CSS background images weight impact
-
Hi,
do you think that the use of a single 1.8Mb background image sitewide could have a big negative impact and make a website disappear from SERPS?thank you
-
Hi Gianni,
There are a ton of reasons why your website might have slipped down the SERPs or dropped rankings. It's almost certainly not because of your image.
If you want, you can PM me your URL and I'll have a look.
Nick
-
Hello,
I think the heavy wheight background image has been wrongly pubilshed without the proper jpg compression during last months... (maybe a webdesigner distraction).Anyway now the website is disappeared from SERPS,
I'm trying to spot the possible reason of this penalization, currently the homepage ranks "A" with Seomoz on page optimization tool for the primary keyword, and it's domain metrics are equals or superior to many competitors that rank in first page for the same keyword.
With this heavy wheight background image the overall wheight of the internal pages is about 2.8 Mb (html/css + scripts + inline images + css background images ), I think this is a really uncommon and high value.
If Google considers a page as "loaded" when all of its assets were actually downloaded from the server and not when the event "load" fires on the browser I think it could be a very negative factor.
Thank you all for your replies
(and sorry for my english) -
That is a pretty large image file, I do not know how it would impact the SERPS.
If you are using photoshop and saving the background image as a Jpg, one thing I always try to do is lower the quality when saving for web to around 30-40 for really large images (can notice a difference but not too bad) or lower the quality to 51 if you want the image to remain pretty much the same.
Another thing that I like to do is use Smush.it (http://www.smushit.com/ysmush.it/) which is a free tool from Yahoo that will save you a little on filesize without changing the appearance of the image.
Hope this helps!
-
1.8mb is HUGE, what on earth is in there? I have a full background complex image for one of my websites - it's 90kb. Even the biggest CSS sprite image I have is just 30kb that includes most of my site template.
I recommend that you revisit this and use a different image format if not jpg/png/gif - for example never use tif or BMP online.
A background this size will really look poor to your first time visitors - this is exactly why Google want to start using speed as a ranking factor.
-
Just to add - try and compress the image as much as you can.
I'd be more worried about waiting for it to load and it having a knock on effect on your user experience.
DD
-
Hi Gianni,
of course the huge image won't make the website disappear from the serps - if you define "disappear" that the website is banned from the index.
I suppose you know that speed / loading time already matters, but it is just one of many ranking factors and Matt Cutts said that very rare pages are concerned. But imagine that there is a website with exactely the same condition as yours then the one with less loading time will be "better" than yours.
Even though the image is in the css defined it is not the best idea. Did you really compress the image yet?
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
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
-
SEO Implications of using Images for Article Titles
Hi guys! New to Moz Pro. I just recently completed an online course with Moz... I have a client who is writing some new content for their site, and we are approaching it with SEO in mind. I was wondering about using an image with text on it as the article title, instead of an actual "text on the page" title. Wondering if that's going to "cost" us anything, SEO wise. I guess we could use alt-text/title/description fields to make sure the keywords are crawlable for our article title but do they have less "weight" than a standard title? How does that work? Hope my question makes sense. Article header attached mB0PXsA.jpg
On-Page Optimization | | JakeWarren1 -
Can I put the company name in the image alt text instead of just the service type im trying to rank for?
Hello, if I am trying to rank for a service type and the exact phrase is in the companies name, can I put the company name in the image alt text instead of just the service type? Seizing the opportunity to get another mention of the businesses name...two birds with the one stone if you will... For example, "lawn cutting" being the service type but the company's name is Paul's lawn cutting. Could i put Pauls Lawn Cutting in the image alt text, or just stick to lawn cutting? Thanks in advance
On-Page Optimization | | Gavinn0 -
How does the footer links impact the the pages SEO quality?
Hi, i want to ask a question. Does this kind of internal links will affect the SEO post quality? Please open the attachment (image) KskOg3U
On-Page Optimization | | joshuaong0 -
What tools or tactics do you use to identify which ranking factors Google is weighting for your industry or keyword?
Google ranking factors are increasingly more complex and less universal. Google is emphasizing different ranking factors for different scenarios. What tools are available that can help identify which ranking factors Google may be weighting for a given query or industry? For example, are there any tools that provide correlative analysis of Google's rankings for a given keyword?
On-Page Optimization | | AdamThompson0 -
Unused CSS Tool Recomendations
Hey moz, Im currently converting my site to mobile as its an older template based on tables it will make a lot of CSS redundant. I cant delete as i go incase a page uses it im unaware of so need to clean it up when its done. Is there a tool that crawls my entire website and highlights the unused CSS in the files? Ive found a few paying tools that claim to do so but am reluctant to just spend money on something without a recommendation. Cheers!
On-Page Optimization | | ATP1 -
Numerous duplicate destination URLs from within one menu - potential impact for on-page SEO?
Hello all What is your evaluation in regards to a number of links (different anchors) targeting the same destination URL from within one and the same menu (on the same website)? Keeping it brief: Think of a top menu drop down entry, that needs to feature the alphabet (each letter has it's own sub-entries). However, the actual letter itself is not represented by a page (it has no URL either). So far so good. However, when testing the menu on a mobile device, the letter entries are still treated, as if they were non-existent pages - thus throwing a 404 when clicked. In order to avoid people getting a 404 when clicking on any letter, it would be ideal, if they were directed to any main page (the same destination URL though). However, that would mean 26 times the same destination URL from within that menu. Is this approach potentially bad for SEO, hence there would be numerous duplicate destination URLs in place? Please mind, I am not inquiring for help on how to arrange the actual menu. I am concerned about the impact, identical destination URLs could have on the on-page SEO. Many thanks in advance for your help and input!
On-Page Optimization | | Hermski0 -
Does Google give weight or importance to scholarly articles such as those found in pubmed?
Does Google give weight or importance to scholarly articles such as those found in pubmed? www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed Do you think it matters to Google if you format and word your contents so that they look like research articles?
On-Page Optimization | | monchconch0 -
How much SEO value does a fashion site get from bolting text onto the bottom of home page? Does the value compensate for cluttering up a page focused on an iconic image?
Getting ready to launch a completely redesigned site for a fashion designer. Since it is a fashion site, visitors do not need text to describe what the site is about., We are weighing three options: 1) clean design with no text (just images and navigational links), 2) bolting on a couple of sentences of text at the bottom of the page to signal keyword terms to the search engines, 3) following the lead of the top ranking site in the category and adding lots of text to the bottom of the page. Do the SEO benefits justify cluttering up the design by bolting text onto the bottom of the home page, and if so, how many characters of text seem to be the minimum to be effective?
On-Page Optimization | | RandyP0