Rotating banners, also sometimes called homepage carousels, are viewed favorably by some web designers for SEO, Orange County. But do they help or hurt your page ranking? Those who deride them feel that they take up too much real estate on your homepage. In light of that, let’s take a look at these simple tips you can use if you’ve decided you want to incorporate a rotating banner on your site.

The Rules for Rotating Banner Usage

The most obvious rule to follow is that your banner should be working correctly. That means it shouldn’t cause page loading difficulties either on mobile or desktop sites. If you’re using an SEO company to run your site and they’ve suggested the inclusion of a rotating banner, that’s fine, but make doubly sure that they know how to install and monitor it correctly.

Keep in mind that users aren’t likely to see all of the slides. They’re going to continue scrolling down the page at some juncture, so if your rotating banner contains links to important site features, make sure there are alternate ways of getting there. In the same vein, your most critical slide, the one that you want people to see the most, should always be the first slide that appears. Most visitors aren’t going to be patient and wait to see all of the rest of the slides.

Your banner should reinforce the feel and context of the products that you sell or the services you offer. They are designed to quickly grab the attention when someone arrives at your site, so if they aren’t a vivid showcase of what your company provides, there is little point in having one.

Make sure that when people interact with the banner, those interactions make sense from an intuitive standpoint. In other words, the slides should not rotate too quickly, and they should pause when a person hovers over one that has captured their interest. If someone clicks on it, then it must pause permanently and expand. There should be arrows or indicators that allow a person to go back or forward with the slides if they so choose.

If you follow each of these rules, it is highly likely that you’ll find a rotating banner to be a suitable option for your website. Just make sure that it is working properly and that when you check the site analytics tools, that it is encouraging a high click-through and conversion rate.