Should I reduce the size of images on my website?

One of the key aspects of having an efficient, fast loading and search engine friendly website, is the page load speed. This should not be looked at as simply part of your website performance analysis , but part of your overall search engine optimisation plan.

One of the first things to consider when looking at both your website performance and your optimising plan is the images you use. There is always a temptation to take pictures from a state of the art digital camera, download the images and post straight onto your website.

We at James Blake Internet believe that any images should be reduced in size before you upload it. One of the questions we often get asked is everyone going on my site has broadband, so the speed will not be an issue.

Unfortunately that although this might be true if you have a gallery of 20 images, each of 3mb, that page has to load and it will take time and bandwidth.

Most people are very protective of their images and so are reluctant to reduce the size as feel that it will affect the quality of the image. This is especially true if the image is personal to them on highlighting their key business service.

The ideal way to reduce the image size is with a professional image editor such as Photoshop which will help prevent the reduction in quality. There is also free software on the web to help help your image sizes down and worth a search on Google to find them.

There is no easy way to achieving an efficient search engine friendly website, but taking little steps like this will definitely help your website.