Call Business Website Center707-794-9999 PST     Contact our web design teamContact    Visit our blog about website design, Internet trends, and marketingBlog

How to optimize a slideshow for SEO
By

website design santa rosa

Slider, slideshows, galleries, and carousels seem to be on every website this year. The reason is simple. Most people are very visual and you can convey ideas (even complicated ones) with strong compelling images, graphics, or photographs. Theses slideshows are now working well on mobile devices like smartphones and tablets. If you have an older slideshows, just hire a webmaster to upgrade it to be better coded version. Today we are going to see if these slideshows are bad or good for search engine optimization (SEO).

=1= Not enough content:

If your home page is primarily composed of your carousel with little textual content, yes this would be a SEO problem. One option is to place the content below the slider. Nowadays Internet users know how to scroll and expect to do so. Content is still kind on Google so make sure you find a way to add text on the page even if your carousel is the main visual element. For a long time, you may have heard that all good content should be above the fold, meaning it should be visible on your visitor’s screen without having to scroll. We feel this way of thinking is old school.  With mobile devices having to scroll no matter what, touch monitors, large screens, and Internet users being more experienced, that is no longer a problem.

=2= Image optimization:

As long as your webmaster does not use the images/slides as background images but as actual images, you should be able to add image alt tag (aka alternative tag required for ADA compliance and tags that bots actually read) and image title tag (which is the text visitors will see if they mouse over an image). Those tags should be similar in keywords and terms but no identical. They are still very important to top ranking on Google and other major search engines.

=3= Text within the slides:

If you have the ability to add text on top of your slideshow (or next to it), it is a good SEO move. You may use headings such as H1, H2, H3, etc. to give important to strong keywords and have optimized standard text. Just make sure it is succint otherwise your visitors won’t read the words. The same is true for the number of images. Unless you are a photographers or artists, keep your slides to four and make them count.

Yes, having a slideshow on your site may make your website look like others but most people love them… so have a nice slideshow with meaningful slides and that work well on all devices and you may see increase time spent on your website.

slideshow seo
How to optimize a slider

Questions about this subject?


Never hesitate to contact our friendly team by phone at (707) 794-9999 (Pacific Standard Time) or by email here. Have a successful day!

© 2024
| Business Website Center | All Rights Reserved