“Above the fold” is a term originating from newspaper and tabloid design. It refers to the upper half of the paper that shows the most important news and photos of the newspaper. In web design “above the fold” means the part that you can see without scrolling down the page. Guidelines often state that your most important message should be above the fold. However, the Twenty Seventeen theme just allows for a large image, and we received a question about that at Ask Yoast:
Ruth Maude emailed us about the Twenty Seventeen theme – the new default theme for WordPress:
“We’ve always told our customers that their main message and call-to-action should be above the fold. The new WordPress Twenty Seventeen is all image above the fold. Isn’t the fold important anymore?”
Check out the video or read the answer below!
Not much action above the fold?
In the video, I’ll share how I feel about “above the fold” nowadays:
Well, Ruth, you’ve hit my single most important issue with the Twenty Seventeen theme. It’s just too big. I think something should be above the fold too. At the same time, what’s really most important is that you show people that there’s a way to scroll. If people see that there’s a way to scroll on your site, they will scroll and they will find that other stuff, if you’ve made it interesting enough for them. So really good imagery is what Twenty Seventeen is all about. That can really help. And it can give a sort of interaction with a user that can be pretty good. But I wish there was a bit more action above the fold on 2017 too. We agree.
Good luck!”
Ask Yoast
In the series Ask Yoast we answer SEO questions from followers. Need some advice about SEO? Let us help you out! Send your question to [email protected].