Your Blog: The MOST Important part

What's the most important and critical part of your blog? It's the same as in newspapers (remember them?)

The most important part of a newspaper is the part "above the fold" -- the top half of the front page.

"Above the fold" for a blog is the part visible in a browser without scrolling, and it's of critical importance. The MOST important stuff needs to be above the fold. As everyone keeps saying, you've got 3 seconds from the average Web/blog surfer -- they'll probably only see the "above the fold section." If what's there grabs them, they may stick around longer.

So what should be above the fold??

It depends on your blogs purpose and goals. Why are you blogging?

My #1 reason for blogging here is to sell books, so pictures of my books are in the sidebars above the fold. The banner area on top has a great name for this purpose, "Blogging for Business," same as my first book. The content area where the posts are is focused and on topic. I'm not blogging on cats and politics and religion -- that wouldn't help my blog's raison d'etre. Since I'm still writing and producing other blog related products, a signup for my newsletter is above the fold -- I want to "grow my list" so I can tell people about new "stuff" and offer great deals to those who subscribe.

If Google AdSense revenue is the #1 reason for your blogs existence, you had better have those ads above the fold. If you only have ads way down the sidebar for example, expect a couple of orders of magnitude less of clicks and income.

If you're blogging to position yourself as an expert, a picture above the fold would be great as well as anything else that says "expertise."

Of course not everything can be above the fold, and what most important can and probably will change.

There are some very common mistakes people make in the "above the fold" section of your blog - I'll go over them in part II in a few days.

Comments

[Dawud Miracle]

You're right, of course. We should place our most important content above the fold.

Yet, what is 'above the fold' on a computer screen? Are we thinking 800x600, 1024x768, 1600x1200 monitor resolutions? Are we assuming full-height browser windows?

My suggestion is to be very picky about what goes in the first 440px of height on your blog. Make sure it's the absolute, got see, everybody needs to know this about me sort of stuff.

One little note, if you're a blogger put your feed link above the fold. It doesn't take up that much space and it's a pretty important piece to retaining readers long-term.

Sorry Ted. I would put your FeedBurner feed just below 'email me' on the left side and better identify it by using the now standard feed icon from feedicons.com.

No rub, just feedback. At least I could find your feed. Some blogs bury it deep down the sidebar somewhere and give it no differentiation from other links.

[T Demop, Blogging for Business]

Dawud,

Thanks for the feedback! Yes, I should have the standard icon and think I'll move it up as you suggest.
It was there, until I recently added the Google search.