Revolution Sliders - Still considered bad for SEO in 2018?
-
Hi guys, I have a question about revolution sliders. Are they generally speaking still technically considered to be bad for SEO?
I've done some research on this topic however most of the information I can find dates back to around 2009-2012, when sliders were mostly java and flash based. It seems that back then they were considered to be bad for SEO. Is this still the case?
We use revolution sliders because it's easy for us to overlay text and because it scales to mobile automatically. It also allows us to put alt texts and image titles in there - we don't use them for the purpose of sliding images.
Would there be any technical reason why a slider would be considered bad for SEO?
-
Thanks, Mike agreed!
-
Hey mike, thanks for the response. I’ve just PM’d you!
-
Hi rswhtn,
I can't add much more than others have here already.
Are sliders in general bad for SEO? If they diminish the user experience or slow down the page, they could hurt more than help. Technically speaking, speed is a potential reason. Since Google responds to signals of a satisfied user (and uses quality rating in their algo.), anything that impacts the user's impression of the value of a page is a potential factor for SEO.
Is Revolution Slider specifically good/bad for SEO? We have no indication Google has targeted specific WordPress plug-ins for security warnings / similar. If a site gets hacked and Google detects malware, different story, but there's no indication an unhacked Revolution Slider instance would impact SEO.
I think I'd consider UX here before SEO - are users engaging with the slider? Would they engage more with another layout? Split testing is easy and free with Google Optimize these days. Security may be an issue, but that's a valid concern with any plug-in.
Best,
Mike -
Sliders If you're talking about the main homepage is generally very negative compared to having a direct message. People want to understand what you do the instant that they come on your website. If your website sells mustache supplies and it takes the person more than five seconds to go through all the slides in order to understand what you do you may have just given up a sale.
See:
https://yoast.com/opinion-on-sliders/ & http://shouldiuseacarousel.com/
In addition, this is true for non-e-commerce sites basically all websites. Unless you are using it in some sort of a gallery format I would stay far away from a slider. They slow the site speed down by having to load another plug-in which requires JavaScript to load prior to being shown to the end-user a huge negative. On mobile devices, it's almost impossible for people to control them. They are antiquated and to the owner of the site they may look great but you have to think about everyone that's coming to your website not just yourself (we are all slightly biased to our own sites).
"Sliders suck and should be banned from your website" Michiel Heijmans of Yoast.com
"Use a static image instead"
“In A/B tests, sliders tend to lose. In fact, one of the easiest ways to grow a page’s conversion rate is to remove the slider, and to replace it with a static image. If you want to be really lazy, you can just test the slider against the static version of each of the slider’s options. The static version usually wins.”
Citing Karl Blanks, Chairman, and Co-Founder of Conversion Rate Experts
"1% clicked a feature. Of those, 89% were the first position. 1% of clicks for the most significant object on the home page?"
"nd.edu stats by @erunyon"
https://blog.sucuri.net/2014/09/slider-revolution-plugin-critical-vulnerability-being-exploited.html
The only bad things about revolution slider are its very heavy plug-in, it's the most exploited plug-in in the world, in fact, I believe the Panama papers were a result of a WordPress site with revolution slider not joking. also, sliders generally do not do as well as static images.
"Almost 10% of the compromised WordPress sites that we analyzed had a vulnerable version of RevSlider. When you combine RevSlider, Gravity Forms, and TimThumb, they account for 25% of the total compromised WordPress sites."
cite: https://sucuri.net/website-security/website-hacked-report
RevSlider never reached TimThumb’s scale, but it still affects websites months after it was first disclosed. The biggest challenge RevSlider faces is that it’s embedded within Themes and Frameworks and some website owners are unaware they have it installed until it TEMP has been used to adversely affect them via a compromise.
With this security feature, Sucuri is able to proactively protect your website
within minutes of a security event, like a Zero Day, being released to the
world. Example of dis at work include the recent Bash vulnerabilities, and
many of the software vulnerabilities mentioned above (me.e., RevSlider,
Mailpoet, etc…).Cite: https://wordpress.org/plugins/sucuri-cloudproxy-waf/
I would look at https://soliloquywp.com/ See: http://www.wpbeginner.com/best-wordpress-slider/
I hope this helps,
Tom
-
Thank you both for the replies, that's very helpful. We're going to take a look and see what we can do with them
Andy - I've PM'd you!
-
Hello,
I have personally found sliders to be ineffective, not bad for seo but bad for the user experience. If you have 8 seconds to capture a users attention the first time they come to a website why hide all the information on consecutive sliders. Most people never see the second or third slider. So to increase conversions why not sell then above the fold with one good piece of information.
That's just my two cents,
Don Silvernail
-
Hi,
As long as everything works and the slides are used to enhance the page and get important points across, then there are no reasons (technically) why it should be considered bad. Test in different browsers and mobile devices to ensure there are no problems.
However... On a mobile, I don't actually like sliders and much prefer just a static image to speed up the load times. Most will give you the option to do this. Speed is probably one of the main reasons I am cautious with them because they can add a lot of size to the page, which results in increased load times.
Just try and keep in mind to use it as a way to enhance the page rather than for anything to do with SEO.
-Andy
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
-
SEO Drop
Over the last few months my rank has dropped by around half and for the life of me I can’t see why. There are no warnings on Google Console. Am I missing something? Website: thespacecollective.com
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | moon-boots0 -
Proxy Servers & SEO
Does putting a blog on a proxy server (the pointed at the main site) hurt SEO? i.e. can Google tell? And if they can, does it matter? My server people won't use PHP on their servers but we want a Wordpress blog. So their suggested solution is that they put the blog on a proxy server and point it at the ourdomain.com/blog subfolder on our site. So to all intents and purposes it's hosted in the same place. They assure me this is normal practice and point out that our (main site) images are already being sourced from a CDN. Obviously we'll deal with Google not seeing two separate versions of the same site. But apart from this, is there any negative effect we could suffer from in SEO terms?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | abisti20 -
Do Page Anchors Affect SEO?
Hi everyone, I've been researching for the past hour and I cannot find a definitive answer anywhere! Can someone tell me if page anchors affect SEO at all? I have a client that has 9 page anchors on one landing page on their website - which means if you were to scroll through their website, the page is really really long! I always thought that by using page anchors instead of sending users through to a dedicated landing page, ranking for those keywords makes it harder because a search spider will read all the content on that landing page and not know how to rank for individual keywords? Am I wrong? The client in particular sells furniture, so on their landing page they have page anchors that jump the user down to "tables" or "chairs" or "lighting" for example. You can then click on one of the product images listed in that section of the page anchor and go through to an individual product page. Can anyone shed any light on this? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Virginia-Girtz1 -
SEO transfer to new website
My website currently has some strong SEO and i will be re-developing the website on a wordpress platform...which will change many of the existing URL. Will this affect the current pages that are well indexed in Google? Does using Wordpress or changing the URL extension (.html to .php) make a difference? If i want to make a clean transition without effecting our existing SEO...what are some essential steps i need to take? Example. Current page is www.mydomain.com/name.html .... and the new URL would be www.mydomain.com/product/name.php Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Souk0 -
Are Silos Still Important for SEO?
I am in the process of migrating www.nyc-officespace-leader.com from Drupal to Wordpress and my developer is of the opinion that it is not necessary to implement silos to achieve favorable ranking for competitive keywords. I know a lot has changed in the last two years with Panda and Penguin. Is it SEO best practices to implement silos in the course of the redesign? Will this make a significant difference for SEO? Thanks, Alan Rosinsky
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan10 -
Local SEO and PO Boxes
What is the best way to do local SEO when the business has a physical address, but the mailing address is through a PO Box. Can you still list your business on Google Maps, Google places, yahoo, bing etc... with the physical address?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | melen0 -
How Does SEO Help Local Businesses
Hello, I recently took a position as a digital marketing manger with a advertising agency. Its my job to grow the digital marketing department. One of the issues I am running into is 90% of our clients are local businesses. When doing keyword research it is very difficult to find keywords with lots of search. For example, if I am optimizing for a Ford dealership in Hackensack,NJ there are not a lot of searches for this term. How can I justify a larger SEO budget when there is just not a lot of search volume for these keywords? This is nothing like Dog Training Videos or something similar. Am I missing something? Where can I pull traffic from for local businesses to justify larger SEO budgets? Thanks, Bill
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | wparlaman0 -
SEO Strategy for URL Change
I'm working with a company who will likely have to change their URL because of a trademark dispute. They will be able to maintain the new URL for some period but will soon need to drop the existing URL all together. Aside from the usual keyword considerations when choosing a URL, are there any SEO strategies I should consider as we execute this change?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Jon_KS0