Many companies lose potential customers due to slow page loading. It is believed that if it takes more than 3 seconds to reload a page on your site, deferred content loading is exactly what can help and speed up page loading.
Next, let's look at what deferred loading is, how to configure it, and how it affects SEO promotion.
What is deferred loading
Let's say you are creating a site that is a set of completely different files - HTML, PHP, CSS, JS, images, videos, etc. If there are a lot of these elements on the site or they have significant "weight" - all this can slow down the work of your site. This is because large files, especially images and videos, take a long time to load.
When visitors navigate to a site page, its content begins to load. This allows the browser to cache all the information, but this does not mean that all users can see all the content that is located on the page.
If the data takes a long time to load, it is not a fact that all users will wait for this because, in the age of information technology, people are already used to quickly receiving information or quickly going in search of the resource that will give them the necessary information faster. A site that loads quickly has long been the first requirement of modern web resources.
You can expect that users will wait for the page to load completely, but in fact, they may look at the first screen and how slowly it loads, and leave. This means you’re wasting memory and bandwidth by loading the bottom half of the page that they’ll never scroll to.
With lazy loading, your site loads gradually as the user scrolls down the page. With this setup, only the top of the page will load, and the bottom will contain a stub.
As the user scrolls down the page, the content below the stub is gradually loaded and replaced with the actual content. With lazy loading, you don’t load all of the page content at once. It loads as they scroll down the page.
Lazy loading is an alternative to bulk loading your content. Instead of waiting for your entire site to load, your audience can access the information quickly. Your page only loads when it needs to.
When you have a site that takes too long to load, you get a higher bounce rate, and a high bounce rate negatively affects SEO.
How lazy loading affects SEO
From the above, it may seem that lazy loading is the solution to all problems since the page loads quickly and at the same time does not waste unnecessary resources. However, there are some special considerations when it comes to SEO optimization.
Lazy loading affects how search engines crawl your site. If your page doesn't load immediately, search engines can't crawl the entire page. This puts your content at risk of being ignored or misinterpreted.
You probably don't want search engines to receive incomplete information about your site, as this negatively affects your ranking in search results. On the other hand, this doesn't mean you can't use lazy loading. If you use lazy loading, you need to make sure that all relevant content is visible in the viewport. This is implemented using the IntersectionObserver API and a polyfill — and ensures that Google robots see all of your content when crawling your site.
You should make sure that your site's pages support pagination even when you implement infinite scrolling. This is necessary so that search engines can crawl all pages of your site completely and users can share your content.
Google's recommendations for lazy loading
To help companies adapt their sites for lazy loading, Google has created a document that will help webmasters configure their sites for proper crawling when using lazy loading.
In this document, Google recommends that content be loaded in the viewport. The document also emphasizes the need to provide unique links to content that does not load immediately.
In short, when working with lazy loading, Google recommends following these rules:
- Make sure that all the content on your page is accessible to Googlebot.
- Check that all the required content is loaded as it appears in the viewport.
- Ensure that all the required content is loaded as it appears in the viewport.
- Ensure that page loading supports infinite scrolling.
- Check out how lazy loading works with the Puppeteer script.
Benefits of using lazy loading for SEO
1. This speeds up the loading of site pages
Lazy loading is a golden mean between quick access to information for users and saving page loading resources. When using this technology, users get the information they came to your site for faster. Meanwhile, the site itself will load the rest of its part, which is below the first screen.
2. It keeps users on the site longer
The speed of access to information is a very important factor in our time. If a visitor to your site receives information quickly and does not go back to the search results due to slow page loading, he will stay with you even longer. Fast sites are now popular and inspire trust.
3. Helps maximize resources
Since the site does not load the page completely, but does so gradually, as the user scrolls, it does not waste unnecessary resources, shows the response faster, and helps save bandwidth if the user is not going to view the site beyond the first screen. In this way, the load on the site is distributed more evenly and a larger number of users will be able to access your information in a shorter time.
Basic rules for effectively using lazy loading
Lazy loading can be very effective for SEO promotion. However, to achieve maximum effect, you should follow a few recommendations.
Use lazy loading only for content below the first screen
Lazy loading is only effective when used for the bottom of the page. If you integrate technology at the very beginning of the page, then the entire page will load more slowly.
Place useful content or part of it on the first screen of the site
To interest the user, encourage him to stay on the page and scroll through the information beyond the first screen, it is worth placing part of the useful information that the user came for at the beginning of the page. This can be a partial answer to his request or a more complete answer. Thus, the user will be interested in your page and will be ready to read the rest of the content in search of a complete answer to his question.
Optimize videos and images on the page
Images and videos have the greatest impact on the loading speed of your page. The size of these files is usually larger than all other files. If you want to speed up page loading, in addition to lazy loading, you also need to optimize the heaviest files on the page.
To optimize and compress images, you can use the service tiny png. As for optimizing videos, it is best to place them on an external site, such as YouTube. Such videos can then be embedded into the page content and they will not use its additional resources, slowing down the display of content.
Conclusions
Lazy loading can help reduce your site's load time. Instead of waiting for pages to fully load, you can quickly deliver content to your audience. For more efficient operation of the technology, it is enough to configure it correctly and follow the simple recommendations of the Google search engine, optimize the content presentation on the first screen, and optimize the largest files on the page.
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