Optimal Image Size for Website

[CostumeD]

What is the recommended size for an image on our website? What is the largest image size we can use without being penalised by Google?

Thank you.

[MattRoney]

I'm not aware of any penalty based on image size. They can be as big as they need to be, provided the page loads reasonably quickly. You can read up on page speed here.

[MoosaHemani]

I agree with Matt, there is no penalty I know that has to do anything with penalty but if you run screaming frog crawler it will ask you to limit the size of the image to 100KB but again going above is not really a penalty.

Yes if the images will be heavy the time on site will increase and if the page take more than usual to load this is where you might lose your rankings as site load time is a ranking signal now.

Hope this helps!

[TimHolmes]

I too also agree with the above.

To me the best solution is serving images of different sizes and resolutions based on device and connection speed, this way the customers should get a balance between speed and quality.

E.g. serve a x2 res image on retina or retina equivalent if the speed dictates that this is an option. alternatively, if it is a slow device connection, say via limited broadband speed, serve a lower resolution/file size to ensure at least something is delivered in an optimised speed.

I would suggest playing and finding the right balance for your site and market.

Finally, I find that using SVG images is the best for gaining a speed advantage.

Cheers

Tim