Importance of text above the fold
-
I am being advised by an SEO that each page of my ecommerce site must have a significant block of unique text "above the fold" to do well in Google post-Panda. This recommendation is at odds with what my design/usability/conversion people want to see. The current site design features eye-catching graphics just below the header and goes right into product listings, with SEO text near the bottom of the page.
How important is it to have SEO text near the top of a page?
-
I agree with your SEO that text contained at the top of the article is given more weight then text at the bottom of an article. It is really difficult to provide any estimates on how much more weight.
If Google would allow us to look at their algorithms, we would be able to provide a specific answer. Since that is not the case, we are left to making our best guesses using experience and related knowledge as a guide.
We know that keywords in a title have more weight when they are earlier in the title. We know it makes sense from a user experience perspective to offer your best, most relevant content upfront rather then buried at the bottom of an article. I would build upon that logic and my experience to suggest that relevant text be provided at the top of the page (all things being equal).
-
I understand your point about testing the effect of the change on the conversion rate, but my question is more basic than that. Is it a given that there needs to be text above the fold to satisfy google, or is text lower down on the page just as good for SEO purposes? I am not sure how seriously to take the SEO suggestion.
-
As a general rule, when a SEO makes a suggestion you feel is in conflict with the user experience I would recommend A/B testing.
Make copies of a few pages with the recommended changes. Have half your users see the original page "A" and the other half will see the modified page "B". Track the results for a period of time and closely monitor all relevant statistics. If the SEO changes do not have a negative impact, then make the change. Otherwise, you would need to weigh the possible SEO benefit (higher ranking/traffic) with the lower user experience. In most cases, what's good for the user is also good for SEO.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
How much is the importance of grammar and formation of sentence in Meta Title and Description in SEO
We are having, say around 100 products, cakes to be specific, with different flavors, available in more than 100000 areas of 200 plus cities. Now to make it SEO friendly, we have an algorithm which creates a unique page for each cake name, with area name, and few keywords, so that if customer is searching for cake delivery in any specific area of specific city, the user will easily find the right page. Now the thing is - when creating such unique pages for different combinations of cake, city and areas, it is also creating some content. So we wanted to know how much is the importance given to Grammatically correct statement compared to incorrect statement in ranking a page. for example: there is 1Kg Chocolate Cake, available in Satellite Area of Ahmedabad city, which one of the following Page title will have higher ranking? Case A: Send 1Kg chocolate cake to satellite area ahmedabad online Case B: Online 1kg Chocolate Cake delivery in Satellite Ahmedabad In Case A: the statement contains all keywords, but there are some grammatical mistakes in formation of statement as well as Capital Characters are not used for Satellite (Area name) and Ahmedabad (City name) In Case B: the statement is grammatical proper, as well as capital characters are used for Area name and City name. Does all search engine also have their algorithm designed to analyze the grammatical structure of page title or it just scans the keywords? Thanks in advance. Team Midnightcake
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | midnightcake1 -
Most important things for seo a travel website
Hello everyone a website working on travel field with this address : https://goo.gl/4gaoAn Let me know what do you think about it and please give me some advises about it get improve on google rankings. If you be able to take time and give me some advises based on what you see on the website, would be great for me. Also what would work best for me to have a great link building strategy after penguin 4.0 update? and what does my site lack right now? Thanks and waiting to hear from you asap.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BahadorGh0 -
Do authority brand (business name) anchor text links still drive SEO rankings?
i have a question about links....if you get a link from a really good authority e.g. bbc.co.uk - website but the anchor text for that link is only your business name e.g Moz and not a chosen SEO keyword target..do you still stand to gain in terms of your overall SEO rankings?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CayenneRed890 -
Are footer links important?
We currently display a list of links in the footer of our site to help boost SEO. They were put in place years ago and in a recent discuss with our UX team they requested we remove them from the site. Do footer links have any value? Or is this an old dated practice that no longer works? If we remove the footer links should we expect to see if have an impact on our SEO traffic?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Mivito0 -
Where's all the text?
Hi, We recently (yesterday) had a developer make a new site for us on Wix http://www.appointeddhq.com/ as the one we were planning to put up had a few teething issues (the beackend booking system wasn't ready and we needed something up immediately for a TV show we were being featured in). Having now had the chance to look through it, I'm not quite sure what's going on. None of the text appears to be there on any page, I can't find any of the descriptions we gave the developer, the alt tags behind pictures (and even the pics themselves) don't appear to be there, the URLs are messed up, titles are incorrect and there are no title tags to be found. Am I misunderstanding or is the whole site built in java? Obviously, this is quite a huge issue and I'll want to get it sorted immediately, but I thought it best to see what the good folks here though. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | LeahHutcheon0 -
Anchor Text Usage
Hi, What is the best way to use anchor text during link building after recent updates from Google. I thinking of doing the following: 60% Brand Keyword (my site name)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Vegitss
20% Click here, visit this site etc
20% myurl.com
10% a Mix of both broad & phrase match of my targetted keyword. What do you suggest Does anyone have a working strategy? Will be waiting for your replies...0 -
ECommerce Products substantially similar but with important differences?
Hi eCommerce gurus, We sell a number of products, electrical in nature where the unit is from a group (sub-model is probably a good description) but each has important different physical properties. An example description is: #1 Clipsal C-Bus Wireless Plug Adapter 1 Channel Leading Edge Dimmer, 3A C-Bus Wireless Plug Adaptors allow mains GPO operated equipment to be controlled as part of a C-Bus Wireless network. The buttons on a C-Bus Wireless Plug Adaptor are able to control a load connected directly to the unit and control loads connected to other C-Bus Wireless units. Also, buttons on C-Bus Wireless Wall Switches can control a load connected to a Plug Adaptor.Each button can be programmed to function as an on/off, dimmer or scene control, as well as a number of other options. The other 2 in this group are: #2 Clipsal C-Bus Wireless Plug Adapter 1 Channel Trailing Edge Dimmer, 2A #3 Clipsal C-Bus Wireless Plug Adapter 1 Channel Relay, 10A but the item description details are really the same as #1. This trips Roger's duplicate content error and so probably Google's as well. I can consolidate into one product with 'options' but then can't list the three products discretely on Google shopping etc, and currently the 'Category' is a much wider 'Wireless Automation Products' which I don't really want to sub-categorise into 'C-Bus Wireless Plug Adapters' with three items in it making it harder for people to find. I can 'Spin' the description but this seem stupid and even more so for other items I have that have 12 different derivations of the same basic product Any Suggestions?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BM70 -
Hidden Text? Part of the game or a major faux pas?
Hey all... I've been doing some competitive analysis lately on different niches in different cities, and upon looking at source code have noticed MANY sites(typically 2-3 of the top listed sites in each niche) who have hidden text, blocked by a box/logo, colored the same as the background, or both. Is this a typical practice? My understanding is Google seriously frowns on this, so is it worth reporting competitors who are doing such things? I don't see any grey areas in this matter and think it's a serious violation, but here these sites are at the top.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | dignan990