Image Size for SEO
-
Hi there I have a website which has some png images on pages, around 300kb - is this too much?
How many kbs a page, to what extent do you know does Google care about page load speed? is every kb important, is there a limit?
Any advice much appreciated.
-
Yahoo's Smushit.it is a tool that can do some lossless compression on your images and may be of use. If you use Wordpress, there's also a smushit plugin that will compress your images on upload.
Page load speed does have an impact both for users and search engines. It's certainly something to consider.
-
Load time is absolutely a consideration in rankings, go into you google webmaster tools account and you can see your site performance and how your load time compares to other sites on the web. Images are just one aspect of why your page load times could be considered slow but it is a factor. Get the yslow extension for firefox and that will give you some suggestions about what other changes you can make on the site to reduce load times.
I would play around with optimizing your images in photoshop and see what percentage decrease you can get away with without noticing a difference. If all of your images are roughly the same quality you can do a batch in photoshop, which is basically making an action first, for example saying shrink all images by 15% and then batch all of the images in the image folder and photoshop will shrink them all in one shot.
-
Agree with Wayne, but for reference I'll have a large, good quality image at around 70kb and a standard image at around 20 - 30kb. If I can get it in for less without it looking terrible I will.
If you have photoshop it shouldn't be much of a problem playing with the save for web setting and seeing how much you can trim off. 60% is a good standard for jpg files.
-
Hi Paul,
I'm not 100% on the actual "size" of the image having any negative effects. In my experience it's directly related to how well the image is optimized. Yes, load time ABSOLUTLEY has an effect on rankings, and while some will say that it's a small effect, I contend that it's an important consideration.
While Google may not give it primary consideration in their algorithm, it can drive your users away as they wait for a page to load. People are going to wait a mere second or two before they back out of a page that is not loading. So bounce rate is the factor you need to weigh with regard to image size.
Other tips to optimize your image properly include, always add height and width to the image for faster loading, always add an Alt-attribute to the IMG-tag, always add a Title-attribute to the IMG-tag, etc.
Best of luck,
W
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
-
Image Size in Alt Text
Hi, On our ecommerce site, when we load an image for an item, it automatically loads different sizes for that image. (i.e. High Res, Large, Small, Thumbnail, etc). We have an option to add the size to the alt text of the image (in addition to the description of the picture... so for example "Blue casual shirt High Res"... is this necessary? One of our clients requested this and I am not sure I see the point of having the image size in the alt text unless it helps the visually impaired in some way?
Technical SEO | | AliMac260 -
Google Blogger Intergration, any SEO benefit?
I want to use google blogger for my website blog, we want to intergrate it into the existing website (which is why wordpress isn't ideal as there is no php) if the domain was www.blog.mysite.com will www.mysite.com still recieve the seo bonuses of having a blog? or does it have to be www.mysite.com/blog otherwise i have little use for a blog, what i also want to ask is how does it intergrate? i don't want the blog on my site to be like a 'window' into the google blog site as that defeats the purpose, i need the content to actually be on my site to ensure the seo benefits. Thanks Dan
Technical SEO | | DanBrayfield0 -
Would this harm my SEO?
Hello, I own a shop, and I want to add the most searched keywords to my products page , example : Nike Aero , add this keywords to the product page : Nike Aero buy Where to buy Nike aero ect , I with the most searched keywords Would it harm my SEO? Would it be good? Thank you!
Technical SEO | | coolninja0 -
International Seo - Canada
Our organization is currently only operating in the USA but will soon be entering the Canadian market. We did a lot of research and decided that for our needs it would be best to use a subfolder for Canada. Initially we will be targeting the english speaking community but eventually we will want to expand to the french speaking Canadians as well. The question is - is there a preferred version in setting up the subfolders: www.website.org/ca/ -- default will be english www.website.org/ca/fr/ - french www.website.org/en-ca/ - english www.website.org/fr-ca/ - french www.website.org/ca/en/ -english www.website.org/ca/fr/ - french Thanks
Technical SEO | | Morris770 -
Duplicate content - font size and themes
Hi, How do we sort duplicate content issues with: http://www.ourwebsite.co.uk/ being the same as http://www.ourwebsite.co.uk/StyleType=SmallFont&StyleClass=FontSize or http://www.ourwebsite.co.uk/?StyleType=LargeFont&StyleClass=FontSize and http://www.ourwebsite.co.uk/legal_notices.aspx being the same as http://www.ourwebsite.co.uk/legal_notices.aspx?theme=default
Technical SEO | | Houses0 -
Google Places for Local SEO
I am a webmaster at a company with over 50 clients, and I have to list the businesses of our clients in Google Places. Most of our clients are architecture agencies and construction companies, so they are unfamiliar with these things, and that's why I have to list their businesses on Google Places. It would be easier for me to manage all the places for these different businesses if I create the places with one gmail account. Can I use one gmail account to list the businesses for all our clients?
Technical SEO | | Arianittt2 -
SEO On-Page Planning - Wire Framing
This is open to discussion. I'm interested in getting help/opinions from others on how they plan their next SEO Project. What methods do you use for laying out On-Page Keyword targeting? Do you use any specific wire framing tools for laying out a large website? With larger websites, this stage is very important so I'd find it very useful to get help in this area. If you know of any useful threads covering this area, share them here.
Technical SEO | | Nick-SEOSpark0 -
Iframes & SEO
I've got a client that wants a site with all content in iFrames. They saw another site they liked & asked if we could do it. Of course we can technically. How big a negative hit would they take with SEO? Is there anything we can do to mitigate it, such as redirects, etc? Thanks for the help!
Technical SEO | | wcksmith0