Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Sliders and Content Above the Fold
-
I was just inspecting a wire frame that is going out to a client and realized that the slider may interfere with the "content above the fold." Can't believe this had not struck me on others.
If the Header has basic business info, etc. in it and you place a slider to display images in the area just beneath the Header or slightly down from it, does that decrease the amount of content seen a being above the fold? Or, is content above the fold established by virtue of H1,2, 3, etc.?
-
The main considerations here are:
1. How is the slider interpreted by search engines and how the presence of a slider affects the interpretation of the page.
Accessibility of the text/content of the slider and how this content may be affected when the search engine tries to determine the relevance of the page.
If google is looking at the areas of a page and applying weightings etc (there's been a number of articles about the ratio of content vs ads for instance) then are you pushing more valuable content further down the page to a less important position and how much of a difference does this actually make.
How different is this from putting a picture at the top of an article/page (although normally the H1 would come first)
It would be interesting to test two copies of the same page - one with the slider above the content and one below to see what difference it makes.
Does the position of the
in the html make a difference?
2. From a user experience / conversion perspective - how effective are the sliders.
I completely see your point about selling product. Yes, putting your goods on show to communicate to the visitor that this is what you do and how great they are makes total sense. When you're a professional services company using a slider to present generic "values" against stock photos then maybe it's not the strongest approach!
How important is the fold to humans? I've read a number of times about how the old advice to put everything above the fold because users don't scroll is outdated advice and that people are more than willing to scroll down. I think the caveat here is that there has to be some sign/scent that they're going to find what they're looking for by scrolling down.
-
Thanks for the response Doug. Is there anyplace you have found as a resource that supports this above the fold delineation? I am with you in that it seems reasonable (but I grew up with newspapers ;)) My thoughts are that with the algorithm there would need to be some mechanism to measure that bottom of header - top of footer area [maybe character or word count] and then to calculate that and apply a factor to the content that is weighted higher than a similar factor for the second half.
It would certainly be easier to game if we new bottom of header to beginning of H2 is 'top of fold' and when there was no H1 or H2, etc. there would be full credit given to page in total. (Then, again, we are at the measure by equation versus placement).As to the slider, If I am doing a professional practice or a product producer, etc. I try to stay away. With companies that sell a service or product that "look" is a big appeal, it really is helpful. We use a lot of CMS (WordPress, Joomla, Drupal) and test a lot of sliders. Typically, by the time a plug in slider makes it near the top of the heap, it has been fairly well tested. Slider issues today typically revolve around browser updates and we have standards in place regarding updates due to the impact a failure can have on a client.
We only update after there has been time for the update to be in the marketplace (truly varies so we break it down by type of update). If it is a browser we might well wait 4 to 6 months to see what bugs get worked out. We then test all on the site once updated so the problem is not a surprise. But, again, I rarely see problems with them.
Thanks again,
-
Yep, there's a real risk that the slider is going to push more valuable content down the page and potentially below the fold.
"The fold" is not determined by header tags or anything like that, it's purely down to the window size of the browser. Different people are going to have different fold positions based on their screen size or their preferred browser window size so you can't be absolutely sure where the cut-off position is going to be.
I'm not a big fan of sliders. My worry is that they get stuck at the top of the page to create something visually interesting / dynamic rather than think about justifying the slider's place on the page.
Does the slider help clearly communicate the proposition / offer or idea being presented?
You want visitors arriving on the page to feel as if they've found what they are looking for rather than starting a treasure hunt...
Is the slider content indexable then you can treat this as content above the fold and optimise accordingly, but you've instantly placed stylistic constrains on yourself!
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Canonical: Same content but different countries
I'm building a website that has content made for specific countries. The url format is: MyWebsite.com/<country name="">/</country> Some of the pages for <specific url="">are the same for different countries, the <specific url="">would be the same as well. The only difference would be the <country name="">.</country></specific></specific> How do I deal with canonical issues to avoid Google thinking I'm presenting the same content?
On-Page Optimization | | newbyguy0 -
Word Count - Content site vs ecommerce site
Hi there, what are your thoughts on word count for a content site vs. an ecommerce site. A lot of content sites have no problem pushing out 500+ words per page, which for me is a decent amount to help you get traction. However on ecommerce sites, a lot of the time the product description only needs to be sub-100 words and the total word count on the page comes in at under 300 words, a lot of that could be considered duplicate. So what are your views? Do ecommerce sites still need to have a high word count on the product description page to rank better?
On-Page Optimization | | Bee1590 -
Duplicate content with tagging and categories
Hello, Moz is showing that a site has duplicate content - which appears to be because of tags and categories. It is a relatively new site, with only a few blog publications so far. This means that the same articles are displayed under a number of different tags and categories... Is this something I should worry about, or just wait until I have more content? The 'tag' and 'category' pages are not really pages I would expect or aim for anyone to find in google results anyway. Would be glad to here any advice / opinions on this Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | wearehappymedia1 -
How does Indeed.com make it to the top of every single search despite of having aggregated content or duplicate content
How does Indeed.com make it to the top of every single search despite of having duplicate content. I mean somewhere google says they will prefer original content & will give preference to them who have original content but this statement contradict when I see Indeed.com as they aggregate content from other sites but still rank higher than original content provider side. How does Indeed.com make it to the top of every single search despite of having aggregated content or duplicate content
On-Page Optimization | | vivekrathore0 -
Duplicate Content with ?Page ID's in WordPress
Hi there, I'm trying to figure out the best way to solve a duplicate content problem that I have due to Page ID's that WordPress automatically assigns to pages. I know that in order for me to resolve this I have to use canonical urls but the problem for me is I can't figure out the URL structure. Moz is showing me thousands of duplicate content errors that are mostly related to Page IDs For example, this is how a page's url should look like on my site Moz is telling me there are 50 duplicate content errors for this page. The page ID for this page is 82 so the duplicate content errors appear as follows and so on. For 47 more pages. The problem repeats itself with other pages as well. My permalinks are set to "Post Name" so I know that's not an issue. What can I do to resolve this? How can I use canonical URLs to solve this problem. Any help will be greatly appreciated.
On-Page Optimization | | SpaMedica0 -
Duplicate content on partner site
I have a trade partner who will be using some of our content on their site. What's the best way to prevent any duplicate content issues? Their plan is to attribute the content to us using rel=author tagging. Would this be sufficient or should I request that they do something else too? Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | ShearingsGroup0 -
Duplicate Content from on Competitor's site?
I've recently discovered large blocks of content on a competitors site that has been copy and pasted from a client's site. From what I know, this will only hurt the competitor and not my client since my guy was the original. Is this true? Is there any risk to my client? Should we take action? Dino
On-Page Optimization | | Dino640 -
Does schema.org assist with duplicate content concerns
The issue of duplicate content has been well documented and there are lots of articles suggesting to noindex archive pages in WordPress powered sites. Schema.org allows us to mark-up our content, including marking a components URL. So my question simply, is no-indexing archive (category/tag) pages still relevant when considering duplicate content? These pages are in essence a list of articles, which can be marked as an article or blog posting, with the url of the main article and all the other cool stuff the scheme gives us. Surely Google et al are smart enough to recognise these article listings as gateways to the main content, therefore removing duplicate content concerns. Of course, whether or not doing this is a good idea will be subjective and based on individual circumstances - I'm just interested in whether or not the search engines can handle this appropriately.
On-Page Optimization | | MarkCA0