Best Way To Host Images For Image Optimization

[tennisexpress]

I need an image optimization expert to tell me whether or not we are hosting images properly for SEO. Currently, we upload all images to Picasa and then call them out with a webpart in our content management system. See example here - http://www.tennisnow.com/Photos/2011-BNP-Paribas-Open-Day-5.aspx

Here's an example of the url that is attached to each image - http://lh5.ggpht.com/_1Oyc-Zgkrpk/TX5H-Pfyd7I/AAAAAAAARbc/nG3Cw-G5tsY/s400/1215548409_FU9xA-L.jpg

We have a lot of images, and we've hosted them on Picasa for speed purposes based on a recommendation from our developer (makes the pages load faster).

I've read that Google can now factor page load time into its ranking parameters. We are not seeing the images from each photo gallery being indexed on images.google.com. We are torn. What should we do to rank for these images?

[prima-253509]

Hey Guillaume,

Thanks for pointing out the alt tags, can't believe I forgot to mention that (doh!).

Good points with how to address the speed issues.

Cheers,

Josh

[G-Force]

Hi,

I totaly agree, you should also add content to the alt tag of the images. About the speed optimization, I would not only look into the images, but also look at the code of the page itself.

There are a lot of inline CSS and JavaScript that could be move to external files and you could also combine and minimize your external JavaScript and CSS files.

There is also this 28772 character long token generated by ASPX that take a while to be generated and loaded. You could also replace your menus by

There are a lot of improvement that could be done on your website that would make your website load faster and have greater effect than hosting your images elsewhere.

Best regards,
Guillaume Voyer.

[prima-253509]

I will take a stab at it and someone more knowledgeable than me can correct me if I am wrong :).

I would host the pictures on your own server and address the speed issues with caching, compression, etc. As long as the pictures are optimized for the web correctly you can mitigate the cost in speed and gain the opportunity to be able to control your image optimization plan.

Right now your links point out and are not descriptive of the content at all. If they were hosted on your site you are referencing your own domain and can control the URL much easier. Instead of the link you currently have you could have a specific url that describes the picture (www.example.com/photos/Rafael-Nadal-wimbledon-2011.jpg). Please note that I am no tennis expert so this is just an example :). this would give you a descriptive url that points to your site, and by optimizing the alt and title tags you tell the search engines what your image is about. When those picture are indexed and show up in google or bing it is your site that gets the traffic and credit not a 3rd party host.

Hope that helps, personally as searching trends towards more visual cues I want to make sure that any pictures that are found of our products are optimized fully and point to our site.