Reducing the site's header to get more content Above the Fold

[rpedri]

The user bizzer posted the following question on the post (http://www.seomoz.org/blog/guide-to-ads

"I've got my above the fold area very light on advertising since Panda.  But reading #4 about the "template" makes me wonder if I should go further and reduce the height of my header area and maybe even remove one of my two sidebars, so as to increase the content-to-template ratio above the fold.  Make sense?"

What do you think?

[EGOL]

I used to have a site with a huge beautiful image in the banner.  It looked great.  But it dominated the above-the-fold real estate.  My content was pushed way down, so were the ads that bring revenue.

So, I made a small, sleek banner that is simply the domain name, search box and social share buttons.

After that was remove my pages had a big article title shouting at the top of the browser window and a beautiful relevant image at the top of the article.

Instantly.....

• people were staying longer on the site

• average pageviews per visitor went up

• my bandwidth was cut by gigabytes per day

• revenue went up

Should you do this?    I would make a quick test that does not require a lot of work, toss it up for  a couple of days and let your analytics tell you if it is a good thing.

You can get a quick answer with two hours of work and two days of statistics.

Try it.  Then use data to make your decision.  The actions of your visits will instruct you.

Also consider this.... After you remove the banner will  you have anything that is beautiful above the fold?  Almost every page of my site has a big juicy colorful image at the top of the article.  This eye candy pulls people in.   I don't think that my results would be the same if I had a big page of boring text and no images.

[bronxpad]

You can have a page 1 position 1 site but if it doesn't provide what the user wants visually then your conversions from visitor to buyer will suffer. Basic seo still works but google wants quality sites that are popular. It's best to create a site that is easy for search engines to crawl, visually appealing, easy for a user to navigate and provides all the information a user would need. Also make sure to market your site on all social media.

[cbielich]

Just always ask yourself this question "Is it good for your users or is it going to benefit them." Trust me like many of us SEO we get caught up in the mindset of "old"SEO practices were we want to optimize for ranking. Google does not want us to write content for search engines, write content for the user. So if it's a good decision that will benefit the users then do it.