Sliders and SEO
For the sake of this article, let me clarify the meaning of the acronym SEO. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. Also, SEO is a way to make a website outrank its competitors.
Now before I move on, I want to make the following clear. I am not an SEO expert. But, when I read articles by so-called SEO experts, they generally agree on the fact that sliders, short for slide shows or carousels, have little to no SEO use 99% of the time. Also, since sliders function on JavaScript, a coding language, this makes a webpage load more slowly than standard HTML.
Since I’m not an SEO expert, I’m not going to argue with the above. But, I do believe sliders do have use outside of SEO. So, I’ll discuss a few of those uses below.
an example of a slider that is user controlled by thumbnails
the user can decide to view or not view
Sliders Do Have Use
SEO aside, I believe sliders are useful under certain conditions. Let’s consider a few situations.
I think sliders are great if you have a gallery of images you want to display. But, I prefer to let the viewer move through the slider gallery at their own pace. I prefer not making the gallery of images move on their own due to timing and viewing habits of the webpage visitor.
Also, there are instances when a slider may consolidate information so you can save space on your page. Information consolidation can be useful for a product tour if you sell several products, but not too many.
Do you have news items that you want to pass on to your viewers? Well, if you don’t want to blog out the latest news, a slider can be the perfect tool. Each news item may be a different category of information, so each slider has its unique content. Once again, I suggest that the viewer controls the slider though you can always entice the user in some way to move on to the next slide.