Smush it affecting SEO?

Hi @eklundz,

I hope you are well today and thank you for your questions.

1:
I read in the desc that Smush it removes meta data from images in order to reduce the size.
Does this in any way affect SEO-optimization of the images?

I don’t think it any way affect SEO-optimization of the images.

The Smush.it uses optimization techniques specific to image format to remove unnecessary bytes from image files. It is a “lossless” tool, which means it optimizes the images without changing their look or visual quality.

Smush.it currently keeps all JPG metadata(for example: camera information, audio files, thumbnails, and so on and exif (exchangeable image file format) information.

It doesn’t compress the images files but just removes unnecessary bytes from image file. You will find more information about it on the following page.

https://developer.yahoo.com/yslow/smushit/faq.html

2:
I have a site with thousands of images that I’ve (until now) have saved as 100%, which I’ve learned is a big no no.
What would be the most effective way for me to reduce the size of all those maybe 5000 images as painlessly as possible?

In this case you can just bulk smush all these images by clicking on the button “Bulk Smush all my images” displayed on the following path.

Admin Area -> Media -> WP Smush.it

Best Regards,
Vinod Dalvi

Im great thanks, hope you are as well!

Ok, that sounds good, it’s the meta data Im worried about.

Would bulk smushing 5000 images be painless procedure?

Also, a question for you conscience. If I need to improve my page loading speed, would Smush it be the best bet to optimize save load time on my images? Or would I be better of compressing them to a smaller file size?

Take care!

Hi @eklundz,

Thanks for your reply! 5000 images is quite a lot so that would take a good moment of time. You could easily give it a go though, should you encounter any trouble, it’s generally easy to start back from where the trouble occurred. Plus we’ll be right here to assist!

As for your further question, the plugin does great with optimization so you can definitely use it to optimze images safely.

One thing though, it does have a 1MB limit, the images would need to be less than 1MB for this to work. So long as they are, it’ll work great and you should see some performance gain due to compression if they’re not already compressed.

It’s totally up to you though, whatever method works best for you. This is just one of the easiest methods since it can optimize right on-site. ??

I hope that helps, just let us know if you have further questions!

Cheers,
David