What does “above the fold” mean?
“Above the fold” refers to anything readily visible on a website when opened for the first time – it’s what website visitors can see without having to scroll around or click anywhere. Smart Washington, DC SEO web designers have made this content visible above the fold at The Washington Post.
And here’s a snippet of what’s also on the homepage, although this information isn’t visible without having to scroll. Reminder – a team of SEO web designers did this purposefully.
Notice most of the conversion happens above the fold (get a digital subscription today, subscribe to home delivery, gift subscriptions, make us your homepage, and of course the most relevant and engaging news articles of the day). Some calls to action are visible below the fold of what’s initially visible, but that real estate is used mostly for news article and blog posts. This is no accident – Washington Post SEO web designers did this for a reason.
Why is what’s above the fold so important?
According to Peep Laja (in 2013), despite the scroll-oriented sensation that’s become so popular across the Internet, content and calls to action that are above the fold still capture 80% of our engagement. According to this statistic, 80% of engagement on your website will occur in the area that’s visible without having to scroll. SEO web designers need to take this into account when developing a website. What is needed is the ability to interact with your website, since traffic alone will not produce results.
Let’s not overstate things – having fully comprehensive web pages on your website is extremely important. The entire page helps for conversion, because scrolling isn’t going away anytime soon. People still like to see everything your landing page has to offer.
SEO web design for your website
The most important point you should take away is this: make sure the pages people visit most have easily accessible content above the fold. If you want people to become better educated about your product or service, make sure recent blog posts are accessible above the fold. If you want people to provide an email address and sign up for your newsletter, that invitation needs to be available immediately upon arrival. Developing your website with SEO in mind is one way to tackle this issue head on.
The trick is to make it easy for people to engage with your website. In this day and age, people are constantly distracted, so you probably won’t have the luxury of having visitors surf your website for an hour before providing contact information. This is especially true with 38% of daily media interactions occurring on smartphones and 9% on tablets – people are engaging with you on the go, so you need to be memorable and engaging very quickly.
Never forget that providing informative content and an engaging website experience is important for attaining and keeping web traffic. Actually converting that traffic into business is a matter of facilitating the experience. Focus your SEO web design efforts above the fold and win business.
