Image Optimization Reminders

Image optimization is not that difficult yet many fail to implement common best practices for optimizing the images on their web properties. As the engines continue to improve image results, simply uploading an image will not get you listed in image search results or in the main results.

Places where image search results appear, and can be indexable into general search engines' contextual results, include:

1. Major search engines - either within contextual search results or vertical image search (Google, Yahoo, ASK, Windows Live Search)
2. Photo sharing sites (Flickr, Webshots)
3. Social image sharing sites (MySpace, Facebook)

Image Size

The following guidelines should be considered when optimizing the images on your site.

* Limit the number of images to a reasonable number that you have on site pages. Having a large number of images on your pages can reduce page and site load time.
* Combine, refine, and optimize your graphics.
* Replace graphic rollovers with CSS rollovers to speed display and minimize HTTP requests.
* As a general rule of thumb, try to keep your total size of images per page to less than 30K (30,000 bytes)

By Geethalakshmi, On - 2009-12-30

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