Jenny @ FrugalGuruGuide said:

The more relevant material above the fold, the better.  What does that mean in plain English?

"Above the fold" is a holdover from the nearly-extinct printed newspaper era:  the top half of the front page.

Applied to web design, it's the part of your web page that appears on the screen before the user needs to scroll down. 

I like to think that it means "you can read it on your screen without scrolling".  Insert some statistic about how only x% of people read the articles past the headline and it would still be useful, heh.

Jenny @ FrugalGuruGuide said:

The more relevant material above the fold, the better.  What does that mean in plain English?

"Above the fold" is a holdover from the nearly-extinct printed newspaper era:  the top half of the front page.

Applied to web design, it's the part of your web page that appears on the screen before the user needs to scroll down. 

And the fact that it has any bearing on rankings any more bothers me. Screen resolutions and sizes can vary so much on desktop/laptop screens, let alone the significant fraction of visitors on mobile these days. Most of what is above the fold on my PC is below the fold on my tablet.

The more relevant material above the fold, the better.  What does that mean in plain English?

"Above the fold" is a holdover from the nearly-extinct printed newspaper era:  the top half of the front page.

Applied to web design, it's the part of your web page that appears on the screen before the user needs to scroll down. 

Large headers could now result in Google penalties.

Also, being schema.org compliant is likely to give your site a boost.  So far, only Thesis appears to offer this.