Hi, I am optimizing my articles and wondering what`s the ideal image file size? I have heard that it should be jpg format and no more than 750 x750 and the size below 70 kb, is it true?
Selected answers from the Dumb SEO Questions Facebook & G+ community.
Harley Helmer: Ideal file size for images on a website is less than 100kb. We we shoot for the smallest file size possible without degrading the quality of the image to a point where it looks bad. Pixel size is really irrelevant. Obviously the more pixels, the harder…
Christine Hansen: Jpg is for photos and png for line art, drawings, graphics etc.
Bill Hartzer: Keep in mind that google discover actually requires large images (not file size but width and height). At least 1200px wide.
DEVELOPERS.GOOGLE.COMIniziare a utilizzare Discover | Google Search CentralIniziare a utilizzare Discover | Google Search Central
Richard Hearne: Do some research here, and base your findings on advice from known experts. Check out Cloudinary, Imgix blogs. There is a lot of general advice here, and there`s a lot going on in the image space recently. There`s rarely no one-size-fits-all approach. It depends on your site, your content, your code, your infrastructure, your budgets.
I don`t agree with less than 100KB (plenty of cases where large images would be too compressed, and Google does consider image quality). There are also more modern image formats with better compression algos than JPEG and PNG (e.g. webP).
As Bill Hartzer points out, there are some differing requirements across Google surfaces. E.g. Google also recommends serving various ARs (16:9, 4:3, 1:1) for Article type in their schema docs. I think Publisher Center documentation also provides some guidance on image best practices.
There`s a lot of nuance in this subject, and unless your site is very large / has a very broad audience, you might be best off using an off-the-shelf solution/plugin to optimise your images.
Jaroslaw Pidburskyj: If you code the image correctly you can have an image as large as you want and it’ll be accepted as good.
Ammon Johns: This is one of those classic "it depends" issues for SEO, because there is no simple, single answer for all situations and scenarios. Instead, there is always a compromise going to happen between what is `best` for a spider (which has no eyes, and thus no appreciation at all for `eye candy`) and what is best for influencing and impressing humans.
In pure SEO terms, the smaller and fewer images you can use the faster the page will load and render. That can also be a factor for humans if those images are making the page take even one whole extra second to load (which is why algorithms were built to model that).
But in human terms, the old saying that a picture speaks a thousand words still has a great deal of truth. The right image can set a tone and atmosphere for a piece, move the reader`s mindset, in an instant. Good, effective imagery is important for impressing people, and can be essential to the value of the content where people need to see a product, or see a diagram, etc.
So you are always going to have to make a trade-off between the cost of image size and quality in page speed (and thereby SEO), and the benefit of impressive images on people for conversions, user experience, and attracting citations (which helps SEO). There is no universal answer, only you selecting your own balance of contradictory demands that you find is optimal for your own situation, customers, case, etc.
Hi, I am optimizing my articles and wondering what`s the ideal image file size? I have heard that it should be jpg format and no more than 750 x750 and the size below 70 kb, is it true? 
