Timothy Carter

If you want your SEO company to be successful, you need to generate revenue. Lots of it. The standard and intuitive approach to generating more revenue is selling more of your products or SEO services. If you currently have 100 clients on monthly retainers, you can hypothetically increase revenue by selling bolstering that to 200. But if you want to grow your SEO business more consistently and more predictably, you might need to take on a different type of revenue generating model altogether. By incorporating a recurring revenue model, and increasing your recurring revenue, you can better fund your SEO company and lay a course for a much brighter future. So how do you do it? What Is Recurring Revenue? Simply put, recurring revenue is revenue generated on an ongoing, consistent basis. Think of it this way. Imagine we still existed in an era with DVD rentals from Blockbuster video. You can rent an individual DVD for $3, or you can sign up for a monthly rental package that allows you to rent up to 20 DVDs per month in exchange for a recurring, $15 monthly charge. As a consumer who rents DVDs somewhat regularly, the monthly fee is a no brainer; if you rent more than 5 DVDs in a given month, you’ll end up saving money. Even if there are some months where you rent fewer DVDs, you’ll still end up ahead. While it might seem like the business is losing some potential money, Blockbuster benefits from this arrangement as well. Instead of being totally reliant on individual choices and fluctuating demand, the business can build itself on the stable income streams coming from its thousands, or millions of customers. Why Is Recurring Revenue Valuable? Why is recurring revenue so valuable for your SEO business? There are several advantages, including: Predictability For starters, recurring revenue is much more predictable than other models. Some of your clients will operate consistently even without a recurring revenue model, but demand is still going to fluctuate. Some clients will demand a high volume of work for a short period of time, then leave for a prolonged period of time. Some clients will buy different volumes of products and services at different intervals. This will lead to various hot periods, where you can barely keep up with demand, and cool periods, where you have excessive resources remaining unused and dry revenue streams. With recurring revenue in place, your income will be much stable and more predictable. As a result, you’ll operate more evenly and you’ll be able to make more accurate predictions about the future of your business. Scalability Recurring revenue also lends itself to scalability. With all your customers paying monthly or annual subscriptions, you can count on a foundation of revenue to support you. It’s much easier to forecast your future needs, and it’s much easier to grow and change your business in response to new external factors. Additionally, growing your business revenue becomes much easier, since you can focus on increasing recurring revenue in a variety of different ways, beyond simply selling more things to more people; we’ll cover these strategies in the final section of this article. Steadier cash flow Any business owner can tell you just how important cash flow is. Maintaining positive cash flow means making more money than you spend on a regular basis. It also means having ample resources to pay your employees, pay your bills, and ultimately keep the business afloat. If you have inconsistent revenue sources, or if you’re subject to demand volatility, cash flow becomes almost impossible to appropriately manage. But with a better, more predictable recurring revenue model, cash flow becomes much steadier. Long-term relationships Recurring revenue models give you a chance to build better long-term relationships with your clients. Without one, your clients will reach out to you only when they need something, and they may be inclined to work with some of your competitors for some of their jobs. If they’re paying an active subscription, you’ll be engaging with them on a much more regular basis, and they’ll be incentivized to remain loyal to you. As a result, your customer base will be far more loyal, you’ll make more money, and you’ll have more rapport with your clients, which can lead to smoother interactions. Better client control Managing a client portfolio also gives you more control over the clients you work with. If you have any difficult, challenging, or abrasive clients, you can let them go or prevent them from signing up for a recurring package. Instead, you can focus your efforts on your most valuable clients – the ones who consistently use your services without making your life unnecessarily difficult. Higher business value If you’re planning on eventually selling your business, you should know that having a recurring revenue model can increase the value of your business. Investors and entrepreneurs typically look for opportunities that allow them to generate income on a predictable and recurring basis. If your business is generating millions of dollars in annual revenue consistently, its value is going to skyrocket. Flexibility Recurring revenue also gives you more flexibility. When you know exactly how much you’re bringing in each month, you can spend in a more intelligent and thoughtful way. You can also choose to use this money however you see fit, reaping profits as a stakeholder or reinvesting into the business. Shifting to a Recurring Revenue Model Your first step is shifting to a recurring revenue model, assuming you don’t have one already. Generally speaking, this means charging a weekly, monthly, or annual rate in exchange for a specific set of services. For example: Consulting Instead of charging an hourly rate for consulting, you can charge a monthly rate for a set number of consulting hours. For example, instead of charging $300 per hour, you can charge $1,500 per month in exchange for up to 6 consulting hours. Content marketing Instead of charging your clients on a per word, per article, or per

When it comes to SEO content, you can choose from two types: trending content and evergreen content. In this article, we’ll go over what trending content and evergreen content are, the pros and cons of each, and why you should create both for a successful SEO strategy. Let’s get started! What is Trending Content? Trending content is content that’s relevant now but won’t be in the future. Think of it like a fashion trend. It could be the hot new thing for a season and then quickly become outdated. Some examples of trending content include: Breaking news Event coverage Holiday or seasonal topics Anything time-sensitive Content related to COVID-19 would also fit into this category. It’s highly relevant now, but once the pandemic more fully ends, not so much. You see a lot of trending content from news websites. That’s because it’s their job to report on the latest to the masses. But businesses can leverage trending content as well. Anything that’s eye-grabbing, controversial, or creates some type of buzz may be worth creating content about because it could increase your web traffic. And who knows? Your trending content might go viral, giving your brand a lot of sudden exposure. To create trending content, look for topics that are just starting to become popular. For example, type a topic into Google Trends to see if it shows an upward search trend. If it does, it might be a good opportunity to take advantage of the increased search volume. Source The Benefits of Trending Content So why create trending content? Well, many reasons. For one, there’s less competition to rank for trending topics. If the keyword hasn’t been on many people’s radar until now, there won’t be much content ranking for it. That means it’ll be easier for you to stake your claim in the SERPs. Once you publish trending content, you’ll also see SEO results faster. With less competition, your trending content could rise to the top of search results in just a few days. All in all, trending content can help increase your brand’s online visibility by a lot in a short amount of time. The key is to identify trending topics early on and then be the first to publish about them. The Drawbacks of Trending Content Of course, the one big downside to trending content is that the SEO benefits aren’t guaranteed to last. Sure, you might make the number one search result for “2022 real estate market trends in Orlando, Florida,” but nobody’s going to be searching for that in a year. In other words, once the trend goes away or the keyword becomes irrelevant, you’ll see your web traffic start to drop. What is Evergreen Content? Now that you know about trending content, let’s talk about evergreen content. Evergreen content is anything that is relevant now and in the future. No matter what happens, there will always be people interested in the topic. Content types that work great as evergreen pieces include: Ultimate guides Whitepapers Case studies Checklists Infographics The key is to focus on quality over quantity. Cover the topic in full and in a way that nobody has done before. That way, your content has a better chance of standing the test of time. Creating evergreen content starts with keyword research. See how much search volume a keyword gets with an SEO tool like Keywords Everywhere. If the search traffic is steady, then it may make a good evergreen topic. Ideally, you want to identify keywords whose search volume is growing. Then create content on it. By getting on the bandwagon early, you have a better chance to stake your claim in the SERPs. Once you’ve published an evergreen piece, review it at least once per year. This helps you make minor updates to keep it from becoming outdated. Say you publish the “Ultimate Guide to Creating a WordPress Blog.” Then WordPress releases an update that slightly changes the process for creating a new site. In that case, you’ll want to update your guide quickly, so that Google doesn’t demote it for containing outdated information. You can also repromote evergreen content. Chances are you’ll gain new audience members over time. So by re-promoting your evergreen content, you give them a chance to consume the great stuff you made in the past and thereby increase your web traffic even more. You can also repurpose evergreen content into different content forms. For example, you could turn a blog article into a podcast episode or summarize a video into a social media post. Publish your content across different mediums to reach the most amount of people. And you can always boost your evergreen content by doing link-building outreach. That means contacting relevant high-domain authority websites, sharing your evergreen content, and requesting a backlink to it. As your site becomes more recognized, this type of outreach will get easier. Source: https://www.searchenginejournal.com/evergreen-content/362554/ The Benefits of Evergreen Content The main benefit of evergreen content is that it can be a permanent source of web traffic. Once you publish it, you can enjoy a steady and reliable stream of visitors to your site. And the higher your evergreen content ranks on search engines, the easier it will be to gain backlinks. Sites looking for a source are more likely to link to yours, which then boosts your SEO even more, creating a kind of snowball effect. Finally, there’s usually already a lot of content on an evergreen topic out there, which means you’ll have plenty of resources for your research. The Drawbacks & Disadvantages of Evergreen Content That said, evergreen content still comes with some disadvantages. For one, when other evergreen content on the topic already exists, it’s highly competitive to get yours to rank. Finding a foothold in the SERPs can become extremely difficult. Secondly, developing good evergreen content takes a lot of time. You’ll have to do extensive research and go through several revisions to make the piece stand out. And lastly, promoting evergreen content also takes

Technical SEO involves a web of complex strategies that can be confusing to implement. If you’re trying to do SEO on your own, you’re up against a massive learning curve that you will probably struggle to get through. If you’re overwhelmed just thinking about all the components of technical SEO, this article will help. Here we discuss how to improve the most important aspects of technical SEO to get your website ranking better in the search engines. What is technical SEO? Technical SEO is exactly what it sounds like: technical search engine optimization techniques. In a nutshell, there are numerous ways to get your website ranking in the search engines by performing a variety of technical tasks. Technical on-page SEO could include one of several hundred Google ranking factors. Why you need technical SEO There are a variety of SEO components that influence how your web pages rank in the search engines, and technical SEO is critical. Having a beautiful website with amazing content is important but won’t make your site rank well in the search engines unless you’ve properly implemented and optimized technical SEO. In other words, the visual and content aspects of your website make your visitors happy, while technical SEO makes search engines happy. The technical components of SEO communicate the information required for search engines to find, crawl, render, index, and rank your web pages. If your technical SEO is off, your web pages won’t rank well. 8 Critical technical SEO components to implement immediately When your goal is to implement stronger technical SEO, you’ll need to look at a variety of factors on your website. With some components, you’ll only need to make small adjustments, while other components will require an overhaul. Here are 8 things to do right away in order to strengthen your technical SEO. 1. Optimize your website architecture Site architecture is how your web pages are organized, including the structure and hierarchy. Few things can help your technical SEO as much as improving your site architecture. That’s because search engine crawlers can’t navigate and index a site with a complicated architecture. If your site doesn’t get indexed, it won’t turn up in search results. A hierarchical site structure is best The ideal site structure is what SEOs call “flat and hierarchical.” This type of architecture organizes your site’s web pages so that they are all connected simply and efficiently. Under this hierarchy, each page is only a few clicks away from your main page. For instance, say you have 100 total web pages on your site. Each of those 100 web pages can be accessed within three or fewer clicks. Search engine crawlers have a limited time to crawl your site, and if they can’t get to all of your pages quickly, pages will be left behind, unindexed. To view the complexity (or simplicity) of your site’s structure, run your domain name through an online Visual Site Mapper. It’s a simple tool that can show you so much about your site’s structure. Limit the use of subdirectories Ideally, you’ll want to contain all of your web pages within a hierarchy of one directory past your main directory. The more directories search engine spiders need to explore, the more of your crawl budget will be spent, which means fewer pages will get indexed. Use breadcrumb navigation Breadcrumb navigation is highly useful for both users and SEO. With this type of navigation, search engine crawlers have an easier time finding additional pages on your website. Here’s a basic example of what breadcrumb navigation looks like: SEO.co > How Long Does it Take to Rank on Google? If you have numerous web pages, use this type of navigation to help both visitors and search engines easily find their way through your site. 2. Resolve all web page indexing issues Do you know if your web pages are indexed properly in Google? It’s possible that some of your pages haven’t been indexed at all. There are two ways to discover potential indexing issues. First, perform a site search in Google to see what web pages have been indexed. Go to Google and type in: site:yoursite.com (replacing yoursite.com with your website domain) and you should generate a bunch of search results from your domain. Any web page that doesn’t come up in the results hasn’t been indexed, which means it won’t come up in searches. Another way to check for indexing issues is to use the Index Coverage Report inside of Google Search Console. This tool will give you more specific information related to any indexing issues Google encountered with your website. When you find any indexing issues, you can fix them with the following: Create an XML sitemap for your website. XML sitemaps have been around for a while and are still an important source for search engine spiders to find URLs. Not sure if your sitemap is correct? You can check your sitemap here. Create more internal links. When you have web pages further away from your home page, they’re harder for search engine spiders to crawl and index. Creating internal links helps search engines find and crawl more of your web pages. Use Google Search Console’s “Inspect” feature. This tool will tell you exactly why your web pages aren’t indexed and will show you how Google renders your pages that have been indexed. 3. Create a consistent URL structure Does your URL structure make logical sense? When visitors are on a particular page, does your directory structure and page URL tell them exactly where they are? For example, say you publish a bunch of photos from your 2020 trip to the Bahamas. A logical URL structure might look like this: https://yoursite.com/photos/2020-Bahamas/ With this URL structure, the ‘photos’ subdirectory is self-explanatory, and you can place additional directories under this main category in the future. This type of organization also helps search engines understand that all the content underneath the ‘photos’ directory is related. 4. Optimize your content Content optimization serves both visitors and

If a business has a physical address, then you probably already know that you need local search engine optimization or local SEO. For many small business owners, this type of SEO continues to be a mystery, and it shouldn’t be. The concept is actually easy to incorporate in any web design or marketing strategy. This guide goes through everything that businesses should know when learning how to use local SEO more effectively for their markets. Types of Businesses That Need Local SEO In a phrase, any business can use local SEO, but it’s more effective if a business has a definitive physical location. However, if you get most of your business from local clients or customers, local SEO might also be a good idea for you as well. Local restaurants, retail stores, doctor’s offices, dentists, lawyers and so forth all benefit from using some type of locally optimized marketing strategy. If you expect foot traffic from your website, you probably want to be the first to use local SEO. Local SEO vs. Traditional SEO Traditional or national SEO will target broad scope keywords. These keywords aren’t attaching a regional identity. For example, if you’re the marketing team behind Wal-Mart’s new national campaign for cheap tires, then your keywords will likely direct towards all markets and focus on “cheap tires,” “tire discounts” or “tire deals.” However if you are a local auto tire company, you want to focus your keywords around location such as “cheap tires Orlando” or “tire discounts Orlando FL.” Creating a great local SEO strategy is about more than keywords but understanding this difference allows you to do accurate local keyword research, which is part of the whole marketing concept behind being local. Local Profiles on Google Creating profiles in Google is the first thing that any business wanting local traffic must do. Why’s that? Most people are using Google to research products and services, and when they type in something like “new tires Orlando,” a list of businesses that have profiles on Google Places will pop up at the top of the results page for the Orlando, Florida location. This means that businesses must add their complete location and details to Google Places and Google Plus. The profile must contain as much information as possible including a thoughtful description, pictures, contact details, store hours and hopefully reviews. You also want to set up profiles on other social media platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn. These sites will undoubtedly come up whenever anyone searches your store’s name or products to learn more information, and you should be the one to control that information. Be Consistent with Every Listing When you start to create profiles and even build a website, you should make sure that your address is consistent on any page that has your name, address and phone number. They should also feature the same main photo and additional images that are consistent with the rest of your profiles. It may seem trivial, but you should never abbreviate one address and not another. Using On-Site Optimization Techniques There are four things to know about local on-site optimization. For one, name, address and phone number must be on every page of your site, such as at the bottom or top. In addition, city and state names should be in the title tags, meta descriptions and content of your site. Schema local markup can also help search engines find your local content better and identify your location for users. Lastly, you can use a KML or keyhole markup language file to further your on-site optimization. The Most Important Factors to Boost Local SEO Rank Reviews, positive feedback and number of profiles is important. Reviews should be on every page that it is possible to have reviews, but Google Places reviews are seen the most, which means that they contribute the most to a local business ranking in search results. Businesses often ask customers to leave reviews or add hints to review when a customer is obviously having a great experience. It’s important that you don’t pay for reviews, but businesses have had some success by offering a free gift if a customer leaves a review. Central Location Matters While having all of the above will definitely boost your ranking, your business may still not be in the lead if you are from the city’s center. That’s because when someone searches for “tires Orlando FL,” Google uses “centroid bias,” which means that the search will look for locations closest to the city center of Orlando. Basic Tips to Boost Local SEO Today This is a rundown of the steps a business owner can take to improve local SEO immediately. 1. Claim a local listing in Google Places. Complete the listing until the profile is 100 percent finished. Images, videos, descriptions, contact information, links and posts are all important to finishing your listing. You do not want to use any keywords or location names in the business title unless it’s critical. For instance, if you own “Cheap Orlando tires Inc” then it’s acceptable, but if your business is “Tires Plus Orlando,” then you wouldn’t write “Cheap Tires Plus Orlando FL.” 2. Spread information through Yext. Yext is a service that allows you to spread your business information to other local platforms in the same format as you did with Google Places. Each of these becomes a “citation,” which is very valuable in terms of local SEO. 3. Set up other important social profiles. Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are obviously important for local SEO, but if your business is more visual, you may want to set up a profile on Pinterest or if there is a local directory website that lists all of the local tire places, your business should be on there as well. 4. Build On-Site Local SEO Some of your content on your site can use local SEO keywords such as “SEO in Orlando” or “Orlando SEO”. The links, title tags, anchor text, in-text keywords and meta descriptions should offer city and state keywords that relate to any of the service areas that are within your physical

When exploring a topic via Google search, how often do you find everything you need after a single query? If you’re like most people, it takes you a few attempts. You might have to rephrase your query. You might think of a follow-up question to ask. Or you might just be curious to know what kind of related searches and content is out there. That’s one reason why Google has introduced two similar, related searches features: “people also search for” (PASF Keywords) and “people also ask” (PAA) Chances are, you’ve already used both of these dynamic search features as a user, whether you realized it actively or not. But did you know that you can also tailor your (SEO) strategy to get more value out of these features for your brand? What Is People Also Search For (PASF)? Let’s start with a definition of “people also search for” (PASF Keywords). This feature only reveals itself when a user conducts a search, clicks a link, then bounces from the website to get back to the original search engine results pages (SERP), typically with the “back” button of a browser. When this happens, Google adds a “People also search for” section underneath the organic search results you clicked; there, you’ll see an assortment of alternative, related searches, and queries you can click. If you click these, you’ll be taken to entirely new SERP. Google provides PASF Keywords as assistance for people who aren’t able to find the results they want upon initially searching. If you visit a page, then return to the first SERP you encountered, Google takes that as an indication that you didn’t find what you were looking for (and rightly so). Think of it as a search  results safety net designed to capture engagements, interaction, and better experiences for people who were unsatisfied with the initial results provided. What Is People Also Ask (PAA)? “People also ask” (PAA) is similar, but it starts with a different goal and works slightly differently. You’ll see a “People also ask” box near the top of more than half of SERPs. In fact, PAA boxes are now 10 times more popular than featured snippets, and are increasing in visibility and prominence every year. Within this box are suggestions, based on what other queries users have searched for in the past. For example, if you search for “What is a dinosaur?”, you might find PASF keywords in Search results like: What defined a dinosaur? What are dinosaurs considered? What is a dinosaur real? Is a dinosaur a reptile or a bird? You’ll then be able to click on any of these results to reveal a featured snippet and a link to a trustworthy result for that search. It’s kind of like a search-within-a-search, meant to help people answer related searches questions without needing to leave the central SERP. Why Do These Strategies Matter? Why should you care about PASF Keywords and PAA optimization? Sheer presence and visibility. PASF and PAA content appears for more than half of all searches, and that percentage is likely to grow consistently from here. It’s obvious that Google finds PASF Keywords and PAA content to be valuable for users, because this content is prominent and prevalent. Additionally, PASF and PAA boxes are designed to be as high as possible in the SERPs, giving you an opportunity to outrank your competitors in strategies other than strict organic ranking climbing. User intent understanding. Working on your PASF Keywords and PAA optimization strategies will also help you better understand the intent and behavioral patterns of your target audience. Both these recommendation boxes are designed to help users find what they’re looking for – and both rely on high monthly search volume of data to generate personalized searrch result. If you study these appearances carefully, you’ll be able to learn much more about user intent, user behavior, and search patterns; you can then incorporate those lessons into your search engines optimization strategy. Keyword optimization ideas. Any seasoned search engines optimization (SEO) expert can tell you, it’s sometimes difficult to come up with novel ideas for keyword optimization. How do you choose keywords that are simultaneously relevant to your brand, relevant to your users, highly searched, and not highly competitive? Basic keyword research goes a long way, but practicing PASF or PAA optimization can open the door to even better keyword opportunities. A path to “position zero.” Position zero refers to being a featured snippet in an SERP, taking precedence over other organic rankings. Specifically optimizing for these recommendation boxes could help you increase your relevance for commonly asked questions, giving you a straightforward path to position zero optimization. Appealing to users and minimizing bounce rate. Studying PASF recommendations, specifically, can help you better understand why users bounce from your site. If they don’t find what they’re looking for after visiting a search page of your site, Google will use a PASF box to help them find what they are looking for; you can then use this data to make your search page more compelling (and improve time spent on page). How to Optimize for People Also Search For (PASF)? These are some of the best strategies for optimizing for people also search for (PASF Keywords ): Analyze PASF Keywords opportunities. Start by looking at the opportunities available to you. Because PASF Keywords search result only display when you bounce from a specific web page, you’ll need to simulate this bounce manually or use a keyword research tool specifically designed to fetch these types of search result. When users bounce from some of your most popular pages, what kind of PASF content do they see? Which of these suggestions are most relevant to your brand and your audience? Make your content relevant to user search intent. Use a combination of core user queries and PASF keywords recommendations to figure out what your average user search intent is. What kind of content are people looking for and which questions aren’t getting answered sufficiently? Then,

Site load time wasn’t always a big deal, but Google has made its mission clear: they want the best possible online experience for its users, and that means favoring sites that maximize user experience. In other words, if you’re not working to optimize images on your website, you’re ignoring a critical ranking factor. For the past several years, site load has been a significant Google ranking factor—meaning sites with faster time to load and rank higher than sites with slower ones. If you want to improve your rankings in search engines and give your users an all-around better experience, you need to do everything you can to minimize the time for a load of your site. The best way to do that, and the first place to start, is to optimize your website’s images for load speed. In addition, for every optimized image you upload, make sure you run through the checklist: Does your image have proper dimensions? Is it in an appropriate format? Have you stripped all irrelevant metadata? Keeping your image optimization streamlined is perhaps the best way to keep your site’s time load down and give your users the best possible experience. 1. Resizing Your Images & Lazy Loading There are two ways to think about the “size” of an image, and both can have an impact on loading times. First, “image size” can refer to the amount of data contained in an image SEO, expressed as Kilobytes (Kb) or Megabytes (Mb). Second, it can refer to the physical dimensions of the image when viewed at 100 percent. The amount of data contained in an image is the most important factors that influences time to load. The more data an image has, the longer it takes for a browser to receive and process that data from a server. While the difference between a 1 Mb image and a 200 Kb image may not seem like much, if all of your images are oversized, the impact on your users’ time to load could be enormous. Images with extra-large physical dimensions are the ones with higher amounts of data. Even disregarding the resolution (PPI and DPI), images with larger dimensions have a higher Image file size than their physically smaller counterparts. In addition to slowing down from the sheer amount of data that needs transferred, your load times can be impacted by the process your website takes to scale your images down. Therefore, it’s important to size your images more efficiently. There are several easy ways to resize your images, both in terms of physical dimensions and in terms of file size: Use Adobe Photoshop, Microsoft Paint, or any image editing software to decrease the physical dimensions of your image SEO. Keep the width to height ratio the same, but decrease both qualities. Upload your image to a free online image resizer, such as Picresize.com, and download a smaller version of your image SEO to use. Use an automated tool to resize all of your images at once, such as by writing an image optimization processing script in Photoshop. There is no single “ideal” image file size, since many images on your site serve different purposes, but generally, you’ll want to pay attention to the following best practices: Blog images should not be wider than the width of your blog (so if your blog is 700 pixels wide, your images should be 700 pixels wide or less, keeping the same proportions). While everyone has different preferences, the 60-70 per cent quality range seems appropriate for most blogs. Never increase the file size of an image. It leads to blurriness and graininess. Keep a copy of the original. That way, you still have it if you need to make edits. Why size matters even if your CMS automatically resizes images When an Internet browser reaches a site that contains an image, it first loads the full-size image you uploaded. Then, it processes the fact that it must reduce the image file size to fit on the page, so it reloads the image as part of the page. Instead of saving time by loading only the processed version of the image SEO, your user’s browser actually loads the image optimization twice—once for the full-sized version and once for the fitting version. Therefore, it’s important to upload properly sized images to your website no matter what. 2. Using Proper Image Formatting The type of format you use for your images is also important. Most people are familiar with the JPG file formats for images because it is one of the highest image qualities and most relevant formats. It also tends to have the highest file size because it’s made for big, high-quality images, so if you can get away with using a smaller file format for your website, you can decrease your load times. For example, the GIF file format supports transparency and can be animated, but it only supports 256 colors. Because of its color and definition limitations, it is a naturally smaller format. You wouldn’t want to use a GIF for product image optimization or for a flagship piece of photography, but you should definitely consider it for small icons or badges on your site. It won’t save you a ton of data, but every little bit counts. PNG images are typically a larger format than JPG because it features a lossless compression system—meaning, it never loses data integrity no matter how many times it is saved. The same holds true for animated images. JPG images do lose data integrity with each save, but because they are much smaller in image files, they are still the preferred image format for high quality images. Still, PNGs can be useful for smaller images, such as menu images. For today’s web, WebP images are becoming more of the standard because of their fast image load times. Other image formats do exist, but these are the key players you need to understand to make sure your website loads as fast as possible. 3.