‘Above the fold’ is the top area of your webpage and is the content your users first see when they land on a page on your website. First impressions count, so, it must load quickly, be eye-catching, informative and compelling enough to entice customers to stay.
It’s the first and best chance to make an impression. It’s where you can showcase your brand, get your message across and attract visitors. Your above-the-fold content directly impacts your engagement metrics, as it can encourage users to explore the rest of the site and its offerings.
That said, designing the perfect above-the-fold experience requires a fine balance between design, content and functionality.
What are the SEO Benefits of Content Above the Fold?
When it comes to SEO, the content above the fold is essential for several different reasons. While Google may not prioritize it as much as it used to, it can still have a significant impact on a website’s overall success. Here’s why:
Where Your Content Falls Determines How Long Your Audience Stays on Your Page
When it comes to getting a viewer to stay on your site, the content above the fold can play a huge part in how long they stay. It’s essential to keep your audience engaged and ensure that they stay on your site as long as possible. The more time someone spends on your site, the more likely they are to become engaged with your brand and return to your website in the future.
It Helps with User Experience
User experience is extremely important as far as SEO is concerned. If your site has a good user experience, then you will have an easier time convincing a user to share your site with others. This will lead to more traffic and more conversions.
It Helps You Get More Social Shares
Social media is a huge part of any business’s online marketing strategy. The more shares you get from your content, the more it will be seen by your target audience. Having content above the fold will make it easy for people to share, and it will make it more likely for people to actually see your content.
The content above the fold plays a huge role in this experience. If your users have to scroll down the page to see anything of value, then they are more likely to bounce. This will negatively affect your overall conversion rates.
Tips to Optimize for Above the Fold
Add a compelling Heading Tag
A heading tag or H1 tag is usually the first thing a user sees. The main objective of an H1 tag is to concisely tell the users what your webpage is about and grab their attention. Usually, H1 tags also aim to convey your website’s USP, which sets you apart from your competition and compels the users to give your website a go.
Since the goal here is to grab a visitor’s attention, you must put yourself in their shoes to create an H1 tag. Whether it is a webpage, service page, pillar page, homepage, or anything else, the same approach must be applied to create H1 tags.
Add Keywords in Your Content
Above the fold content is as important for search engines as for the users. To optimize your web pages and make them noticeable for search engine crawlers, it is imperative that you convey what your webpage is about in above the fold area itself.
Keywords are a great way to achieve this. Proper and organic keyword placement can help search engines understand what your webpage is about, and the more quickly it is done, the better it is for your rankings.
CTA Buttons
Call to Action or CTA buttons are the most important factor for user conversion. Depending on the website you are building, CTA buttons can be placed above the fold area as long as they fit in organically.
There are also different types of CTA buttons that you can place on your website. CTA buttons don’t have to be restricted to just being purchase gateways. They can be about subscribing to your newsletter, forms to learn about your services, different resources, and links to other pages.
Content Above of the Fold
Search engines often consider the length of the content to rank websites higher. For instance, the average word count of a webpage that ranks on the first SERP in Google is 2000 words. While this is easy to achieve for blog pages, you might be wondering how to do it for other pages on your website organically. Let’s take an example to understand this.
Suppose you’re a software development company that offers its services in multiple regions. You create content for each of these reasons for providing enough information for your visitors while also getting around the dilemma of stuffing the content with keywords.
Optimize for Featured Snippets
Featured snippets are usually displayed for the top-ranking search results on Google and other search engines. The aim of featured snippets is to answer the search query of the user on the SERP itself.
Usually, the information from featured snippets is displayed from the top-ranking pages, but it can also be used from other pages. This helps websites in gaining more traffic and better rankings.
Use Attractive Images with Alt Tags
Optimizing your images is imperative to make above the fold area more noticeable for the search engines. It is often overlooked by many websites, but taking some time to find the perfect header image can help you pull in more traffic.
Using attractive images, infographics, etc., can take you a long way in capturing the attention of the website visitors. The most important thing you can do for search engines is use “Alt text” for your images. This helps search engines understand what the images on your page are about and improve your rankings.
Improve Your Page Speed
If your website is not properly optimized, it can lead to a bad user experience. If images in the above-the-fold area load slowly and only the content is displayed when a user visits your webpage, it might not be a great first impression on the visitor. Above the fold, content should load all at once for the visitors so they can access information on your website seamlessly.
You can use the process of lazy loading, which only loads the part of the page the user is visiting rather than the entire website at once. If the user only sees the above-the-fold area of your website before leaving, the remaining page will not load.
What to avoid in your above-the-fold content?
The above-the-fold content should grab user’s attention and make them scroll down to dig deeper. Don’t overwhelm them! Cramming a lot of information above the fold will also make your website look substandard and chaotic.
Adding ambiguous info, advertisements, or anything else that might disrupt the visitors’ focus won’t do you any good.
Plus, if you place too many ads in this section, it’s only a matter of time until you find trouble knocking at your door—Google will penalize your website, and you’ll see less and less traffic.
How is above the fold measured?
It is impossible to define a single fold placement for a website. The precise location of the fold differs because of the variety of monitor sizes (both desktops and laptops), screen resolutions, browser plugins and sizes of various phones and tablets.
When determining an average fold placement, most web designers agree that the fold line is at approximately 1,000 pixels wide and 600 pixels tall.
This is the best-case scenario for the most common monitor/browser combination of 1024×786 pixels, with the browser window maximized and no installed toolbars at the top pushing the content down.
Your website’s analytics program should be able to tell you which are the most common screen dimensions for your visitors. While 1024×768 has traditionally been the most common, new dimensions are rising in popularity such as 320×568 and 360×640.
Tips for responsive design
Today, a responsive website is imperative. It not only lessens maintenance costs but also drastically increases conversion rates. In short, it enhances the user experience, which results in lower bounce rates.
The benefits don’t end there: with responsive design, the pages of your site will load faster. And you won’t need to create separate websites for all devices, which means no duplicate content.
In 2024 and beyond, more than half of traffic to your website will come from mobile devices. This means you need to have a responsive site that looks amazing on any screen size and any device.
Below are some of the most common screen resolutions that web designers use for responsive web pages:
Note: There’s no one-size-fits-all approach, so utilize screen sizes after knowing your breakpoints.
Standard website resolutions for mobile screens:
- 360×640
- 375×667
- 414×896
- 360×780
- 375×812
Standard website resolutions for tablet screens:
- 768×1024
- 1280×800
- 800×128
- 601×962
- 962×601
Standard website resolutions for laptop screens:
- 1920×1080
- 1366×768
- 1440×900
- 1536×864
- 1024×768
The first impression is the key to success here. You want to provide the best possible browsing experience for regulars and first-time visitors. If they’re forced to do a lot of zooming to read the contents of your page, they’ll most likely abandon it and go looking for a more user-friendly site.
If you have too much content on a page (especially above the fold), try to reduce it and focus on the most important information. If you follow these steps precisely, you’ll be well on your way to providing your users with a flawless, responsive experience!
Conclusion
Your above-the-fold content should pique visitors’ interest. Therefore, it’s essential to add your most engaging content and an emphatic call to action there. Using strategic CTAs will help guide visitors through the selling/signup process.