A webmaster was concerned regarding lead gen forms and pushing their main content below the fold. Their primary question was whether or not it would impact SEO in any way.
John explained he doesn’t think it would impact SEO noticeably.
He also mentioned that Google’s algorithms do examine things that may show up above the fold and if they push the main content down below the fold. It’s also possible that they would see the lead gen form and treat it as an ad.
However, Google might not always respond that way.. It depends on what the page is trying to rank for.
If the intent of the form is to sign up for car insurance, for example, then that’s the user intent behind the page. But if it is a page about why oranges grow and then you have a car insurance form, then that could be considered an ad.
The conversation about this occurs at approximately 11:09 in the video:
John Mueller 09/10/2021 Hangout Transcript
Webmaster 3 11:09
I was just wondering, and you’ve spoken about this before, but recently that, you know, the content, the main content should be sort of above the fold. Would this, like lead generation form, impact SEO, and in any way, because if you scroll down, it’s an article about the Ultimate Guide to phone system prices and at the top here, there’s just a sort of lead gen form where people can compare telephone system prices. Would that impact SEO?
John 11:48
I don’t know, my, my guess is probably not noticeably. What, what effect might come into play is, our algorithms do look for things like ads above the fold, that kind of push the main content down below the fold. And it’s possible that we would think a lead gen form, like that would be kind of like an ad. But I don’t think it’s always, it would always be the case. And it kind of also depends on what, what that page is trying to rank for. If it’s essentially a page that’s trying to rank for, like, I don’t know, get, get car insurance, and the form is about like, sign up for car insurance, then, like, that’s kind of the intent of the page. But if the intent of the page is like, find out more about why oranges grow, and then you have a car insurance form on top, then that seems like more like an ad.
Webmaster 3 12:47
Okay, that makes sense. Thank you. So it’s the relevance of, of the lead gen form, and also with the images, and I don’t know if this would impact SEO at all, but so I guess, based on maybe your opinion, as well, but do you think that we shouldn’t include images? At the top of the article? Do you think we should just have like the introduction, to begin with, and then…
John 13:16
I don’t think it matters that match. I don’t think even for image search that would be like a big difference. If you were looking at image search.
