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.
Loading images below the fold? Impact on SEO
-
I got this from my developers. Does anyone know if this will be a SEO issue?
We hope to lazy-load images below the fold where possible, to increase render speed - are you aware of any potential issues with this approach from an SEO point of view?
-
Happy to help!
-
Thanks Tom!
As always, an amazing response.
Best
-
Hi Chris sorry for the late reply absolutely you can do this by using a plug-in cloudfare or PHP code
- https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-deferred-javascripts/
- https://wordpress.org/plugins/defer-css-addon-for-bwp-minify/
Another plugin that does this solution but providing an administration area to configure it manually is Autoptimize, that allows to define a specific CSS code in a independent way of your theme CSS stylesheet
- http://www.oxhow.com/optimize-defer-javascript-wordpress/
- https://seo-hacker.com/optimizing-site-speed-asynchronous-deferred-javascript/
- http://www.laplacef.com/how-to-defer-parsing-javascript-in-wordpress/
The solution of these problem is removing those render-blocking scripts. But if you remove them, some plugins may not work properly. So, the best solution for the smooth rendering is:
1. Remove them from your website source page.
2. Use a single script, hosted by Google as the alternative.
3. Push down the new script at end of the page ( before “” tag).
Here is how to do it.
Copy the code from the following link and paste at your theme’s function.php file.
function optimize_jquery() { if (!is_admin()) { wp_deregister_script('jquery'); wp_deregister_script('jquery-migrate.min'); wp_deregister_script('comment-reply.min'); $protocol='http:'; if($_SERVER['HTTPS']=='on') { $protocol='https:'; } wp_register_script('jquery', $protocol.'//ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.9.0/jquery.min.js', false, '3.6', true); wp_enqueue_script('jquery'); } } add_action('template_redirect', 'optimize_jquery');
Save the file and you are done! Now recheck the source of any page and you won’t see those two scripts at the head section. Alternatively, you can see the Google hosted JavaScriptscript source at the end of the page.
That’s all! Now the visible section of your page will be rendered smoothly.
Defer Loading JavaScript
Another suggestion from Google Page Speed tool is “Defer JavaScripts”. This problem happens when you use any inline JavaScripts like the scripts for Facebook like box or button, Google plus button, Twitter button etc. If you defer the JavaScript then the scripts are triggered after loading of the entire document.
How to defer JavaScript at WordPress
1. Create a JavaScript file and give the name as defer.js.
2. Place the JavaScripts codes that you want to defer into the defer.js file. For instance, if you want to defer Facebook like box script, paste the following at that file.
(function(d, s, id) { var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) return; js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = "//connect.facebook.net/en_GB/all.js#xfbml=1&appId=326473900710878"; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs); }(document, 'script', 'facebook-jssdk'));
3. Save the file and upload at your theme folder.
4. Now, copy the following code and paste at the head section of the source page. Here in WordPress, open header.php file of your theme and paste the code before the closing head tag.
Make sure to put the correct path of defer.js. For example, the source path should be like this:
/wp-content/themes/theme_name/defer.js ______________________________________________________________________________________________
I hope that helps,
Tom
-
happy I could help
-
Thomas,
Can this be implemented on a Wordpress site?
Apologize for hijacking!
-
What a great response! Just what I was looking for. Thank you!
-
lazy loading images is not as good as deferring an image. Because lazy loading images can cause issues can cause JavaScript issues that will not cause problems if you deferred the image instead of lazy loading.
Defer images you will have a easier time the method discussed here does not hurt search engine optimization in fact it will help it because increased load speeds or what people perceive as an increased load speed always helps the end-user.
Here is the best way
https://www.feedthebot.com/pagespeed/defer-images.html
This is where we defer the images without lazy loading
In the scenario of a one page template, there is no reason to do all the things that lazy loading does (observe, monitor and react to a scroll postion).
Why not just defer those images and have them load immediately after the page has loaded?
How to do it
To do this we need to markup our images and add a small and extremely simple javascript. I will show the method I actually use for this site and others. It uses a base 64 image, but do not let that scare you.
The html
The javascript
-
I have looked for information on this in the past and come up empty handed. With page speed Google really pits you against best SEO practices. I think if you follow most of the page speed insights you can severely limit your SEO. How many images are you talking about, how does Google render the page in their fetch as Google?
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
-
Are Expires Headers Detrimental to SEO Health?
My dev was looking into Expires Headers to increase speed, but she don't know the ramifications behind them for SEO. What I found online is really old: https://moz.com/blog/expires-headers-for-seo-why-you-should-think-twice-before-using-them What do SEOs think? Thanks in advance! ~Dana
Technical SEO | | dklarse0 -
Static Links in Sidebar Hurting SEO?
Our website currently has a sidebar/widget area that appears on almost all pages throughout of entire site (350 page domain). In that sidebar, we have some static links and some non-static links. Right now there are: 6 Related Post Links - Non-Static
Technical SEO | | DemiGR
1 - Call To Action - Static to a landing page
10 Calculators - Static - These calculators I think are very useful to our users (financial website). So in total 17 total sidebar links, 11 static links, and 6 which change based on the content of the page. Do you think these static links from an SEO perspective can be hurting us? Is there some sort of best practice for sidebar links in regards to quantity as well as static vs non-static? Thanks!0 -
Impact of Medium blog hosted on my subdomain
I am using the Medium blogging platform to blog, but it is pointed to my site and appears at blog.mysite.com. Since the content is hosted on Medium and pointed to my subdomain via an A Record / CNAME / etc... 1. Will my domain get credit for backlinks to the blog content? 2. If Medium changes in the future and no longer points to my subdomain, will I lose all of the backlinks I've built up?
Technical SEO | | davidevans_seo0 -
Will removing the trailing slash impact my SEO?
Hi there, We have a company website based on Wordpress. I just noticed that under Settings > Permalinks I can configure the look of the URLs and even remove the trailing slash. We have about 2-300 pages online. If I remove the trailing slash now, will that negatively impact our SEO in anyway for existing pages? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | Amr-Haffar0 -
Changing menus regularly - will this impact SEO
We are working on an internal project, where the website owner is thinking of making regular changes to one or two items on the top level menu. Assuming they redirect the original pages or navigate to them in other ways, is there any other impact on SEO to changing the menu structure? I assume they'd submit new sitemaps after each change. Many thanks Fiona
Technical SEO | | fionah0 -
Product Images with organic results in SERP
Hey Mozzers, I've noticed that several of our product page results in Google have the product image associated with them. Today is the first day I've seen this. Does anyone know anything about these? Has Google put anything out about this? Here's a couple examples: http://content.screencast.com/users/Will_Swales/folders/Jing/media/08a16dcf-505e-443c-866d-fae6d805743e/2014-03-31_1031.png http://content.screencast.com/users/Will_Swales/folders/Jing/media/04972e7b-f6b2-4e78-ab11-95c52d69a200/2014-03-31_1056.png What's interesting is that they don't show for me when I use Chrome's Incognito mode. Any insights much appreciated! Will
Technical SEO | | evoNick4 -
Why are old versions of images still showing for my site in Google Image Search?
I have a number of images on my website with a watermark. We changed the watermark (on all of our images) in May, but when I search for my site getmecooking in Google Image Search, it still shows the old watermark (the old one is grey, the new one is orange). Is Google not updating the images its search results because they are cached in Google? Or because it is ignoring my images, having downloaded them once? Should we be giving our images a version number (at the end of the file name)? Our website cache is set to 7 days, so that's not the issue. Thanks.
Technical SEO | | Techboy0 -
What is the best website structure for SEO?
I've been on SEOmoz for about 1 month now and everyone says that depending on the type of business you should build up your website structure for SEO as 1st step. I have a new client click here ( www version doesn't work)... some bugs we are fixing it now. We are almost finished with the design & layout. 2nd question have been running though my head. 1. What would the best url category for the shop be /products/ - current url cat ex: /products/door-handles.html 2. What would you use for the main menu as section for getting the most out of SEO. Personally i am thinking of making 2-3 main categories on the left a section where i can add content to it (3-4 paragraphs... images maybe a video).So the main page focuses on the domain name more and the rest of the sections would focus on specific keywords, this why I avoid cannibalization. Main keyword target is "door handles" Any suggestions would be appreciated.
Technical SEO | | mosaicpro0