It is standard practice to upload a featured image on WordPress blog posts. Most WordPress themes use the featured image on the blog page and on the individual blog post. What is often overlooked is the SEO (Search Engine Optimization) benefit of uploading a featured image to all of your WordPress pages as well. The featured image, while not shown on the actual page is included in the meta data of the page that is visible to search engines. The WordPress featured image is also visible and used by social media platforms like Facebook when your page is shared.

Best Practices for WordPress Page Featured Images:

• A good size for a WordPress Page’s Featured Image is 1200 px by 630 px. This size is the optimal size for sharing on Facebook and will give you the best look when your page is shared on Facebook. This size is for pages, your theme may need an exact size to display correctly on the blog, so only use this size for WordPress pages. The file size of the image should be as small as possible while balancing appearance and file size. Large file size of images are the enemy of SEO, they slow down the load time of your pages. The file size of a page featured image is less critical since it not actually displayed. We use services like CompressPNG.com and CompressJPEG.com to help us optimize the file size of the images we use on our website and our website design clients..

• Name the image to match your post or page content. The image name should be relevant to your page and the image. The featured image of this post is named “wordpress-featured-image-optimized.jpg.” This helps search engines like google understand what the image and post are about.

• Always fill out the Title and Alt Text Fields when uploading an image. Whenever you upload an image to WordPress there are options to designate the Title and Alt Text of the image. These fields should be completed with relevant data to the image and the post. As an example, the title and alt text fields of the featured image of this post is “WordPress Featured Image Search Engine Optimized.” It is also a best practice to complete the caption section of all of your images. the caption should be a complete actual description of the image and it’s context.

We hope you found this information about best practices for WordPress Page Featured Images useful. Kwazadilla.com has been providing expert website design for over 10 years. We offer Premium Managed WordPress Hosting, Domain Registrations, Email Plans and more.