Learn how to optimize images for SEO in this short video interview with Kyle. It’s understandable to want impactful images on your site, but having too many heavy images on your website can slow it down.
1. Keep images to a minimum, avoiding unnecessary slideshows on homepages.
2. Resize and crop images appropriately to fit the space they occupy.
3. Compress images using tools like compressedjpeg.com to reduce file size without sacrificing quality.
4. Aim for a maximum image size of around 200kb for larger images and keep the total image size on a page under 2MB.
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Video Transcription
0:04
all right so how to optimize images for
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SEO um obviously um no images um but no
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for real
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um heavy uh images with a lot websites
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with a lot of images tend to to display
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slower because there’s a lot of
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resources that need to be loaded um
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however it’s understandable that you
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might want to have a lot of images on
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your website
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so um there are a few things I like to
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keep in mind is obviously the fewer the
0:36
better um you know not overdoing a site
0:40
with images just because so like I I
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don’t like to put like slideshows on
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homepages for that reason it’s just a
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bunch of extra images that aren’t
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necessarily needed up front um you know
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Galleries and whatnot can be on
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different pages when people have a more
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specific intent to see that information
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instead of having it pushed in front of
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them without that intent
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um however when we do have images
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there’s a few things I like to keep in
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mind and one is like when you have like
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a large image you want to make sure that
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it’s not any larger than it needs to be
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so for example um most websites have a
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what I call a hero section that’s the
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section right below the the header up
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here it’s usually right below it and
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that’s where the main call to action is
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your value proposition in large letters
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and a lot of times they’ll have a a
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really large background image um that is
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a background image um and if you’re a
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photographer and you need Clarity and
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crisp crispness of that image then I
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understand if you need to make that
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image uh larger to maintain that
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Integrity but most other businesses it
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is a um it’s a background image um you
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know obviously we don’t want a ton of um
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graininess or artifacting or blurriness
2:02
so we do need to compress it but the
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first thing is actually making sure that
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we resize it and crop it to the
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appropriate Dimensions that fit the
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space so you don’t need the to have a
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portrait style image loaded on your
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website at at full camera um Quality for
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a horizontal background you want to
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actually crop down the image so that the
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aspect ratio matches roughly where it’s
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going and then you want it to re be
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resized down to the largest it needs to
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be um you know keeping in mind that
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there are people that have 30-in
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widescreen monitors and if they were to
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you know stretch your website out to 30
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inches most every image is going to look
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like crap so we want to think about
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what’s reasonable um and so I I like to
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think you know I’m on a 15-inch MacBook
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Pro um there I also run off a couple of
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20 24inch monitors um there are going to
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be I rarely go full screen on my on my
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monitors and I think that’s pretty
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common um so I like to keep some of my
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large images capped out around 1400 1600
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pixels wide as the largest um and once
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they have them cropped down then you to
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the larger size they need to be then
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running them through a tool like um
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compressed jpeg or compressed pg.com
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those are some great websites to you can
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upload an image directly to the website
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and then play with a little bit of the
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compression um I’ve been able to take
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you know images that were five or 600
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kilobytes and get them cut down to 200
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kilobytes um which is a significant
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savings and so uh generally speaking
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that’s my goal is if I can get the
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largest image on the site around 200k um
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and everything else smaller than that
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and I I feel like I’ve
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I’ve uh been pretty successful and then
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obviously we talked early on I mentioned
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like the fewer images the better so when
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I’m looking at a single page that’s not
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like a gallery portfolio kind of page I
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still try and keep the total size of all
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my images combined like less than two
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megabytes um because that you know most
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of us do have fast internet uh and so a
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lot of page loading time isn’t
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necessarily a huge Factor anymore
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but when it is a
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factor that matter it tends to matter a
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lot more and so I found that most things
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under two Megs or less you can still
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load pretty pretty
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quickly