How to optimize images for search on Wix
- 17 hours ago
- 9 min read
Author: Crystal Carter
Image optimization is essential to improving SEO, online visibility, and driving conversions. Wix websites have SEO image tools that can be used to improve both site performance and search engine discoverability.
This article will explain exactly what you need to know about image optimization and detail the powerful automatic features Wix uses to ensure your images are fully optimized for search.
We’ll cover:
What is image optimization?
Image optimization is the process of making your images discoverable and rankable by search engines, relevant to your pages, and optimized for fast page speeds.
Why image optimization matters
"Images typically make up the largest payload of a webpage," says Alon Kochba, Head of Reliability, Performance and Production at Wix. "If they aren't optimized, you risk severely slowing down your initial page load, which hurts Core Web Vitals, specifically Largest Contentful Paint (LCP). Poor optimization can also cause layout shifts (CLS) and waste mobile bandwidth."
Meanwhile, properly optimized images can help improve your site’s user experience by appealing to visual learners and making your content more digestible. Your image optimizations can even be the difference between a positive and negative experience for users that rely on screen readers (more on this below).
Images are also important from an SEO perspective. Believe it or not, images can be a great source of traffic to your website. This is all the more true as, over time, Google has introduced more features to the SERP that prominently include images.
What Wix does to optimize your images
"Instead of requiring users to manually compress files or understand formats, Wix abstracts the complexity away," Kochba says. "The infrastructure is built to automatically process, compress, and serve the most optimal version of an image based on the end-user's device, screen resolution, and browser capabilities, without sacrificing visual fidelity."
In fact, Wix maintains the smallest image footprint among major CMS platforms, according to the Web Almanac 2025 by the HTTP Archive. Wix sites load a median of only 194 KB of image data on mobile devices, significantly lower than WordPress (1,250 KB) or Squarespace (1,511 KB).
This performance is a direct result of Wix’s "stronger defaults"—systems designed to produce consistent, lightweight payloads without requiring the user to do anything.
Image compression
As mentioned, large image files can result in your page not loading as quickly as it could. To prevent this, Wix automatically resizes and compresses your images, in most cases. This is done without sacrificing the quality of the images.
Perhaps more importantly, this process takes place on the server side. Without getting into all of the technical details, this enables Wix to serve the number of pixels actually needed to produce a quality image and no more. That makes it easier for the images to load quicker than they would otherwise.
Large images
You should be aware, however, that Wix does not compress images that are over 25MB. If you’re working with image files this large, you should compress them on your own before uploading them to your site. Use online tools like Sqoosh to reduce file size.
Low resolution images
Low-resolution images can be a significant barrier to website quality. The Wix Photo Studio now features a suite of AI image tools designed to address common issues with low-resolution images and media refinement.
AI Image Upscaler: Transform low-resolution images into high-quality assets without pixelation.
Generative Expand: Adjust aspect ratios without stretching or distorting your original content.
The optimal image format
For years, WebP was the gold standard for web performance, offering significant savings over JPEG and PNG. However, technology has moved forward, and Wix has moved with it. Wix now automatically converts and serves your images in AVIF (AV1 Image File Format) whenever a visitor's browser supports it.
"AVIF outperforms WebP in most cases and is supported by all major browsers," Kochba says. "It pushed the boundary of compression further, drastically reducing page weight and improving mobile loading speeds without losing image quality."
Kochba says this allows Wix to produce smaller image payloads. AVIF files are approximately 50% smaller than WebP and can be up to 80% smaller than a standard JPEG without sacrificing visual quality. This drastic reduction in file size is a major reason why Wix sites maintain such a small image footprint compared to other platforms.
Because Wix’s conversion engine is so robust, the old advice of uploading as a JPEG to save space is no longer necessary. In fact, Wix now recommends uploading the highest-quality version of your image possible—at least 2560x1440 pixels. Whether you upload a high-resolution JPEG or a PNG, Wix's server-side optimization will intelligently compress it and serve the most efficient version to your users.
This means you can focus on the quality of your content, knowing that Wix is automatically handling the technical heavy lifting to ensure your site stays fast and lightweight.
Optimized image loading
How images load, or more technically, how they are rendered can have a big impact on both the page’s overall performance and the user experience. To that end, Wix does the following to automatically support optimal image rendering.
01. Low-quality image placeholders (LQIP)
If large image files slow down a page’s loading time, Wix uses low-quality image placeholders to improve performance. These are versions of the images you uploaded that don’t use as many pixels. As the page loads and becomes interactive, the full pixel load is displayed. Basically, a version of the image, using very few pixels, initially loads so that the page can be rendered quickly. As the page is rendered, that low-quality placeholder is then replaced with the high-quality, compressed version of the image you originally uploaded.
02. Lazy loading
Lazy loading basically means that images will only load when they come into view on the browser. Think of it like this: You have 20 images on a page, but only two of them appear above the fold (the area of the page that is visible when the page first loads). All 20 of those images could be rendered, but what for? No one is going to see the majority of them until they scroll down (if they scroll down).
With lazy loading, the only content that loads is what the user needs to see. In this case, the two images that appear above the fold will load, while the other images will only load as the user reaches them upon scrolling. The result is a faster overall page load and improved user experience.
How to optimize images on Wix
Half of the image optimization equation has to do with your site’s performance while the other half is all about your images being indexable and, ideally, highly visible on the SERP.
You can get the most out of Wix’s image optimization capabilities by being mindful in how you go about image placement on your site.
Of course, there’s also the need to make your site accessible, and how you optimize your images has a lot to do with that as well. Let’s dive into it.
Use galleries strategically
Having multiple image galleries on one page can slow down how quickly that page loads. If gallery-heavy pages are a must for your site, consider implementing “load more” buttons so as to only show a few gallery images upon the initial load to help improve performance.
Use GIFs sparingly
Be strategic about using multiple GIFs on a single page, or a GIF and a gallery on the same page, etc. These files are often large and will not be auto compressed by Wix’s backend.
Add image alt text
This is where SEO and accessibility converge. Alt tags, also known as alt text, are the written description of what is portrayed in the image. Think of it as the written version of the image. It tells visitors who can’t see the image (including search engine bots) what the image is about.
When visually impaired users use a screen reader, these tools make written text into audio content. When a screen reader encounters an image with alt text, the reader will read the description of the image aloud. This gives a visually impaired user context for what's on the page.
It also helps search engines and agentic browsers in the same way. When a search engine reaches an image, it can read the alt text to understand what that image represents.
Best practices for writing alt text
Does this mean you should write long-winded descriptions? No. You should aim to be descriptive but succinct.
Focus on context: Identify the most important message in the image and center your description around it.
Avoid redundancy: Screen readers already know it is an image, so there is no need to start with "image of" or "picture of".
Be specific: For example, instead of just "waffles," use "waffles with syrup" to provide better clarity for both users and search engines.
Don't keyword stuff: While including keywords can help SEO, the primary goal should be accurately describing the image for humans.
Being descriptive but succinct will help you with search engines and, more importantly, increase your site’s accessibility.
How to add alt text on Wix
While you can add alt text to individual images via the Settings panel in the Editor, Wix now offers a more streamlined approach through the Accessibility Wizard. The Wizard scans your entire site for accessibility issues and prompts you to add missing descriptions in one centralized location.
Adding alt text via Settings
When adding alt text to individual images, you can do so directly within the editor via the Settings panel. This is useful for providing immediate context as you add new media to your pages.
Access the Panel: Click on any single image in the Wix Editor, Studio Editor, or Wix Harmony Editor and select the Settings icon.
Input Description: Enter your description in the field labeled "What's in the image?".
Galleries: For images within a gallery, you must select Manage Media, click the specific image, and enter the description in the Alt Text field.
Save Changes: Press Enter to save your text, and ensure you Publish your site to make the alt text live for search engines and screen readers.
Using the Accessibility Wizard
To access the Accessibility Wizard and optimize your images, click Settings in the top menu of your editor, select Accessibility Wizard, and click Scan Site to identify missing alt text. From here you can:
Scan and Fix: The Wizard identifies images lacking alt text and lets you enter descriptions directly in the task panel.
Generate alt text with AI: If you have a large number of images, you can use the built-in AI tool to generate descriptions for specific images or an entire page at once. Note that AI generation is not currently supported for SVGs or GIFs.
Mark as Decorative: For images that are purely aesthetic (like borders or background shapes), you can use the Wizard to mark them as "decorative". This ensures screen readers automatically skip them, providing a smoother experience for visually impaired users.
Generate alt text with AI on Wix
Wix Studio premium plan users can save time by generating alt text for images in bulk or one at a time.
While image recognition technology is surprisingly accurate, it often cannot provide the specific context of your page; always review and edit AI-generated text to ensure it's accurate. To access the AI generation tool for alt text, open the Accessibility Wizard from the Settings menu in your editor, click Scan Site, and then select Add alt text to images.
Use captions to provide context
If you want to write something more descriptive, save it for the caption. A well-worded caption not only helps your readers better understand and interpret the image, it can also help search engines.
Search engines can use the text surrounding the image to contextualize what that image is. Use captions whenever you can (so long as it is done in a natural way).
Image optimization is a joint effort
As you can see, there's a lot that Wix automatically does to help optimize your images. At the same time, the image optimization process depends on several factors, like the type of file you upload and how you name your images.
By keeping these factors in mind and being strategic in how you implement images, you can save time and reap the full benefits of image optimization on Wix.
Crystal is an SEO & digital marketing professional with over 15 years of experience. Her global business clients have included Disney, McDonalds, and Tomy. An avid SEO communicator, her work has been featured at Google Search Central, Brighton SEO, Moz, DeepCrawl, Semrush, and more.