Above the fold

What means Above the fold?

In the course of increasing digitalization, many terms from the classical trade have made their way into online marketing. In the print shop trade, a perfect crease is known as a folding line. In the field of search engine optimization or search engine advertising, the English expression “above the fold” is used as the area of a website that a user sees immediately without having to scroll. This area is the most important part of a website for increasing sales and other interactions. Several factors play a role in optimizing the directly visible area. The area of a website that cannot be seen directly is called “below the fold”.

Significance for search engine optimization

If you optimize a website for search engines, you should try to place as much important content as possible in the directly visible area. This increases the user-friendliness of a website, which has a long-term positive effect on the rankings. Furthermore, the probability of sales success, interactions and the acquisition of qualified contacts increases. For quick navigation, a table of contents can also be placed in the directly visible area. This is also positively evaluated by the major search engines, since user experience is positively influenced.

Significance for search engine advertising

If you advertise your products on the Internet, the directly visible area of a website also has the strongest effect. This is where it is often decided how long a user stays on the website and whether a purchase or contact is generated. With a good presentation of the most important products and services, the conversion rate increases and the bounce rate decreases significantly. This, in turn, has a major impact on the return on investment (ROI) and the success of the ads placed.

What do you need to consider?

When presenting your own content, you should consider as many resolutions as possible in your planning. In addition, all common browsers should be tested to ensure a uniform presentation of the content. The display can be tested quickly using various software modules. Google Analytics offers this possibility as well as the most common templates. The placement of advertising banners, Google AdSense, ads or other formats should be kept to a minimum or should be avoided completely. Through various Google updates, websites overloaded with advertisements are more ignored and no longer considered in the top rankings.