What Is Above The Fold?

Grabbing the attention of your website visitors with your first impression is essential to making them stay on the page and converting them into profitable customers.

This means the content at the top of your page needs to engage a visitor, and get them to start scrolling down the rest of your webpage. This content is your “above the fold” material.

Optimizing your “above the fold” content is essential for digital marketers, SEO specialists, and website owners if they are to improve their landing page conversion rate and increase their eCommerce store profitability.

What is above the fold?

The fold is the point on a web page where the bottom of the screen reaches. Above the fold refers to anything that is shown before this point, making it visible without scrolling.

The term was coined by graphic designers in newspapers and magazines, who wanted to distinguish an article that could be seen at a single glance alongside other articles that would need to be unfolded (i.e., “flipped”) to read them.

This is because in the early days of publishing, when newspapers were the primary means of sharing news, they were folded in half to be stacked on the news stand. Thus, only the top half of the front page was visible.

The content, such as headlines, writing, and photographs, that were visible after the paper had been folded in half, needed to be eye-catching and engaging enough to make a passerby want to pick up the paper and read it. Thus the term “above the fold” was created.

Source: Reliablesoft

On a webpage, “above the fold” is anything visible when the page first loads. This aspect of website design is vital in creating a website with higher conversion rates and better metrics.

Why is Above the Fold Important?

Optimizing the fold design of your website is crucial to boosting usability and improving your customer’s user experience.

Web designers now need to create websites that are optimized for all screen sizes, screen resolutions, and mobile devices and ensure the fold content grabs the relevant audience’s attention and keeps them scrolling through the page.

Creating a responsive design with informative content on the prime real estate that is your website’s homepage is a key consideration in your web design. The content below your fold line (or the bottom portion of a web page visible upon landing on it), often social proof and informative material, is highly important content, but your website visitor must scroll to see it. Images might also play an important role in your SEO strategy. This means you must maximize this content’s viewability with optimized on-page user behavior, which starts with optimized above the fold content.

Above the Fold FAQ

Does content above the fold affect rankings?

Above the fold content likely plays a role in rankings, because it will affect metrics such as the bounce rate of the web page. Furthermore, above the fold content may contain important keywords relevant to search engine algorithm queries.

An increasing number of SEOs are claiming that Google is filtering and limiting content shown above the fold by default and is negatively affecting rankings.

What began as a theory formulated by SEOs has now become a common belief among practitioners that anything that appears above the fold is being filtered out. However, this theory doesn’t seem to be substantiated by any evidence from Google. While above the fold content likely won’t attract any link building, it helps your audience understand what your website offers, which will help them navigate your website.

What is an example of an above the fold CTA?

When creating a landing page, it is helpful to apply an above the fold call to action. An example of an above the fold call to action would be “Download our free eBook.”

Generally, an above the fold CTA should contain as few words as possible, which are compelling and can easily be read by users. Ideally, the call to action should appear in a prominent position on your webpage and shouldn’t require any scrolling.

Is Above the fold still important?

Some SEOs that have increased their visibility have made the claim that the above the fold concept is irrelevant because Google uses other signals such as domain authority, page speed and content length to determine rankings. For them, this concept isn’t important anymore and they do not need to put any effort into above the fold calls to action.

Sites with well-written content, like Wikipedia or The New York Times, can still rank well even if none of it appears above the fold. However, understanding what Google deems as important is not easy because there is no official statement about why some sites are not rank-worthy.

Above the fold is likely very important because of its role in on-page user experience and engagement.

Summary

Hopefully, this article has given you a better understanding of Above the fold.

The important take-home message to remember is to create one that is as clear, succinct, and engaging as possible when designing a website. You need to tell your audience they are in the right place immediately, and you do this with your above the fold content.

To learn more about SEO website design, reach out to us at Loganix about our SEO services today.