Google PageSpeed Insights is invaluable to developers looking to speed up their websites and improve their search ranking.

One of the biggest score hits I took was on “Serve images in next-gen formats”, which applied to all thumbnails I had.

PageSpeed Insights recommends me to “Serve images in next-gen formats”.

I previously used EWWW Image Optimizer for WordPress, and while that helped with other recommendations, it did not solve the one mentioned above.

After digging around a bit more I found an extension that can both optimize and serve images in the next-gen webp format.

It’s called ShortPixel.

ShortPixel Logo

Once you’ve signed up on their site, it’s pretty easy to install.  Just search it up in your WordPress plugin manager and install and activate.

Once activated, head to settings and enable “Also create WebP versions of the images for free”.

Enable “WebP images” to reap the benefits.

From here, once it finishes optimizing your library, rerun PageSpeed Insights and you should see a good improvement!