Know-How Exchange : SEO/SEM

Way back in the last century, when you sent a business letter, you would typically fold and 0.5 x 11 sheet of paper into thirds, so that it would fit into a number 10 envelope. You would typically try to fold the paper so that you can see the first third when you remove the paper from the envelope. Those things which you see on that first third, such as the letterhead, inside address, salutation, and the first line or two of text is "above the fold".

Back in the days of snail mail, when writing a persuasive letter, you would want to have a headline with your basic business proposition "above the fold" so that it would be easy to see, and many people also repeat the basic message in a p.s.

That's a bit of origin and background. I'm not an expert on SEO, and so I will leave that part of the discussion to others. Good luck.

Above the fold content is what shows up on your computer screen when you land on the page. If you have to scroll down to see it, it's below the fold.

When a search engine crawls through your website to see what it says, material above the fold (especially headlines and sub-heads) is given more weight than stuff that's farther down the page. So considering all the other factors that go into determining your search ranking, the content above the fold is more important than what's below the fold.

Of course, relevant click-through is most important of all. It would be a mistake to put a lot of stuff above the fold just to fool the search engine bots, unless it actually improved your relevant click-through rate.

A good rule of thumb is to write persuasive copy and trust that the bots are smart enough to recognize it ... and test, test, test everything. There is always a better way.

The term describes any content that sits inside the main browser window before you begin scrolling.