Once again I have had the opportunity to see some appalling handling of images which will have a devastating ‘hidden’ long term effect on the (sort of) well known Port Elizabeth based web site in question.
Yesterday, we both received the same article release with some stunning images – the release and images alone totalled just under 5 megabytes of disk space.
As I do with every article submitted to MyPE, I chose the keywords that I would optimise for, as well as optimising the 9 images that I would publish. In addition I checked for grammar, spacing and spelling as well as changing the flow of the article. The time taken to do so for this particular long article was well over 60 minutes.
The images were all reduced in size and resolution – we at MyPE do this for the following reasons:
- Smaller images load faster
- They take up less server space
- They consume less bandwidth
- Lower resolution images help protect the copyright of the photographer.
As you can imagine – in the long run this saves us money and makes our visitors happy as it also saves their precious bandwidth.
The other site in question just set the size to fit WITHOUT reducing the actual size or resolution – as a result, every time their version of the article release loads they take up a huge chunk of bandwith – 2.1 megabytes of bandwidth. Imagine if their version of the article is seen 2000 times – they will chew 4.1 megabytes of bandwidth and frustrate a lot of people. In contrast the MyPE version only consumes 500 kilobytes of data. Should the MyPE article be viewed 2000 times then the total amount of bandwidth used will be 976 megabytes.
Here follows the advice:
- Watermark your images
- Reduce them to a use-able size BEFORE uploading – we have standardised on a maximum 600 pixels wide and 85% or less than 100 kilobytes per whichever is the smaller
- Name them properly and NO spaces in the name
- Make the names descriptive
- Credit the photographer properly
- Caption, Title and Alt the images correctly
The proof of the pudding – the MyPE article took less than 5 minutes to appear on the first page of Google.com for my chosen keywords and as the first result on Google.co.za.
Come on people – by doing things right you will not only be saving money and creating less frustrated readers, you will also be showcasing Port Elizabeth in a far more professional manner and contributing to the growth of our region.
I am available for paid consultation – contact me HERE.
Alan Straton
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I think I know which local website you are referring to here. But as a sort of meant to be “local news” site it is so lame. Not a very entertaining site at all. And this view is expressed by various colleagues as well. They are just a rip off as far as the prices they charge companies to advertise with them. And you get absolutely nothing in return. O well – this is PE after all. We are happy to accept below standard fodder served to us.