Above the Fold Content - Use of large images
-
Hi All,
Our designers have come to the SEO team to ask if have a large image across the top of the page taking up a large majority of the above the fold real estate will impact our SEO.
Our initial thoughts are no as long as we have an optimised H1 visibal to the user landing there which informs them what the page is about.
Any thoughts would be appreciated.
-
Touche EGOL... Touche...
-
I am confident that the images make a great impression on visitors. Just, would some assessment done by Google, for example, Panda see them as non-content above the fold.
You never know what google is doing.
-
Go for the user. If you look at seo-browser's reports for pages that have large images or fullscreen sliders, it still renders out to a search engine bot about the same. People like pretty. People share pretty. We use a full screen slider for our home page, and still rank consistantly on page one.
Even better if your large images are conversion-focused. Might actually see an increase if done right, rather than a ranking loss.
-
GentleMozers,
If I may. I think this is when the lines of SEO/Social Media/Marketing become slightly blurred. All of you have touched on a very key point that people simply enjoy it! There are numerous studies, like one by Kissmetrics which show that Facebook posts get 30% more interaction than pure text posts.
I would say it not a stretch to assume the same applies to a website. I personally think there are plenty of other tactics to try and implement before I choose to get rid of the main imagery. Not only that, but with the Parallax/jQuery style of website you technically can have your H1 sit on top of your image, so you get the best of both worlds!
I honestly think that my visitors enjoy these images... but they don't determine the rankings of my pages in search.
EGOL I would be curios to know more about this. I mean yes, happiness unfortunately doesn't directly correlate to SERP's but Google must take into account visits. I know it isn't black and white that one image isn't going to make or break a website completely, but there are many times that I have been to a website and been severely distraught by the pixelated imagery and my trust in the company is diminished immediately, even if it's only a little. I guess I'm "cyber-shallow". That in turn, leads to a chain of self-destruction and questioning why I ever went to the website, severe crying, lot's of rocking back of forth. I'm being sarcastic of course, but I think you get my point. Happiness does correlate to rankings, even indirectly.
Getting people to your website is only half the battle, if they don't stay and do something to benefit your business/service/complete a goal that's potentially a lost opportunity. You only get one chance to make a first impression, make sure it's a good one!
Just my thoughts!
-
We built a site with large images and pushed the H1 below as an experiment. We saw no downsides, and because the site was far more user-friendly and good looking (we didn't change any on page SEO really) we noticed visitors were bouncing less, browsing more, and converting almost 40% more.
Go for the user first!
-
Sometimes I have wonderful images that are relevant to the topic of an article and become part of the article's content.
I have been posting them below the
but above the content of the article. These images are big and beautiful and I am certain that people like them.
But, I honestly have the same question that you have. Is this pushing text content down "TOO FAR FOR GOOGLE"? I honestly think that my visitors enjoy these images... but they don't determine the rankings of my pages in search.
-
you should check out this weeks WBF:
http://moz.com/blog/panda-optimization-whiteboard-friday
It's also about the above the fold content.Regards
Jarno
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
-
Will Google Judge Duplicate Content on Responsive Pages to be Keyword Spamming?
I have a website for my small business, and hope to improve the search results position for 5 landing pages. I recently modified my website to make it responsive (mobile friendly). I was not able to use Bootstrap; the layout of the pages is a bit unusual and doesn't lend itself to the options Bootstrap provides. Each landing page has 3 main div's - one for desktop, one for tablet, one for phone.
Web Design | | CurtisB
The text content displayed in each div is the same. Only one of the 3 div’s is visible; the user’s screen width determines which div is visible. When I wrote the HTML for the page, I didn't want each div to have identical text. I worried that
when Google indexed the page it would see the same text 3 times, and would conclude that keyword spamming was occurring. So I put the text in just one div. And when the page loads jQuery copies the text from the first div to the other two div's. But now I've learned that when Google indexes a page it looks at both the page that is served AND the page that is rendered. And in my case the page that is rendered - after it loads and the jQuery code is executed – contains duplicate text content in three div's. So perhaps my approach - having the served page contain just one div with text content – fails to help, because Google examines the rendered page, which has duplicate text content in three div's. Here is the layout of one landing page, as served by the server. 1000 words of text goes here. No text. jQuery will copy the text from div id="desktop" into here. No text. jQuery will copy the text from div id="desktop" into here. ===================================================================================== My question is: Will Google conclude that keyword spamming is occurring because of the duplicate content the rendered page contains, or will it realize that only one of the div's is visible at a time, and the duplicate content is there only to achieve a responsive design? Thank you!0 -
Best Practices for Leveraging Long Tail Content & Gated Content
Our B2B site has a lot of of long form content (e.g., transcriptions from presentations and webinars). We'd like to leverage the long tail SEO traffic driven to these pages and convert those visitors to leads. Essentially, we'd like Google to index all this lengthy, keyword-rich content AND we'd like to put up a read gate that requires users to register before viewing the full article. This is a B2B site, and the goal is to generate leads. Some considerations and questions: How much of the content to share before requiring registration? Ask too soon and it's a terrible user experience, give too much away and our business objectives are not met. Design-wise, what are good ways to do this? I notice Moz uses a "teaser" to block Mozinar content, and I've seen modals and blur bars on other sites. Any gotchas that Google doesn't like that we should be aware of? Trying to avoid anything that might seem like cloaking. Is it better to split the content across several pages (split a 10K word doc across 10 URLs and include a read gate on each) or keep to one page? Thank you!
Web Design | | Allie_Williams0 -
Moving servers which means moving ip address but using the same URL. Would it harm the website's SEO?
Hello everyone, The server (in-house) which we use to host our website is a bit old. We are using CDN77 for our static content. What if I move all our website to the CDN service? meaning I use their storage capability and just have our url point to the IP address they provide. Would that hurt our rankings?
Web Design | | Edgar-Cerecerez0 -
How to setup a redirect from one subfolder to another to avoid duplicate content.
Hello All, I have a WordPress site that Moz says has duplicate content. http://deltaforcepi.com/latest-news/page/3
Web Design | | Michael_Rock
http://deltaforcepi.com/category/latest-news/page/3 So I set up an addition to the .htaccess file . . . redirect code to move from one folder to another RewriteRule ^category/latest-news/(.*)$ /latest-news/$1 [R=301,NC,L] What did I do wrong? I am not proficient in .htaccess files.0 -
Should I Use An Animated Javascript Responsive Site
Hi, hope someone might be able to help me with this. I am setting my son up with a website for his small painting and decorating company. However, I am a wordpress stalwart and he has seen a theme which is a javascript animated responsive theme from template monster. Its not my choice just he is adamant that he wants it. However, I am slightly concerned that Google cannot index as well with these kind of sites as they would with a standard HTML site. I would be grateful if someone could confirm if they can be indexed etc. The content appears in what I can only describe as lightboxes. Thanks
Web Design | | denismilton0 -
Using a query string for linked, static landing pages - is this good practice?
My company has a page with links for each of our dozen office locations as well as a clickable map. These offices are also linked in the footer of every page along with their phone number. When one of these links is clicked, the visitor is directed to a static page with a picture of the office, contact information, a short description, and some other information. The URL for these pages is displayed as something like http:/example.com/offices.htm?office_id=123456, with seemingly random ID numbers at the end depending on the office that remain static. I know first off that this is probably bad SEO practice, as the URL should be something like htttp://example.com/offices/springfield/ My question is, why is there a question mark in the page URL? I understand that it represents a query string, but I'm not sure why it's there to begin with. A search query should not required if they are just static landing pages, correct?. Is there any reason at all why they would be queries? Is this an issue that needs to be addressed or does it have little to no impact on SEO?
Web Design | | BD690 -
Nav / Sitemap Question. Using a "services" page vs just linking directly to individual service page?
Okay, so our company offers video production, web design, and web marketing services. While we do offer these services individually, our goal is to get our clients to integrate these services together. Our nav is currently like so : home - about - video - web design - web marketing - blog - contact Now I've seen businesses and agencies also use a nav with a "services" button instead of listing out their service offerings (if they have more than 1, like us). The services button usually links to a category page or has a drop down with links to the company's individual services. I'm wondering if there is any benefit to having a main services page like this and linking to the individual pages off of it (video ,web design, marketing, etc). Or if we should just keep it the way we have it now (since we've already got some page authority on the individual service pages). I know this may not be the most important aspect of our site and we may be over-thinking it but any thoughts/ideas would be greatly appreciated, thanks!
Web Design | | RenderPerfect0 -
Using H1 Headings - More than 1?
I've known about avoiding the use of more than 1 H1 Heading Tags, however, with HTML5 is this going to change... at least that's how I understand it. According to HTML5 Specs, Each 'section' can have an H1 heading, which at least theoretically means certain web pages that have multiple "sectioning elements" can have more than 1 H1 heading... true? False? What I'm looking for here is some insight into the ramifications HTML5 will have on the use of H1 tags. And would like to know how search engines currently handle this and are they anticipated to change as the HTML5 outline algorithm becomes widely supported? thanks in advance Kelly
Web Design | | KellysTutorials0