Before we delve in, here’s a simple explanation of what is meant by “above the fold”. This is basically the content, images and\/or text, which appears on the screen when a user lands on your page without the need to scroll down to see more.<\/p>\n
Planning your content “above the fold” is important for a couple of reasons, primarily encouraging instant user engagement and also for SEO. Let’s start by taking a look at user engagement……..<\/p>\n
First impressions count everywhere and this is also true for effective website design<\/a>. Would you rather be confronted by a scree of text or an element which is going to catch your attention, tell you quickly and succinctly that you are in the right place and encourage you to investigate further? Pretty obvious I think. So what are the main elements to consider?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Titles and sub-titles are critically important to introduce the page and should be considered very carefully. Think about the questions your users may be asking themselves when they land on your page and how your main headings can address that. Make them interesting and compelling.<\/p>\n This is also important as it acts as the “hook” into the rest of your text. Get this right and it’s likely that your visitors will engage and read on. Don’t be too formal and stuffy and think about your target audience. Also consider using different text styling to make the first paragraph stand out.<\/p>\n All too often when designing websites for dentists, we see clients’ text which looks like it has simply been re-purposed from Wikipedia or a text book – whilst there may be a place for this on some websites, typically your main audience is the general public so pitch your information accordingly. At Dental Media, our copy writer can help you get the balance just right.<\/p>\n We call these “calls-to-action” and they are designed to do just that. This may be a prominently placed button which links to a special offers page or maybe a snippet of a glowing patient testimonial in a strategically placed call-out. The key here is to maintain a sensible balance – sufficient to grab the user’s attention but avoiding making your page look like a market stall.<\/p>\n It’s worthwhile mentioning image sliders at this point, if only to dispel the myths we often see written about them. Image sliders have become very popular over the last few years and they offer a good way of presenting a lot of information to users quite quickly.<\/p>\n Some commentators consider that image sliders are always bad and that they detract from SEO, but this is inaccurate and ill-considered. Any page element which is configured poorly is certainly problematic and this holds for image sliders too. So where too many slides are used, perhaps with conflicting messages and resulting in slow page load speed, this would be present problems. However, a well-configured slider can be an attractive feature and if configured correctly will not harm SEO in any way. So the key to effective image sliders lies in the implementation.<\/p>\n It is quite easy to see the user engagement argument but what’s all this about “the fold” and the effect on SEO?<\/p>\n Just over a year ago, Google made an update to it’s search algorithm which was designed to relegate websites which showed too many advertisements “above the fold” i.e. content which it considered to be weak and not necessarily in the user’s best interests. Now whilst this article is not about how adverts can affect SEO, this examples serves to show that Google *does* take notice of page layout and can certainly interpret it. There are no definitive answers here but we do recommend that some high quality textual content and page elements such as ‘h’ tags are placed above the fold i.e. ‘good stuff’ which Google likes to get its teeth into.<\/p>\n The other key factor for SEO is related to “dwell time” (more here<\/a>). There is growing evidence that Google is assessing how long users remain on a web page and then using this is a quality indicator for ranking purposes. So any page element which improves user dwell-time can impact on your search positions<\/a>. If your content above the fold grabs attention and encourages users to hang around, then you are in good shape.<\/p>\n No, absolutely not. We do have clients who insist that all content needs to be displayed without the need to scroll but this is an outdated concept and misguided. From a practical perspective, the “fold” varies hugely depending on the display device. Recent studies also show that most users expect to scroll to reach information that is lower down on pages. However you still need to grab their attention first!<\/p>\n There is a lot of nonsense talked about web page layout but also some basic common sense guidelines which must be followed. Understand which elements should be placed above the fold and make sure your dental web designer understands too.<\/p>\n If you would like a free, no-obligation review of your practice website, please get in touch with the Dental Media team on 01332 672548<\/strong>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" What does this mean and why is it important for your dental practice website? Before we delve in, here’s a simple explanation of what is meant by “above the fold”. This is basically the content, images and\/or text, which appears …<\/p>\nTitles<\/h3>\n
The first paragraph<\/h3>\n
Other elements to grab attention<\/h3>\n
Image sliders – the myths<\/h3>\n
How does all of this affect search engine optimisation?<\/h3>\n
Does everything need to be above the fold?<\/h3>\n
Summary<\/h3>\n