Nov

Don’t be scared of Images!!

Anshu Garg on November 13th, 2008

Google has again become generous & reveal some secrets about the use of images & their optimization. I hear a lot of the concerns, questions, thoughts, etc about image optimization.

You might have read many articles on the same topic….It might not be new to you but I found it helpful so thought to share it with all of you.

Images are important component of a website and you will be happy to know that images can bring lots of traffic to your sites, but we have to optimize our images to get the desired results.

Here are image optimization tips from Googlers:

We should use Alt attribute to optimize them, this attribute allows us to specify alternative text for the image if it cannot be displayed for some reason. Alt text (alt tag) is basically a brief description of the image.

It is useful, if a user is viewing your site on a browser that doesn’t support images, or is using alternative technologies, such as a screen reader, the contents of the alt attribute provide information about the picture. Similarly, if you’re using an image as a link, the alt text for that image will be treated similarly to the anchor text of a text link. However, Google don’t recommend using too many images for links in your site’s navigation when text links could serve the same purpose. Also, image optimization makes it easier for image search projects like Google Image Search to better understand your images.

Always use descriptive file names & avoid using image.jpeg, picture1.jpeg etc. For example: if you are inserting image of IBM printer then use the file name ibm-printer.jpeg or ibm-printer.gif etc. Don’t write lengthy file names but try to make it accurate.

Store images in a directory of their own, instead of having image files spread out in numerous directories and subdirectories across your domain; consider consolidating your images into a single directory (e.g. yourdomain.com/images/). This simplifies the path to your images.

Also, use commonly supported file types. Most browsers support JPEG, GIF, PNG, and BMP image formats. It’s also a good idea to have the extension of your filename match with the
File type.

Also, don’t forget to optimize PDF. You can also use PDF adds-ons from Mozilla that enable you to complete the PDF-Object metadata, place links inside PDFs which did not previously have them.

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