We've built traditional Wordpress websites, and more recently anchor point scrolling one page websites on Wordpress. Anchor point scrolling seems to be a growing trend in design, but we are seeing a significant drop in rankings from this design type. Does anyone have any insights into this topic and best practice advice? While we have tried to steer clients away from this type of design, they seem to love it from a navigation stand point. Trying to explain the value of top of fold content to them, seems to be falling on deaf ears. I appreciate the feedback.
I would assume you are talking about "Hero" home pages and 'above the fold content'. Yes above the fold content is important for page rankings but only when related to page speed. A lot of times the hero images are very large and will increase load time, this is especially important for Mobile devices. Here pages with content below the fold will rank well as long as the page loading speed isn't too much. Optimize the Hero image and create great content below the fold and you will rank. Make sure you have plenty of relevant content on your other pages and you have appropriate internal linking and you will rank. Earning some external backlinks will also help.