CTAs Above The Fold Is Not Bad For Google Search Or SEO, Says Google

There is a new SEO myth floating around that says CTAs, call to action buttons, placed above the fold is bad for Google search ranking and SEO. That is simply not true and John Mueller of Google said so on Reddit saying “Google search doesn’t say anything about CTA buttons.”

The question was “Does Google recommend removing CTA buttons from above the fold?” He added:

I have a client (I’m a web designer) who’s working with a local SEO agency and they recommended the following change ” it is very important that any CTA (call to action) buttons are removed from the above the fold, as Google documentation does not recommend placing them in the first part of the screen.”

It’s the first time I hear about this and wanted to know if it’s true because I’m not sure about this, although they’re a big agency here. If it’s true why? How can this affect SEO? As a website strategist, this seems strange and not very strategic.

John replied “Google search doesn’t say anything about CTA buttons. Maybe it’s an ads or analytics things?” He added “I think just placing them partially on the fold would be a problem, because that could break the HTML over time.”

So I am trying to think, where can this have come from? I remember writing a story about how some large CTAs can be seen as ads and thus the ad pushing down the primary content of the page and thus it may be impacted by the old page layout algorithm. So maybe it is coming from there? But again, normal CTAs are fine.

Forum discussion at Reddit.