[FAQ]

We’re working on speeding up our site, which is quite heavy on high-quality images. Our developer suggested we use “lazy loading” for them. As I understand it, this means the images only load when you scroll down to them, which sounds great for making the page feel faster initially.

However, I’m a bit worried about the SEO side of things. If the images aren’t all loaded at the start, will Google’s crawler be able to “see” them? I don’t want to hurt our ranking in Google Images or have it negatively affect our page’s overall SEO.

What’s the general consensus on this these days? Is lazy loading a good or bad thing for SEO?

[Jeff Bullas]

An excellent and very relevant technical SEO question. The best practices around this have definitely evolved.

Brief Answer: Yes, lazy loading is now strongly recommended for good SEO when implemented correctly. It significantly improves page load times and user experience metrics, which are key ranking factors, and modern search engines like Google can now properly discover and index lazy-loaded image and video content.

The old concern about search engine crawlers not ‘seeing’ the content is largely a relic of the past; today, the performance gains from lazy loading are a much more significant factor for your ranking.

The primary SEO benefit of lazy loading comes from improving your site’s Core Web Vitals. By deferring the loading of images and videos that are ‘below the fold’ (off-screen when the page first loads), you dramatically speed up the initial rendering time. This directly improves user experience, which is a major signal that search engines use to rank pages. A faster site is, in Google’s eyes, a better site.

Your specific concern about search engine visibility is understandable but no longer a major issue. Modern crawlers, particularly Googlebot, now render pages much like a real user’s browser would. They can execute JavaScript and effectively “scroll” to discover content that loads on interaction. As long as the lazy loading is implemented using standard, modern techniques, you can be confident that search engines will find and index your image and video assets.

However, this does not mean you can ignore other SEO fundamentals. For every lazy-loaded image, its associated text attributes are still critical. You must provide a descriptive filename and, most importantly, clear alt text. This text provides context to search engines about the image’s content, which is vital for ranking in image search.

The one crucial guideline is to not lazy load content at the very top of your page. Your main hero image and any other critical content visible without scrolling should always load immediately, as delaying them can negatively impact your performance scores.

Cheers,
Jeff

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