5. Top fold issues

Living Life Above-the-Fold

Internet marketing folk describe the section of a web page that is visible without scrolling as being above the fold. This is the sweet spot of a web page; the section that every visitor will see. The actual size of the page that will appear without scrolling varies by screen resolution. A page on a monitor set at 1280x1024 will show more than a page on a monitor set at 640x480. Marketing gurus obsess over the minimum targeted resolution of potential customers because advertisers want to see there ads.

The prime virtual real estate of Above-the-Foldville is also the most logical place to put your logo and the primary navigation of our web site. The important information always belongs near the top of the page as possible. This placement has a side benefit for Search Engine Optimization: search engines also consider the top fold as a priority by reading the page code starting with the header.

Like Fish, Text is Best Served Fresh
The Internet is filled with stale, moldy web pages. Keep your web site updated frequently and post these text updates proudly above the fold. These updates will keep your page interesting to visitors and will have a direct effect on the frequency of Google spider visits as well. You need to update your content and links both to attract your visitors with new information and to allow the spiders to consider the changes. A changing page is more visited and thus better indexed. Remember the Golden rule in optimization: the more frequently you update your web site, the more frequently it will be frequented by visitors and spiders alike. And what could be better than more people and more spiders?

Links
Links in the top fold are of greatest importance. Why they are so influential? The top fold links are valuable for reasons we explained partly above. They are the keys users and spiders will use to reach your content. Thus you will have to define what the most important part of your site is you need to lead the visitors to. The outbound linking section here is recommended only if you are sure that you change the link information at least daily. This way you will keep the visitors to your site, making them back for more your picks to other interesting topics on other sites. You may found that I am talking always about the user part of your site, while considering the search engine optimization issues. You need to understand that the traffic and specifically the user retention are of the most important factors for your search engine visibility.

The Invisible Value of Images
Images play several roles in search engine optimization. The appearance of images is naturally important to the overall look and presentation of your web site. But beyond the superficial value, carefully named images can also serve a dual role in search engine optimization. One trick is to use relevant keywords in the name of the images. For example, if your company is a SEO software company, link the images with relevant SEO terms like searchengineguide.gif and seoarticle.jpg. Even the name of directory and subdirectories can contain meaningful keywords.