Using pictures from another domain
-
We are building several sites for several clients which will be using images from the manufacturer. Our dev team wants to insert the manufacturer's url for the images, instead of actually downloading the image and hosting on our server. There are thousands of images, so downloading images to our server will be time consuming, so we are looking for a shortcut.... however I'm concerned this will cause other issues.
Is using manufactueresdomain.com/12345.jpg going to cause SEO issues? will this generate Google penalties? Since we are not able to control the image file name, we cannot optimize it. We will add Alt text and Title tag for each image, but the file name is random characters. How important is the file name for SEO?
-
Egol echoes what I was going to write. Would you trust someone else with a major portion of your website?
What immediately came to mind was this MySpace incident with John McCain in 2007. http://techcrunch.com/2007/03/27/john-mccains-myspace-page-hacked/
-
Just saying what I believe and what I do. Not saying that it is "right".
I don't want to call images from another domain. I want google to see me as the source for all of my content.
I also don't want to rely on the manufacturer's server. My sites are on fast, dedicated servers on a host that has almost zero downtime... only moments of downtime in the past decade. Don't bet that delivery will be faster from the manufacturer. Bet on yourself.
Manufacturers often have idiots running their websites. They can put HUGE image files out there that download slowly. Manufacturer's web team might move images around their server and not notify you. They might also upload new images without telling you. It can take you a while to realize that the images are missing or switched and in the meantime their idiots are making your website look like crap. After they change or move images try to sort out that mess. You will waste a lot more time than it would have taken to download the images and put them on your own server.
I think that we can produce better images here. I want BIG images that are often not available from the manufacturers, I want multiple or different views that are not available from the manufacturer. I want optimized images that download quickly and look nice.
So, in short, if I have a choice between betting on me or betting on the manufacturer, I am putting my money on me.
-
Yes, I was referring to Content Distro Networks.
There are no quality issues as to why you can't or shouldn't do what you want to do.
-
The file name isn't as important for SEO as it used to be. It can provide a useful signal as to the nature of the image's content and the text content around it. It shouldn't cause any "issues" or penalties with your SEO, however, you may lose the side benefit of some/all traffic from image searches.
The biggest concern I would have is if the manufacturer decided to move, delete or rename images.
-
Are you referring to a CDN? We use a CDN for our images. However we are contemplating using the image url from the manufacturers website, instead of downloading and hosting the image on our domain.
-
I echo Andy's response. There are services that look and see where an IP is located then call the images on your page from a server closest to that user to improve load times (which is a ranking factor).
Cheers!
-
Hi Branden,
You are fine using images hosted elsewhere - this is a well-used way to speed up page load times. You will get no penalty for going this and it won't impact on-site SEO either.
-Andy
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Using Hreflang Tags For Australian Domain Extension
Hi Guys, We have a company with a Australian domain www.domain.com.au which has just launched in the US market. The company is in the process of purchasing the .com version of the domain and then the plan is to have one single global .com site (like apple.com) on a new domain which would be domain.com and put both the (US version) and (Australian Version) on the new domain: domain.com (global). e.g. domain.com/us and domain.com/au However the .com version won't be available till March 2016. The company still wants to launch in the US market asap with it's current .com.au domain. which it has. So basically the current set-up is like this: http://www.domain.com.au/us/ (US homepage) http://www.domain.com.au/ (Australian homepage) I was wondering, does anyone know if hreflang tag can be used on a .com.au extension to target specific pages to the US. e.g. I was wondering will the hreflang tag override the fact that Google would automatically geo-target the .com.au extension to Australia? e.g. would the http://www.domain.com.au/us/ (US version) with the hreflang tag above be considered as the US version, even-though we it's on a .com.au domain extension? Cheers.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jayoliverwright0 -
International SEO Domain Structure
Hi Guys, I am wondering if anybody can point me to a recent trusted report or study on international domain name structure and SEO considerations. I am looking to read up on the SEO considerations and recommendations for the different domain structures in particular using sub-directories i.e. domain.com/uk, domain.com/fr. Kind regards,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WeAreContinuum
Cian1 -
Domain Forwarding - SEO Impacts?
I have a site that has been active for years - thinkbiglearnsmart.com. Awhile ago I had purchased about 50 domain names that were relevant to my company. I still have those urls and would like to use them to point to different pages on my site - just because they have good key words in the URLs. For example - one is dreamweavertrainingclassesonlinelive.com. Currently they are all redirecting to my homepage. A. is that hurting me? B. I would like to redirect to the more relevant page. ie the page dedicated to Dreamweaver training (http://thinkbiglearnsmart.com/dreamweaver-creative-cloud-training-course/ ) Will this hurt my Dreamweaver keyword for example because there is already a 301 redirect on that page from a very old Dreamweaver link which was something like thinkbiglearnsmart.com/dreamweaver C. On my hosting account where I can select where the URL forwards to - it has an option for "Location forwarding" and "Frame forwarding" - currently they are set to Frame forwarding - which one is best? Any help is much appreciated!!! Thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | webbmason0 -
Using Canonical Attribute
Hi All, I am hoping you can help me? We have recently migrated to the Umbraco CMS and now have duplicate versions of the same page showing on different URLs. My understanding is that this is one of the major reasons for the rel=canonical tag. So am I right in saying that if I add the following to the page that I want to rank then this will work? I'm just a little worried as I have read some horror stories of people implementing this attribute incorrectly and getting into trouble. Thank you in advance
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Creditsafe0 -
What is best practice SEO approach to re structuring a website with multiple domains and associated search engine rankings for each domain?
Hello Mozzers, I'm trying to improve and establish rankings for my website which has never really been optimised. I've inherited what seems to be a mess and have a challenge for you! The website currently has 3 different www domains all pointing to the one website, two are .com domains and one is a .com.au - the business is located in Australia and the website is primarily targeting Australian traffic. In addition to this there are a number of other non www domains for the same addresses pointing to the website in the CMS which is Adobe Business Catalyst. When I check Google each of the www domains for the website has the following number of pages indexed: www.Domain1,com 5,190 pages
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JimmyFlorida
www.Domain2.com 1,520 pages
www,Domain3.com.au 149 pages What is best practice approach from an SEO perspective to re organising this current domain structure? 1. Do I need to use the .com.au as the primary domain given that we are in this market and targeting traffic here? Thats what I have been advised and it seems to be backed up by what I have read here. 2. Do we re direct all domains to the primary .com.au domain? This is easily done in the Adobe Business Catalyst CMS however is this the same as a 301 redirect which is the best approach from an SEO perspective? 3. How do we consolidate all of the current separate domain rankings for the 3 different domains into the one domain rankings within Google to ensure improved rankings and a best practice approach? The website is currently receiving very little organic search traffic so if its simpler and faster to start again fresh rather than go through a complicated migration or re structure and you have a suggestion here please feel free to let me know your ideas! Thank you!0 -
Best Way to Consolidate Domains?
Hello, My company has four websites in the same vertical and we're planning to integrate them all on our main company site. So instead of www.siteone.com, www.sitetwo.com, www.sitethree.com, etc. It would be www.branddomain.com/site-one, www.branddomain.com/site-two, etc. I have a few questions... Should we redirect the old domains to the new directories or leave the old domains and stop updating them with new content... Then have the old content, links, etc. 301 to the same content on the new site? Should we literally move all of the content to the new directories? Any tips are appreciated. It's probably pretty obvious that I don't have a ton of technical skills... my development team will be doing the heavy lifting. I just want to be sure we do this correctly from an SEO perspective! Thanks for the help, please let me know if I can clarify anything. E
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | essdee0 -
Purchased a high ranking domain and want to transfer my site to the new domain
I recently purchased a highly ranked domain. The link profile is very good and I don't want to lose to many links however I want to transfer my site to that domain. What is the best way of doing this without losing the current rank on search engines? Also how much does the transfer of registrar information impact my SEO?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ydop0 -
Sub domain versus separate domains, which is better for Search engine purposes?
We are pitching to a hotel client to build two new websites, a summer website and a winter website, two completely different looking websites. The client wants to automatically switch their domain name to point to one or the other, depending on the time of year. The customer does not want to use a landing page where you would choose which site to visit; they want the domain name to go directly to the relevant website. Our options: Set up two new domain names and optimise each website based on the holiday season and facilities offered at that time of year. Then change the exisiting domain name to point at the website that is in season. Or Use the existing domain name and setup two sub domains, switching the home page as necessary. We have been chewing this one over for a couple of days, the concern that we have with both options is loss of search visibility. The current website performs well in search engines, it has a home page rank of 4 and sub-pages ranking 2 and 3’s, when we point the domain at the summer site (the client only has a winter website at present) then we will lose all of the search engine benefits already gained. The new summer content will be significantly different to the winter content. We then work hard for six months optimising the summer site and switch back to the Winter site, the content will be wrong. Maybe because it's Friday afternoon we cannot see the light for the smoke of the cars leaving the car park for the weekend, or maybe there is no right or wrong approach. Is there another option? Are we not seeing the wood for the trees? Your comments highly welcome. Martin
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Bill-Duff0