Ecommerce question - Should I use a CDN for my images. ?
-
Hi ,
We are currently in the process of re-developing out commerce website and I wondering should we use a CDN (content delivery nertwork) for our product images.
My category pages are currently showing approx 21 product images per page and the page speed is okay but can be better but the page size is rather large ... anything between 600kb - 1 Meg. We do optimise the images already in photoshop. We also do things like minify etc to get the pages to load as fast as possible but I think the only thing left is using a CDN but I have heard mixed reports about using this.?
We are also doing a mobile responsive version of the site to but I know that speed will be king with google and how it reflects on rankings.
Whilst I can see a CDN will improve image page load speed etc, I guess there a negative SEO impact as well as images will be stored in the cloud ?.. as opposed on to on my site/database.
Does anyone know how best to implement a CDN without impacting on SEO or know of any good SEO /implementation articles on this ?... Maybe do Ieave some images on my category pages so I can still do the alt image tags etc/ and have the remaining images on the CDN.?
Many Thanks
Sarah
-
For a personal project, I implemented a CDN to my site (MaxCDN). The CDN now delivers every image via a subdomain and the CDN has sped my site's load speed.
My goal from the start was speed, and in fact I got obsessed with load speed as I wanted to score over 90 in Google's PageSpeed and GTMetrix. There was another element at play and it was the most crucial one - the customer. I'm impatient when it comes to web browsing and I know I'm not alone. We know what we want when we click links, and we expect it to load fast. I am my own customer so speed was important.
I name my image files with SEO in mind, using dashes, key phrases relavant to the image and alt tags, but I also know images aren't the sole driver for link backs and leads. Your site is an ecommerce site, if you have up to 21 images per page, speed is the importance here.
- Your customers are more likely to link/share to your product page not images
- The goal for you is an ecommerce conversion. Users who share your images might fall into 2 groups, users who share images for the aesthetic value and users who share the image for a purchase. Those sharing for purchase will more likely share the page URL and that's the audience you want.
- This ties into how users will find your images, search engines will offer the ability to see the image (aesthetic audience) and visit the page (potential purchaser). Getting the right alt tag, image file name will help rank your image higher in the search result for images
- Hosting your images in a subdomain should be fine as your site is an ecommerce one, it isn't deviantArt where they want every link to the core domain
- You already are using the correct file names and alt tags. Images are just one element of an optimisation strategy.
To conclude, I would put yourself in your customer's shoes and ask, what do I want when I visit your ecommerce site. Will a slow site frustrate/make you leave? Will speed change your experience with the site and thus make you browse more? How are you showing such large images? Is the user experience fluid?
-
Sarah -
I think it's a balancing act. I agree that having images in proper directories with good image names will help with SEO for a site. It's something that most web developers overlook, because it's easy to name an image 'logo.jpg' instead of 'company-name-city-state.jpg' and put the image in a /category/ directory that matches a description of what the company does.
A CDN will often use a subdomain (i.e. cdn.domain.com) for hosting your images; this maps directly to a CDN directory.
The advantage of using a CDN on a subdomain is that you'll get the SEO value of having the images on the same domain, but it's not the best practice (search on why to use blog.domain.com vs. domain.com/blog).
That said, it's a big balancing act. And my guess is that page load time and increasing that dramatically (especially for mobile users on a slower mobile network) may do a lot more to increase your relevance and customer engagement than what you would lose from the overall SEO for the site.
So, I think your idea to leave some images (i.e. a product image or two) on the main site is fine to test. Use the CDN for your logo, images associated with the overall template / layout of the site, and perhaps even your CSS, too.
I'd measure the site load speed increase before and after, and then see if your conversion rate increases during the same time and/or your bounce rate decreases.
Hope this helps!
-- Jeff -
I've used Amazon CloudFront for years and never had any SEO issues. Google indexes our images just fine.Consider that most of Google's most popular sites (i.e. news sites) all use a CDN to serve images.
Google associates images based on the content you write, not on where the image is hosted.
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
-
Minimum amount of content for Ecommerce pages?
Hi Guys, Currently optimizing my e-commerce store which currently has around 100 words of content on average for each category page. Based on this study by Backlinko the more content the better: http://backlinko.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/02_Content-Total-Word-Count_line.png Would you say this is true for e-commerce pages, for example, a page like this: http://www.theiconic.com.au/yoga-pants/ What benefits would you receive with adding more content? Is it basically more content, leads to more potential long-tail opportunity and more organic traffic? Assuming the content is solid and not built just for SEO reasons. Cheers.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seowork2140 -
How to target slight variations in ecommerce store
Hi friends, I'm trying to target a variety of keywords for an e-commerce/woocommerce store. These keywords have slight differences, and I have a writer to come up with a paragraph or two of unique content for each SEO landing page. I plan on making them with WordPress pages, and linking them with in the content to other related blog posts and product categories. Would it be best to make individual landing pages for terms that vary like: mens wallets under $100 mens wallets under $50 mens wallets under $25 mens leather wallets qaulity mens wallets affordable mens wallets buy mens wallets online shop mens wallets online Should these each be individual pages? How should I link these to the main navigation? or Should I interlink them elsewhere?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JustinMurray0 -
Content Audit Questions
Hi Mozzers Having worked on my companies site for a couple of months now correcting many issues, im now ready to begin looking at a content review, many areas of the site contain duplicate content, the main causes being 1. Category Page Duplications
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ATP
e.g.
Widget Page Contains ("Blue Widget Extract")
Widget Page Contains ("Red Widget Extract")
Blue Widget Page Contains ("Same Blue Widget Extract")
Red Widget Page Contains ("Same Red Widget Extract") 2. Product Descriptions
Item 1 (Identical to item 2 with the exception of a few words and technical specs)
Item 2 Causing almost all the content on the site to get devalued. Whilst i've cleared all moz errors and warnings im certain this is causing devaluation of most of the website. I was hoping you could answer these questions so I know what to expect once i have made the changes. Will the pages that had duplicate content recover once they possess unique content or should i expect a hard and slow climb back? The website has never receive any warnings from Google, does this mean recovery for penalties like duplicate content will be quicker Several pages rank on page 1 for fairly competitive keywords despite having duplicate content and keyword spammy content. What are the chances of shooting myself in the foot by editing this content? I know I will have to wait for google to crawl the pages before i see any reflection in the changes, but how long after google has crawled the page should I get a realistic idea of how positive the changes were? As always, thanks for you time!0 -
301 or Canonical - Ecommerce Site Question
We are making a change to our Navigation and this includes having to change the URL structure of a few pages of our site. Due to issues with the CMS (that are out of my control) we are unable to keep the current URL structure of two of our highest ranking pages. Our site is an E-commerce Site The Structure is changing from..... www.domain.com/page/highrankingpage <----OLD PAGE RANKED WELL to www.domain.com/category/highrankingpage <----NEW PAGE Generally I would have 301 'd this page but I found out that our Tech team added a Canonical to this page instead....(showing the high ranking page to the Search Engines) and on our site the visitors are able to browse the website getting the new page. BOTH PAGES ARE BASICALLY IDENTICAL (Same Content) http://searchenginewatch.com/sew/how-to/2288690/how-and-when-to-use-301-redirects-vs-canonical# Thoughts?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CMcMullen0 -
How to See Image Metadata?
We sell 1000s of audiobooks and get our cover images and descriptions from the publisher’s sites. When I download a cover image such as this one (http://www.audiobooksonline.com/media/Alex-Cross-Run-James-Patterson.jpg)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lbohen
I always rename and re-size it before installing at our Web store. Would this process result in any publisher’s metadata in the image we use at our Web store and/or anything else Google would not like?
Is there an online utility that would allow me to see metadata in our images?0 -
Question on starting again after being penalised for bad links
Hi, in a scenario where you have been heavily penalised for bad links but the quality of your site is good, If you put the exact same version of your penalised site on a new domain (with no redirects), would Google recognise it and penalise it again, or would that give it a completely fresh start? Any advice or experience with this would be much appreciated. Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | em_welsby1 -
How to use Video sharing sites for SEO ?
How to use Video sharing sites for SEO ? There are many video sharing sites like Youtube,vimeo,flickr ect .How to use them properly for boosting ranking of a web site using videos.as i can see only youtube and vimeo can add url of web site in description area so how to use videos on others sites .
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | innofidelity0 -
SEO question
Hi i changed my page titles for a competitive keyword last week and noticed it has dropped 9 search engine ranking positions. Was ranking 37 and now it 46. Would you guys leave it and see if it starts creeping back up or change again? the page title i used was across my pages for example was Primary keyword | secondary keyword | Heading on page thanks for you help
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | wazza19850