Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Sitespeed: Do images require width and height attributes?
-
Currently working on a sitespeed issue, and was wondering if not having width and height for images actually do cause a problem. We simply Photoshop the resolution we require for the image and add it to the page as is. I though this would actually speed it up, but I am getting from www.gtmetrix.com that we should have them.
What's your experience? Thanks!
-
Just came across a terrific resource that reminded me you'd asked about further reading, Ben.
Check out BrowserDiet for a huge collection of resources about tuning front-end performance of websites. (You'll see #6 talks about exactly your original question)
I can also recommend reading Steve Souder's two books - High Performance Websites and Even Faster Websites - both from O'Reilly. Souders is pretty much the leading specialist in this area. He's the creator of YSlow, one of the primary tools for measuring/analyzing site speed, and is now Head Performance Engineer at Google. His website is SteveSouders.com
That'll be more than enough to get you started. Lemme know if you're still hungry for more!
Paul
P.S. The report details from tests at webpagetest.org can also teach you a huge amount, and there's a forum there run by Patrick Meenan (who built webpagetest) which is just excellent. Patrick frequently answers questions personally.
-
you're welcome, hope your site will be speeding up a lot!!!
-
Yes, thank you. We size them all to what we want on the site so we are good there. Just got done doing it, and it did make a difference. Thanks guys!
-
as Paul correctly said, if your purpose is to improve the page speed just be sure that you're not resizing the images with css/html but that you're uploading the images in that dimensions.
An image of 10241024 resized to 100100 still weights as an 1024 image so my recommendation is to resize all those images to the desired dimensions, moreover if you can use an external cdn you'll save bandwith and have those images loading outside your website. That will help reducing the loadtime of the page.
-
Perfect-O! I completely get it now. Thanks Paul. You da man!
I thought it would be faster as in my mind it was more to read, but now that I understand the loading, I get it. Guess I need to start researching how a website loads. Have any resources I can read, to up my experience with this?
I've been in development but on an application side not website side.
-
The main reason PageSpeed and YSlow recommend including width and height for images is as much the perception of page speed as the actual load time, Ben.
When you include the image dimensions, the browser can draw out the "containers" that will hold the images, reserving the space for them while they download. The browser can then go on the paint the rest of the pages CSS and objects around those "containers" without having to go back and redraw the whole page once the images have downloaded and their sizes are then known.
This gives the user the illusion of a much faster, cleaner page load, and hence the impression of a faster website.
Does that make sense?
Paul
[Edited to add: You should still keep doing what you're doing to produce "size-as" images for your pages. You don't want to be resizing images with the html dimensions, just reporting in html the actual size of the image]
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Google Image Search - Is there a way to influence the related icons at the top of the image search results?
Google recently added related icons at the top of the image search results page. Some of the icons may be unrelated to the search. Are there any best practices to influence what is positioned in the related image icons section? Thank you.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JaredBroussard1 -
Redirect old image that has backlinks
Hi Moz Community! I'm doing an audit of a website and did a backlink analysis. In the backlink analysis, there is an image that has 66 backlinks but the image doesn't exist on the website anymore (it was on a website that was created in 2011 - 2 web launches ago). I don't believe a 301 redirect will work for an image that doesn't exist anymore. How would I redirect the image URL (it's WordPress so we have a specific URL that other websites are linking to but get 404 errors) without going to each individual website and requesting they change the URL link? Any advice or recommendations would be great. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BradChandler1 -
Probably basic, but how to use image Title and Alt Text - and confusing advice from Moz!
I've been doing SEO on my business's site for years and have got good results. I've always used image Titles and Alt Text text. Our blog posts are image-intensive, often with 100-200 pictures (not surprising since we're photographers). For any given blog post, I've tended to have a uniform image Title for each image and then a more specialised Alt Text tag giving a description. A typical image on one of our blog posts would be like this: Image filename: wedding-photography-at-so-and-so-venue-001.jpg .... 002, 003 etc Image Title Attribute: Wedding Photography at So-And-So-Venue by Our-Company-Name - this would be the same for every image in the blog post. Alternative Text: Bride and groom exchanging vows during wedding ceremony at so-and-so-venue - this would be tailed for each image. So my question is - is this right? The Moz help page for image SEO is actually incorrect in one aspect: https://a-moz.groupbuyseo.org/ugc/10-tips-for-optimizing-your-images-for-search "Alt text (short for “alternative text”) is used to highlight the identity of an image when you hover over it with your mouse cursor. It also shows as text to all users when there are problems rendering the image." This is not the case. Hovering over the image in Firefox, Chrome, Edge and Opera ALL display the Image Title, NOT Alt Text. Thoughts?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | robandsarahgillespie0 -
Google doesn't index image slideshow
Hi, My articles are indexed and images (full size) via a meta in the body also. But, the images in the slideshow are not indexed, have you any idea? A problem with the JS Example : http://www.parismatch.com/People/Television/Sport-a-la-tele-les-femmes-a-l-abordage-962989 Thank you in advance Julien
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Julien.Ferras0 -
Creative Commons Images Good for SEO?
I've been looking at large image packages through iStock, Getty, Fotolia and 123RF, but before spending a bunch of money, I wanted to get some of your feedback on Creative Commons images. Should be worried that something found on Google Images > Search Tools > Usage Rights section can be used without issue or legal threats from the big image companies so long as they are appropriately referenced? AND will using these types of images and linking to the sources have any affect on SEO efforts or make the blog/website look spammy in Google's eyes because we need to link to the source? How are you using Creative Commons images and is there anything I should be aware of in the process of searching, saving, using, referencing, etc? Patrick
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WhiteboardCreations0 -
Best way to noindex an image?
Hi all, A client wanted a few pages noindexed, which was no problem using the meta robots noindex tag. However they now want associated images removed, some of which still appear on pages that they still want indexed. I added the images to their robots.txt file a few weeks ago (probably over a month ago actually) but they're all still showing when you do an image search. What's the best way to noindex them for good, and how do I go about implementing it? Many thanks, Steve
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | steviephil0 -
Why is Google Displaying this image in the search results?
Hi i'm looking at advice on how to remove or change a particular image Google is displaying in the search results. I have attached a screenshot. From the first look of it, i assumed the image would be related and be on the dealers Google+ Local Page: https://plus.google.com/118099386834104087122/about?hl=en But there are no photos. The image seems to be coming from the website. Is there a way to stop Google from displaying this image or making them display a totally different image. Thanks, Chris XzfsnUy.png
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Mattcarter080 -
Hosting images on multiple domains
I'm taking the following from http://developer.yahoo.com/performance/rules.html "Splitting components allows you to maximize parallel downloads. Make sure you're using not more than 2-4 domains because of the DNS lookup penalty. For example, you can host your HTML and dynamic content on www.example.org and split static components between static1.example.org and static2.example.org" What I want to do is load page images (it's an eCommerce site) from multiple sub domains to reduce load times. I'm assuming that this is perfectly OK to do - I cannot think of any reason that this wouldn't be a good tactic to go with. Does anyone know of (or can think of) a reason why taking this approach could be in any way detrimental. Cheers mozzers.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | eventurerob0