Website speed—and, by extension, technical SEO—is more important than ever. Fast websites tend to rank slightly higher in search results than slow ones. Fast loading times are also important for user experience.
Ask yourself: How patient are you when it comes to waiting for a website to load? A slow website causes you to lose visitors and negatively impacts your SEO results.
But what exactly determines this load time? It depends on various factors, but the images on a website play a major role. Research by Akamai shows that, on average, images account for about 65% of a page’s file size. The WordPress SEO plugin Imagify reduces file size without sacrificing quality. In this Imagify blog post, we’ll explain exactly how the plugin works and how to use it.
Let’s start with Imagify’s pricing so you know exactly what to expect right away. The Starter plan is free and allows you to optimize up to 20 MB per month. Want to optimize more images? Then you have three other options:
The Growth and Infinite plans are both cheaper on an annual basis. But if you’re not quite convinced yet, a monthly subscription might be a better fit. With this option, you can cancel at any time if it doesn’t end up adding value to your website. Do you have a special request? Feel free to contact the Imagify team to discuss your options.
Figure 1: Imagify Subscriptions
Try Imagify online—it's easy and free. Upload images up to 2 MB with a free Imagify account and optimize them right on the Imagify website.
Imagify is a WordPress plugin and is incredibly easy to download. You can find the plugin in the WordPress plugin directory. You can also find it using the search function in your dashboard. First, log in to your WordPress dashboard. From there, go to Plugins and select Add New.
Manually search for Imagify and click “Install Now.” Once it’s installed, activate it. In no time at all, you’ll have added the plugin to your WordPress site.
Figure 2: Download Imagify
Once you’ve activated the plugin, you’ll immediately see a change on your dashboard. You’ll see a step-by-step guide to get started with Imagify.
Figure 3: First Steps for Using Imagify
As soon as you enter your email address in step 1, you’ll receive an email with the API key. You can also create an account right away so you can easily log in to your Imagify account. After you’ve entered your API key in the dashboard in step 2, you can go to “Go to settings” in step 3.
In Step 3, you can fine-tune the settings exactly to your preferences. As shown in Figure 4: General Settings in Imagify, first select the optimization level you prefer. There are three options:
Next, you’ll choose whether you want to automatically optimize all images you upload to WordPress. You’ll also choose whether you want to back up the original images before the optimization process begins. And the final choice you’ll make is whether you want to preserve the EXIF data in your images.
Figure 4: General Settings in Imagify
If you scroll down from there, you’ll see a few more settings. First, you can choose to create WebP (tip!) files from the images on your website. Next, you can choose to resize your images to a maximum number of pixels. Imagify already provides a recommendation for the size. Finally, choose which images you’d like to optimize.
Figure 5: Imagify’s General Settings
We recommend that you also add your theme for optimization. To do this, click the “ADD THE THEME TO OPTIMIZATION” button and then select the theme you’re using. Once you’ve changed your preferences, save the changes.
Now that you’ve adjusted all the settings to your preferences, the real work can begin. If you’ve chosen to optimize all images you upload in the future, that will save you work down the road. But the images you’ve uploaded in the past still need to be optimized. Fortunately, Imagify has designed the Bulk Optimization feature for this purpose. It allows you to optimize all the images on your website.
Figure 6: Bulk Optimization with Imagify
Imagify was developed by its parent company, WP Media, which, in addition to the Imagify plugin, is also the developer of WP Rocket. As a result, Imagify includes integration with WP Rocket, which handles the caching and lazy loading of the optimized images. You can read how to set this up in our WP Rocket guide.
We can be brief about the pros and cons in this Imagify review. Thanks to the plugin’s user-friendliness, it’s suitable for anyone who wants to improve a website’s loading time. The steps you need to take are clear and don’t have to take long. Plus, you won’t waste any valuable time, because thanks to the Bulk Optimization feature, you can optimize all the images you’ve uploaded in the past all at once.
The downside of the plugin is that you have to pay if you want to optimize more than 20 MB per month. But since your website’s load time has such a big impact on your Google rankings, it’s definitely a good idea to optimize the images on your website.
With a passion for SEO and an unmatched drive for results, Jarik Oosting is the driving force behind SmartRanking. With over 15 years of experience in the field, he has built an extensive body of knowledge spanning technical SEO to complex site migrations. As the founder of SmartRanking, he has assembled a team of like-minded SEO specialists who help businesses achieve sustainable online growth.
His academic background in information science at the University of Groningen, with a specialization in natural language processing, gives him a unique perspective on the world of SEO. For Jarik, it’s not just about visibility in search engines, it’s about sharing knowledge and guiding businesses toward sustainable online success. That mission also led him to write a Dutch book about GEO.