Questions
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Technical Question on Image Links - Part of Addressing High Number of Outbound Links
Hello Tesbat, It sounds like you are using a content delivery network (CDN) to serve images, which is pretty standard. However, there are some best practices that I like to follow, and if your traffic from images is really that low it could be that you are already not following them. First, I like to have a CNAME set up so the CDN exists on your own site's subdomain (e.g. cdn.yourdomain.com) as opposed to another server, (e.g. yourdomain.akamai.com). Every CDN company and host will differ on the details of how to set this up, but if you tell them you want the images to exist on a subdomain of yoursite.com I'm sure they can figure it out - if you don't already have it set up that way. Second, don't change the filenames or basic folder structure. For example, if your images followed this format (/images/image1.jpg) and you went to a CDN that either renamed the images or put them in a totally different folder structure (e.g. /images/0000123.jpg or /CDN/assets/image1.jpg) you could lose some of the momentum you built up over time, especially if those image files are not redirected. Here's a case where that happened to someone. Third, set up and verify the new CDN subdomain in Google and Bing Webmaster Tools. Add the geotargeting for the country you are targeting in case the IP address of the CDN is in another country. Typically this is not an issue for most sites, but is worth considering if the CDN is hosted in another country. Fourth, continue to optimize your images with appropriate file names and alt attributes, and with the title attribute (as you do) when linking to larger versions of the image. Don't worry about those links. I'd rather link to a bigger image than just have the thumbnail sitting there by itself. Just make sure you're actually linking to the image file, as opposed to another web page on which the larger image is embedded (e.g. image nodes in Drupal, or attachment pages in Wordpress). Here are a few pages from Barry Schwartz worth reading: How Barry set up his Amazon S3 CDN Does Google Like CDNs? More from Google on CDNs and SEO
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