Location of body text on page - at top or bottom - does it matter for SEO?

[McTaggart]

Hi - I'm just looking at the text on a redesigned homepage.

They have moved all the text to the very bottom of the page (which is quite common with lots of designers, I notice - I usually battle to move the important text back up to the top).

I have always ensured the important text comes at the top, to some extent - does it matter where on the page the text comes, for SEO?

Are there any studies you can point me to?

Thanks for your help, Luke

[McTaggart]

Thanks v much Marie - that's really useful - this sounds like it'd be good to test so will try to do that and see what happens.

[MarieHaynes]

Google's Above the Fold Page Layout algorithm looks at how much good, helpful content is visible without scrolling:

https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2012/01/page-layout-algorithm-improvement.html

There is often a struggle between designers and SEOs because it sure looks nice to have a big huge image taking up all of the above the fold content but if there is no or limited helpful text there then that's not good from an SEO standpoint.

With that said, Google will still index content that is below the fold. It's debatable whether it's given the same weight as content higher up on a page though. Matt Cutts from Google has said before that a link that is higher up on a page is not worth any more than a link lower down on the page. However, some experiments by Moz contradict this.

This might be a fun experiment to do - create content both above and below a hero image and see what ranks best. I might even do that!

Marie