Image dimensions not being recognized by SEO Utilities

[Discman]

Good day Eh. ..

Further to an earlier post on a related matter, my graphics dimensions are not being seen by SEO ulilities when I check for Page speed as required by Google for page ranking. I get the impression from some of the responses that I received to my earlier post, that I'm doing something wrong regarding that problem. I have been trying to compensate for the coding that XARA Web Designer 6 does, or doesn't do that is the source of this problem. I have tested this by applying a template, adding a jpg and having the scan done by GMetrix etc and with the same result.

Does XARA Web Designer 6 not create a code for graphics that can be recognized by Google. Google, by the way, has started using page speed for its' ranking, so suggesting that it isn't as important as other aspects seems somewhat off the mark.

I specifically chose Designer 6 because I wanted to avoid coding errors and speed up design. . .should I have chosen a different product?

[gwpriester]

The basics are going to be the same whether you are using WD6 or WD9.

Not sure what the importance of graphics dimensions has to do with SEO rankings. It seems such a trivial thing.

Naming your images either by using filename"imagename" to name your your images and/or using the Alt text tag would both seem a lot more important to me.

Google looks at your .html file and sees a lot of numbered .png and .jpg files which tell it nothing about your content. And the fact that 210.png is X x X pixels does little to enlighten the search (unless I am missing something crucial). But widget-2305A.jpg or Widget 2305A Side View says a lot more than 210.jpg.

And even if you have met all the expected criteria to delight Google and the other search engines, if your site is content poor, then all the other things are not going to do much to help your site.

In short, worry about your site design, function, and content. Primarily the content. Make sure you name each page to inform the search engine what the content of that specific page is, About My Grand Company vs About Us. Take the time to fine tune your page descriptions to address the terms and words your site visitors are searching for.

And make sure your website title, is informative and content rich. My Company that Produces World-class Widgets vs My Company.

[Acorn]

I have checked back to your previous post: http://www.talkgraphics.com/showthre...ended-Graphics.
It does not specifically mention page load speed. To improve your speed and hit better SEO ranking, read https://developers.google.com/speed/...es/rules_intro and http://stevesouders.com/hpws/rules.php.

To reinforce Gary's position on the use of filename"imagename", you should check across all your web pages and see where the same image is being used repeatedly. Xara is bad for user-defined bullets as you can end up with literally hundreds of them all as different numbered jpegs; giving them a proper filename by cloning it for each use, makes a site upload size and possibly download experience for the end-user to be much more quick.

Because it rankled that you wanted image sizes and Xara seemed incapable of doing this, I have checked a number of approaches for you.

I found that Xara does include the image dimensions:

1. <img class="xr_ap" src="index_htm_files/7.jpg" alt="" title="" style="left: 247px; top: 492px; width: 320px; height: 240px;"/>
2. <img class="xr_ap" src="index_htm_files/2013-07-22%2021.09.40.jpg" alt="" title="" style="left: 179px; top: 209px; width: 320px; height: 240px;"/>

I dropped an image into my design page and got option 1 above with styles for width and height.
I created a Placeholder box for option 2 and used the Replace with graphic file method.
It too creates width and height style information but comes with the SEO advantage for retaining the original filename.

All I can now guess is that you are referring to the properties you can view on a camera photograph or add into an image's IPTC meta-data. to add this into Xara-generated images would be tedious.

Other than this, I think you are covered.

Acorn

[Discman]

Not sure what the importance of graphics dimensions has to do with SEO rankings. It seems such a trivial thing.

Amazing

[Discman]

Not even close. I switched over to WordPress and went from a "D" rating from http://gtmetrix.com/ to an "A". I reiterate, XARA is great for Graphics design but when it comes to the important aspects of SEO for Web Design, it is definitely a failure. For those to whom "page ranking" IS an important issue, I would suggest using WordPress, which has little or no graphics design capacity, (but I havent searched the available plugins for that particular subject), and leave XARA strictly for those who want pretty pages and are in no way concerned with SEO.

[zaphodeist]

I hope Sketch sees this thread, a professional designer who uses Xara for all but those where responsive design is insisted upon. He obviously has had good SEO results. Pretty pages AND SEO friendly ;-)

[Cloud]

Thanks John. As someone who provides SEO on sites created with xara I can assure anyone using xara that as long as you follow some simple rules for onpage seo, combined with good link building, you will see some very good results.

Page Titles
Make them relevant - For example; instead of Bills Bites name it Fish and Chips Restaurant Leeds

Headings
Make sure that they are relevant - so if the page title is Fish and Chips Restaurant Leeds, have a heading the same exact words on that page.

Content
Make sure that every page has different content relevant to the page and most importantly that the content is ORIGINAL. Make sure that the keyword is within the content, 3 or 4 times should be fine, having a keyword 10 times within the page is just spam and will be seen as such by the search engine.

Internal Links
This does not apply so much to navigation bars but to text only links, instead of >read more try an link to the actual page with the actual keyword for instance instead of >contact us consider >Fish and Chips Restaurant Location

Images
No we are getting on to the OP. Image size within the code will not make any difference whatsoever, I know this from experience with xara and also has been confirmed by some friends who have many years web design experience in everything from dreamweaver to wordpress to hand coding. When it comes to images you need to make sure that the alt text is present and is relevant, for instance when I have a photo of a restaurant's interior I will have the alt text as Fish and Chips restaurant in Leeds.

Wordpress is good (we have 2 wordpress experts in house completing lots of sites per week) but for a static site which is not updated too often xara cannot be beaten. I never ever go by rating sites and as an example I will site the following cases:


A client (azizcatering.co.uk) I had designed a site for (with xara) sent me an email from hibu.com (yellow pages people) showing the ranking the site had achieved on the ranking site silktide.com (by the way hibu.com have an account with silktide but I will come to that at the end) Overall the site achieved 6.4 according to silktide but and this is a very BIG BUT: The site ranks first for it's keyword and the catering company has achieved well over 300% more bookings as a result; in a matter of less than two months: and you can see the first attached screen grab, this is for the keyword wedding catering bradford. Now this is fine for a location based search but some people from the area might not type Bradford in the search for their next keyword: asian wedding catering, and as you will see from the second screen grab they are currently placed second for this search.

Then we come to another client (poochpooch.com) running a site for chihuahua fashion (doggy clothes) and we did her website again in xara. This site has been running for quite a few months but achieved it's current position on google search less than 3 months after launch. The company is running at a very healthy turnover as a result of the SEO: As you can see from the screen grab they are positioned at NUMBER 1 on google for their keyword of chihuahua fashion.





These ratings sites are pretty pointless, what matters is the results, not the dimensions of the image within the coding, not the pretty design, not the so-called 'bad code' or the rating from another site, if the site achieves a good listing on google for the chosen keyword and it works as it should then nothing else matters. We have created over 200 websites for clients using xara alone and all achieve very high first page ratings for their keywords on google, and we have never had to worry about the image dimensions etc.

Oh by the way rating sites are used by competitors to show a client that their site is "not rated highly or graded lowly and we can make it grade A because the software used to create the site is no good for SEO".

[Acorn]

Cheers skech.
Acorn

[gwpriester]

For all the good in the world it will do.

[marky007]

I did not think images mattered but only text .i thought google only crawled text .I was told by my web designer to take some of my photos out of my gallery . Have a look and see ,maybe i can get a few pointers as i am dropping from last month on page ranking . http://www.thepaintingspecialist.co.uk