Decreasing Load Time, Part. II

I wrote an earlier post on the importance of decreasing website load time. One of my SEO gurus, who taught me the tricks of the trade, used a general rule of thumb that has served me well in my Internet Marketing efforts:

The longer a site takes to load its objects and elements, the poorer its rankings will likely be in the SERPs.

And since Quality Score factors in to Google's ranking algorithms, it pays to learn decreasing website load time techniques.

Using Photoshop to Re-Size Images

In the previous article, I talked about the technique of pre-loading website images as a means to decreasing load time. But there is a second, easier, way to decrease load time, and that is by using Photoshop to save the images as Web images.

To do this, simply open the image you wish to resize in Photoshop. Then, go to the File menu and select "Save As." Change the image to a .jpg or .gif (whichever is appopriate - .jpegs for photo images and .gifs for graphic images, typically).

Next, hit save. This will bring up a pop up window which will allow you to slide a button to the left, where it says "Save for web" or "low resolution", or something to that effect. The idea is that you want to save the file in a lower-resolution than what it is currently.

Then, re-upload the image file into your web server location.

If done properly, the image should be significantly smaller. We have found that this technique does not lost any noticeable image quality once transferred to the Web. Super-Refresh (CTRL + F5) the web page with the image, and you should notice a faster loading page.