Sliders And SEO – The Impact on Website Performance

If your current website includes a slider, you might want to think about getting rid of it. Also known as a carousel, sliders are no good for SEO. Not only that, but sliders even stand in the way of your visitors reading your site’s core content right away. Sliders can also negatively affect your conversions.

All in all, sliders don’t do much for a website, if anything at all. Instead, sliders do more harm than good, which is why you should probably consider getting rid of them if your website currently has one.

The Proof is in the Science

Studies have actually been done on the usefulness and effectiveness of sliders, in case you need evidence to convince you that sliders suck. You’d be hard-pressed to find a study that proves sliders actually do a website good.

Here are some things that studies suggest about sliders:

• Just 1% of website visitors click on a slider, and it’s usually just the first one;
• People tend to ignore sliders;
• Sliders can be confusing;
• Sliders don’t typically work well on mobile devices;
• People often consider sliders advertisements;
• Sliders slow websites down;
• Sliders push content below the fold, which is bad for SEO.

Pick One Relevant Image That Works For Your Site

Instead of picking many photos to include on your website when using sliders because you can’t just pick one, you should focus on one image. Doing so will have a bigger impact on your website and communicating what your business is about rather than confusing and overwhelming visitors with all the photos.

By focusing on one photo or message, you’ll give your visitors a much better idea about your business compared to sliders. Messages are often lost with sliders, so why include them at all?

Sliders and SEO

Since sliders push down your core content, it won’t be visible above the fold. This is a basic SEO no-no. Content that is found below the fold completely wreaks havoc on any SEO efforts. Any web developer or marketer already knows this, or at least should.

As a result, sliders pull-down conversion rates. Just having a slider on your website will result in fewer sales than you would experience without a slider. Just this simple fact alone should be enough to convince you to get rid of it.

Mobile Websites

Sliders typically load desktop images which are not optimized for mobile speed. Smartphones with 3G or less will not do well at all. The same can be said for sliders running on JavaScript. There’s no sense in adding JavaScript for something that visitors will look at as a banner or skip over to get to your content. If the slider is not responsive, it can ruin your website, even if it is responsive.

The bottom line is, sliders rarely convert. They’re distracting and deliver no value to visitors. Instead, you should use a static image and copy.