimization at a budget, Shortpixel plans start free with an option to get more credits for as low as $4.
However, it doesn’t come with the capabilities that Optimole allows. Optimole is loaded with extra features, including the option to customize images according to visitor’s browsers automatically. That makes it all the more interesting than Shortpixel.
