SEO And Displaying Your Images To Effect
One of the most talked about issues of 2008 was that of the use of images and video as part of your content. For the most part, the consensus has been to use images freely on your pages; the search engines love them and they help to break the page up a little for your visitors. I agree with the later, however the former can be a trap for the unwary.
You should know all about the tags associated with images. The ALT tag is the most important although it doesn’t hurt to include a title tag as well. That’s all fairly elementary these days – if you’re unsure then read our post on “SEO – Get Your Image Tags Right“.
What most people don’t fully understand at present is the effect the visitor has on your search engine rankings. We have spoken before about bounce rates and how they may effect your rankings and we have covered some of the issues that cause a high bounce rate. The one are that hasn’t been covered so far is the effect that images have on your bounce rate.
You may wonder, if images are good for your content, how they can affect your bounce rate and your rankings. Remember it is all in the eyes of the beholder – in this case the visitor. Images are, generally speaking, a factor that can make a visitor a little stickier – if they get to see the image. Therein lies the key – does your visitor get to see the image?
If everything is well with the images location, and you have linked correctly then the only thing that will prevent the visitor seeing the image is the pages general load speed. Images come in all shapes and sizes, different colour depths and different file types. Don’t make the mistake of accepting the image as is and inserting into your pages. Some images can be horrendously slow to low. Have three or four on a page and you could go and watch the football and still be waiting for the page to finish.
Image size is important. The smaller the image, the faster it will load. Image file types also have an effect on load times. JPG images are generally slower to load. They are however the best file type when it comes to quality for complex images such as photographs. For the simpler images like logos, then GIFs are often the fastest to load. Out of the major image types, PNG are by far the fastest.
Using the right file format together with the right image sizes can improve the load time quite significantly. This can help to reduce the bounce rate for your pages and, overtime, increase the pages rankings within the search engines.
The next time you decide to include images, ask yourself whether or not is has the best file type and is the right size to that it helps with your SEO activities.
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