The Importance Of Image Optimization For Dental Website SEO!
Author: Eric Chmiel 🥂
I know what you're saying, you spent all this money on your brand new website, but for some reason it's taking forever to load! This is a lot more common of an issue than most web developers would like you to believe, and it can happen for many reasons! Traditionally, the only issue you'd get from this is a bad user experience, but come mid-June 2021, Google is updating their search algorithms to have web page speed influence rankings(1). Due to this, as the leading SEO department in the dental industry, we've been preparing our clients over the last year for this change. Our biggest fix that we found? Popping those bloated images!
What Is A Bloated Image?
A Bloated Image, in our department, is an image placed on a website page that is larger in file size than it has to be for its role. Many times upon on-boarding a new client, we find small, thumbnail sized images that take up an entire megabyte in space! In context, Google recommends web pages not exceed over 2MBs in package size. Bloat images quickly compound into each other, making web pages several megabytes in size!
When it comes down to it, the human eye can't discern easily between detailed and compressed images very well, so having detailed images on a site that isn't focused entirely on the image content is not necessary, and even detrimental to your user experience and future ranking.
For example, I went on Shutterstock and downloaded an image of a person smiling. I needed the image for a header on a webpage that was being built, and it was exactly what was being looked for. But, upon closer inspection, what appeared to be a simple image was actually over 8 megabytes large, over 4 times the recommended size of a page by Google!
This example is from a website that I pulled off a basic search and ran an audit on quickly. The top image is a .png file, which is notorious for being larger than any other compressed image format. The next two images serve as background to the primary content, on which the real focus lies. The next two images are background images, used behind content that will be focused on by the client that's visiting the webpage. The next two that follow are thumbnail sized images on the webpage, a size so small on the page that any small detail is completely lost on the client.
By formatting the .png into a more efficient format (such as .webp images, due to all modern browsers now supporting this format), and compressing the 4 other images, we could reduce up to an entire megabyte off the page, decreasing the loading size of the page to only 2 megabytes and drastically improving the page performance!
These images become pests real fast, and getting rid of all them is a real pain once you get enough improperly used images on the site. The best way to deal with it, is to learn how to get rid of them in the first place!
Do You Have A Bloated Site? Contact Us!
Dental specialists interested in learning more about Progressive Dental Marketing's award-winning services and continuing education seminars are invited to contact the dental marketing company in Clearwater, FL. Progressive Dental Marketing can be reached by calling 727-286-6211 or by visiting progressivedentalmarketing.com. Or feel free to explore our website and the several case studies we have!
If you are interested in hearing more from Bart Knellinger, come to one of our upcoming dental continuing education courses. Visit boostfullarchcases.com today to reserve a spot for you and your team!
Progressive Dental is more than just a marketing company, we are a company located in Clearwater, FL dedicated to dental practice growth. Our team was founded on creativity, collaboration and hard work. We are constantly evolving and are passionate about providing the best suite of dental marketing services for our clients. They are the reason we jump out of bed!
References
- (1) Google Delays Core Web Vitals Update to Mid-June, SEO Design Chicago, https://seodesignchicago.com/google-algorithms/google-delays-core-web-vitals-update-to-mid-june/
