Discussion 3: To Image-Optimize for SEO Mew 👑 How to Image Optimize Like a Pro Warning: the views and opinions expressed below are based on my own results. Remember to test, test, test. I see a lot of information floating around, and it's not accurate… Things you should not be doing Naming your images incorrectly Using WordPress Plugins to Optimize Images (This is Lazy) Over Optimizing and Sacrificing Quality When optimizing your images, you should be using the highest quality form available. Pre-cropped and pre-edited to prevent what is known as artifacts. Things you should be doing Naming your images with keywords in them Geo Tagging your images, if you know how (local service pages for main and rural areas) NOT USING PLUGINS (it causes more requests on your sites server and SLOWS it down!) Using Photoshops "Save For Web" abilities for JPEGS and using SVG's for logos and icons whenever possible. Using ALT Tags correctly. These are not for keyword stuffing. Use your keywords with natural text. [filtered from 23 💬🗨]
Thang 1. Who told you "Using WordPress Plugins to Optimize Images (This is Lazy)" it is work smarter and how do you optimize for Mobile and Tablet ? 2. There is also called as Lossless compression without loosing much quality just stripping metadata 3.NOT USING PLUGINS (it causes more requests on your sites server and SLOWS it down!) – Might slow down bit of Admin area but you can use Redis or Memcache to cache them but it will never slow down website. 4. another tips – lazy load your images this will speed up your website overall Thank you 👍2
Mew 👑✍️ Hey bud, 1. No one told me. If you run GTMetrix with an image plugin, you will see your requests go up and page speed go down. Optimizing without a plugin only makes page speed go down. This goes for all plugins. 2. Yes Lossless compression is possible but if you are taking an image from RAW or near RAW to JPEG you will always experience a loss in quality. 3. Again, the more plugins you add the more it slows down your website. If you do it manually you will never experience a loss, nor will you need to add Redis or Memcache. If you do want to cache the site, use the .htaccess file so that you don't need more plugins, with cache expiration headers. 🙂 4. If your website loading time is below 1.6 seconds per page, which is what we shoot for on all websites, lazy load isn't necessary. Good luck! Thang About first question 1. No one told me. If you run GTMetrix with an image plugin, you will see your requests go up and page speed go down. Optimizing without a plugin only makes page speed go down. This goes for all plugins. – Did you have Content Delivery Network (CDN) if not test your test in Nearest server location as possible so you will not face latency issue. if you use Image CDN and serve webp, resize everything then it will be slow because they are done with JS. 2. Yes Lossless compression is possible but if you are taking an image from RAW or near RAW to JPEG you will always experience a loss in quality. – Are you going to upload image in 4K or raw image with srcset attribute ? Quality will be lost but you wouldn't make any difference 3. Again, the more plugins you add the more it slows down your website. If you do it manually you will never experience a loss, nor will you need to add Redis or Memcache. If you do want to cache the site, use the .htaccess file so that you don't need more plugins, with cache expiration headers. 🙂 – Again, the more plugins you add the more it slows down your website : not really if it poor coded plugin then it will definitely otherwise nope – Redis and Page cache with WP rocket are different because one is Server side and other one is page cache respectively. .htaccess one is slow compare to CDN cache by the way 4. If your website loading time is below 1.6 seconds per page, which is what we shoot for on all websites, lazy load isn't necessary. — I have no idea why people so much worried about GTMetrix score and Fully load. 1.6s on which connection type – Native speed i guess then it would probably be 100 MB/s lazy load isn't necessary. – lazy load is necessary if you have more images on your website . and it can save tons of Bandwidth, Improve Time to first byte and First Contentful Paint (TTFB and FCP). 👍1 Mew 👑✍️ » Thang – 1. No need for a CDN unless you are pushing a lot of content across the country. There's many documents you can find via Google searches that show how CDN's can hurt your SEO. 2. Depends on the website right? If it's a video editors website, wedding photographers and so forth, absolutely. Start with the best quality and move down to the native size of the element. 3. All plugins slow down sites due to extra request headers. Whether it's by 0.3 seconds or 1 second, it doesn't matter. It will slow it down. These are facts. 4. Because SEO's know page speed helps with ranking…tremendously. If you have a <1.6 second load time on GTMetrix, you will probably also pull a good score on Google's lighthouse and in Googles algorithmic signals. Again, these are facts. Thanks for the comments! Thang 1. No need for a CDN unless you are pushing a lot of content across the country. There's many documents you can find via Google searches that show how CDN's can hurt your SEO. Yap CDN is not necessary if your traffic is coming from one region if it is global then using CDN can save your butt a lot like DDOS, Malware attack and so on 2. Depends on the website right? If it's a video editors website, wedding photographers and so forth, absolutely. Start with the best quality and move down to the native size of the element. – Yap it is true for Photography and other image dependent website for that might exclude them but if you don't want other to steal your images. Compression is better and you can create something like Pixabay they offer multiple images size for download 3. All plugins slow down sites due to extra request headers. Whether it's by 0.3 seconds or 1 second, it doesn't matter. It will slow it down. These are facts – I can't tell you about that because i don't have data Instead of Relying on GTMetrix, use PSI , webpagetest, Web.dev they are more accurate and reliable . About Ranking signal i care more about UX than score https://twitter.com/methode/status/1255224116648476675 FYI And by the way i do speed optimization for my website and other too Socially distant Gary Illyes on Twitter Mew 👑✍️ » Thang 1. I'm glad we agree. 2. I'm glad we agree. 3. Give it a test. I've tested this on over 100 sites to find the best process of building websites and what plugins we approve at my firm and which ones we don't, as a plugin slows slows it down by a certain amount. Sometimes it's 0.1 and sometimes it's 1. 🙂 👍2
Aaron What about using webp and srcset? 👍1
Mew 👑✍️ Our theme builder auto converts to WebP, which is nice. If you can do it, I don't see why not. It is Google's technical recommendation in 2020. Builder we use: YooTheme 👍1 Cory I run wprocket with imagify webp. Running expirary headers of a year. Its more handshakes but all async with year expiry cookie makes it very acceptable. Manual resized is good for some projects but if your working a project with 12,000 images it's not an option. 👍1 Mew 👑✍️ +1 for WPRocket Cory . Have used it in crunches and it worked well. I come from pure HTML days so I have an affinity for doing everything manual. 👍1 Cory » Mew 👑 totally feel you and on smaller projects I'll shave pixels for kb's all day. 👍1 Mew 👑✍️ » Cory – Truth my mans! I have an E-com site with about 7000 products. We use WpRocket on it haha. Just checked 👍1 Thang » Cory WebP is great and you have to deliver conditionally if not webp will not work on all browser for example safari browser https://caniuse.com/#search=webp. If you're using Wp rocket you can serve webp conditionally with <picture> tag Or use Image CDN like Cloudinary( Expensive), BunnyCDN (cheaper) or Cloudflare pro support webp extension ( pricey) srcset is great approach highly recommended. CANIUSE.COM Can I use… Support tables for HTML5, CSS3, etc Cory » Thang correct! It's so fast once you carve it out. Imagify integrates with wprocket and rocketcdn or cloudflare basic. It writes your tags for you. 👍1 Jaros WEBP does not show on ipads so you could be losing visitors who use these.
Nisha Should jpg2000 or webP format for image optimization
Thang WebP is an excellent choice but you have to deliver conditionally ( if browser support deliver if not deliver original one) There ways to deliver them – 1. By using <picture> tag 2. Deliver WebP on fly using CDN If you're using WordPress, you can use Shortpixel adaptive image, or Shortpixel free one ( you need to enable under advanced section ) or WebP express and bunch of them are there CDN – Cloudinary( Expensive) but impressive, BunnyCDN (cheaper) or Cloudflare pro support webp extension (pro plan) ( pricey) or Business plan Jaros Have you got friends who use ipads, ask them to view your page in webp and they will say there is no image. Thang Slauco Jaros You don't need to ask your friend to test webp on safari browser because there is an online tools called https://www.lambdatest.com/. As i told you have to deliver WebP conditionally otherwise Safari browser wouldn't load you images. LAMBDATEST.COM Free Cross Browser Testing Tool on Cloud | Selenium Automation Testing
This may satisfy you: To Optimize h1 h2 h3 Header Tags Discussion 2: Alt Text for Images in SEO Floros Hi… I want to ask what is happening to "alt text" to webp images in terms of SEO. Do you use webp images on websites? When a browser pick the webp image the alt text remains? <picture> <source srcset="img/awesomeWebPImage.webp" type="image/webp"> <source srcset="img/creakyOldJPEG.jpg" type="image/jpeg"> <img src="img/creakyOldJPEG.jpg" alt="Alt Text!"> </picture> [14 💬🗨]
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Kumar You don't have to worry much about the webp.as jpeg or png is the fall back version. That will help the search engines. 👍🏽1 Alex Yes, the alt text comes from the <img> tag in this case. Also the reason you’re doing this is for search engines to give you traffic, but I’d like to reframe it – it’s really about you giving users a better experience. And naturally search engines will reward you that… 1. You should use source sets to serve smaller files (WebP, SVG, etc) to all users with modern browsers and fall back to JPEG or PNG on older browsers. This will make the site faster for users – saving everyone bandwidth and improving rendering time by 30%, or more in some cases. This also goes for video where you can use WebM instead of MP4 or even GIF… but IMHO it’s better to host video on YouTube then host your own – only problem is YouTube doesn’t have an upload API – so not that feasible for user generated content sites. Totally feasible for small WordPress / Shopify / Medium etc publishers. This idea of using modern compression and falling back even goes for text files – HTML/CSS/JS etc – so make sure you’ve got brotli/gzip tuned on and these files are minimized… but this is handled automatically for most people reading this. 2. You can also use the <source>‘s media attribute to serve smaller files to mobile devices and larger files to users with 4K monitors. 3. Continue to use alt text to describe your image to users using accessibility browsers (visually disabled users, for example) – search engines also use this alt text for context about the image. You can test the alt text by telling your browser not to download images – alt text will show up in their place. 4. Use proper file names for the images so that if a user downloads it they aren’t stuck with a huge random string named file in their downloads folder. – Search engines also use this file name for some context as well. 5. Prefer using <img> tags over css background images, again for accessibility reasons. CSS images won’t print and don’t have alt text. 👍🏽1
Floros ✍️ y got me covered! now i am working on my website, i am doing some optimization with gtmetrix and page speed insights.. my website is already ranked 1st place on Google… now i am changing all png images to webp. thanx 👍🏽1 Alex » Floros , 1. good job and congratulations! 2. hmm your changing PNG or adding webp as an option? You won’t want to remove the PNGs cause some browsers can’t display WebP Floros ✍️ soory not changing .. adding webp to the options for the browser .. so if browser suports webp pick that or if doesnt suport webp then pick png. now i ll try my css files to add webp to body,backgroung imgages\. 🙂 👍🏽1 Alex Awesome. For body/background images you can often get away with more compression as well – since these aren’t the focus of the page, users will usually not notice the loss of quality in more highly compressed images 💟1 Jason » Alex Hi Alex, one question please, what would be the best alt text for an image: a) shoulderrehabideas.jpg b) shoulder-rehab-ideas.jpg I am soon to do this on a large scale and would like to employ best practice. Thanks in advance! Alex » Jason Those are file names. For the file name i would choose B, as that's how I would prefer to see the file in my downloads folder. For the alt text.. you have some more space to play (125 chars) — what is the image? For an image like this you might put "Shoulder Rehab Ideas – 6 exercises for shoulder flexation, extension, adduction, with and without resistance" and still have 25 chars left over [image] 👍🏽1 Alex For an image like this you might just put "Great Shoulder Rehab Exercises (banner)" You could add more detail "Great Shoulder Rehab Exercises (Banner with PT holding rubber band bar)" [image] 👍🏽1 Alex Remember the true purpose of the alt text is to inform users who are using a screen reader or a text-only browser like lynx… And Google rewards you for doing a good job. [image] 👍🏽1 Jason » Alex Thanks a lot! It would be a variety of the above. We have 140+ blogs i'll need to sift through. One last question if I may. We have just this AM published this blog: https://www.physio-network.com/blog/calf-strain-rehab/ It's pretty extensive, and I heard people advise using URL slugs like 'a guide to calf strains' to improve SEO. However our target audience is physios, and they may instead search for 'calf rehab protocol'. What would be the best choice here please? And does Google process queries more from URL or title? Thanks a lot. Alex Hi Jason. This is a more complicated question. How-to or top-ten listicals are great for consumer content, but for professional niche content i think it's important to understand exactly what they may be searching for and form your content to answer their queries. I do like the idea of calling it a guide since it’s so detailed. So then i'd ask how would a physio phrase "ultimate guide" in a professional way? "The Physio's Protocol Guide – Runners Calf Strains" maybe? I would use Google search console to find the queries that are already bringing you traffic and then build lists of keywords / queries off of that to test with. Additionally I would use a category URL structure (and move blog out of there… don't forget to 301 the content) to make your URLs appear more relevant. You might consider /rehab-protocols/diagnosing-and-treating-calf-strains-for-runners or /rehab-protocols/calf-strains-for-runners-diagnostics-classification-and-rehab In either case i would put a list of rehab-protocol pages at /rehab-protocols/ i like this second structure more cause it front-loads the specific keywords and puts more general keywords in the back of the slug, kind of like how i might search – i would first search for calf strains for runners, find a bunch of consumer content, and then add "diagnostics" or "classifications" to my search. You might also consider if runners is a sub category 👍🏽1 Jason » Alex thanks so much for this. I can see you consult, it’d be great to keep in touch. I’ll drop you a PM if you are interested 👍 Alex 🙂
Discussion 1: SEO for Art Gallery Ignacio Hey guys, I need some advice. I'm currently doing Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for a friend's Art Gallery in Europe. I'm struggling a bit to find useful keywords that they can rank for because none of the artists they have seem to bring up a lot of traffic volume on Google. I've looked at their competitors, and most of the traffic they receive is directly for their artist pages (artists who have a much larger following). What recommendations would you give to help improve this? I've already listed the obvious things like increasing their presence on Social and creating their Google My Business (GMB), but I'm unsure of what to do for an industry that is so based on artist name recognition. Any advice would be appreciated. 1 👍🏽 1 [filtered from 20 💬🗨]
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Karl One thing you could do is create or have them create a glossary or directory or set of articles of artists terms, movements, artists. My background degree is in fine arts and art history and I strongly believe that the art history component could be of great value to you in providing context and keywords for attracting audiences to this gallery or any others as that is actually what the gallery itself has to look for when they find curators or staff who run the gallery and engage visitors or enquirers with information in hopes to sell work. And during the pandemic they won't be able to get many crowds so they should definitely commission some writing and heavy photography content on any art or sculpture inventory they have with extensive pictures which can also be titled with SEO keywords in their file names and alt tags and anything else associated with the actual ability to advertise and sell artwork to moneyed bored people who are stuck indoors thus are totally addicted or casually inclined towards home-improvement, namely buying lots of cool artwork from this gallery, which ties directly into why they need you. Also interior designers are a parallel industry where wealthy homeowners engage said professionals to decorate their homes. And so there are certain keywords and phrases of value relative to the intersection of these particular industries and disciplines. Especially when you consider that Google really does like a well thought out and in-depth presentation of information, either within the context of search engine optimization or in website content quality overall. Such that any superior effort that you conduct which outclasses the other galleries in the area, you will start to notice an increase in search result rankings for your project. And example is a website that I did for a tour company in Thailand where I found Local writers who were able to create in-depth articles about nine of the most popular Buddhist temples (on separate pages and destinations selected for their high keyword traffic) that were visited in that area specifically due to the fact that most of the tourism in that part of Thailand are locals and they primarily visit temples as their form of tourism. We then got the in depth articles translated into English also. The combination of both the English and Thai version of their website, the in-depth material outperformed the other tour agencies big time, who basically were just using keywords related to destination, transport, hotels and food but had zero conceptual integrity regarding the tour sites that they were transporting people to, because they apparently could not be bothered to create deep quality content regarding them or their history. AdWords liked it too but we won't mention them much lol. As an artist and art historian, having taken the double major of those two separate disciplines paid off in many ways because I always had a context to create within. I feel like other artists were always stuck "guessing" at what to create, when all they had to do was look at the past few thousand years of human expression in this regard, and how could one not come up with an idea just being inspired by what came before or thinking outside the box of something entirely new. The point of all that is, if you attach Art History to this gallery's Fine Art content (even if unrelated to present or past works they've shown) it's my opinion that you would have the missing link you are seeking, or a path leading to it. Superior Relevant Content. 💟👍🏽4
Ignacio ✍️ » Karl That was beautifully explained and extremely thorough. Thank you for that! I'll definitely bring this up to my friend and do some research on some of the most interesting aspects of art history and start writing some articles on them 🤘🏼🙌🏼 💟1 Karl » Ignacio Thanks much! I even revised the text to include the gallery creating additional written and photography content of their inventory to sell to bored wealthy homeowners who due to lockdowns are currently a thriving home improvement industry, as a replacement for the gallery's usual primary money maker e.g. "events". Business 101, Adaptation. In our discipline, business and entrepreneurial skills can be quite valuable tools on offer. 💟1 Paul » Karl What an amazing useful comment! Karl » Paul Thank you fellow Udon Thani resident. I remember meeting you some years ago. 🙂 Paul » Karl Karl wow, only read your comment, not realised it's coming from you with those odd ears 🤪 Hope all is good with you and the girls! 🤭1 Karl » Paul Yep small world! 🙂 Paul » Karl Let's catch up and have a cup of coffee together…
Samir I'd say list them On Google business and upload photos of artists and post about them and consistently post using Google posts . That should help boost their rankings imo and add their keywords in the posts . Talk about viewing dates, sale of their art work. Rhen Blogging for branding would be the play I'd say. Example: how to crosshatch like a pro, pastel painting for beginners, best color matching techniques, etc. Nair Connect with all the artists and ask them for incoming links from their websites… Make a section or some pillar pages like a showcase page for each artist… They won't mind promoting that page for free…
