Keep Unique Content Above the Fold

Like the killer in an 80s slasher movie, The Fold just won't die. What is it? It's the invisible dividing line between what you can see when you first load up a webpage and what lies out of sight until you scroll downwards. Web designers used to obsess about the fold and what was, and wasn't above it.

Then, the mobile web came along and suddenly there were a lot more devices to worry about and designers stopped worrying about the fold quite so much. (In fact, designers now spend a lot of time telling people not to worry about the fold). Those cheeky designers... they do like an easy life.

Because, guess what? The fold isn't dead. There's a big space where its body should be. The fold is alive!

Whilst it's arguably true that the average user is much more used to scrolling now than they ever were and it may genuinely not be as important to keep your important information and calls to action "above the fold" Google's John Mueller has been uncharacteristically clear on the importance of putting unique content above the fold.

Mueller explains that when there is a lot of repeated template content above the fold, this can cause problems. It's been a commonly held SEO belief for some time that content further up the page is more important, something that Google has occasionally denied. In this instance however, they are in a rarely transparent mode - you need unique content above the fold.

So if you have a banner on top, and you have generic URL image on top, that's totally fine. But some of the above the fold content should be unique for that page. And that could be something like a heading that's visible in a minimum case, but at least some of the above the fold content should be there,

John Mueller, Google Search Liaison. https://www.seroundtable.com/google-templated-content-above-fold-31559.html

What should you have above the fold?

You're going to have a lot of standard stuff above the fold, potentially taking up a lot of space on mobile. Logos, contact details, menus, baskets... these all take up space. Add in that super-big hero image that marketing simply insisted you have on the page and there may not be any space left for any actual content.

But content is what you need - unique, useful content, right there above the fold.