Regarding First Contentful Paint (FCP) as Google sees it, does this only apply to rendering "above the fold?"
To improve a page for FCP, does the the entire page need to be made faster or only that part that is visible when the page is initially rendered as it is presented to the searcher (which would be at the top of the page)?
Google has an article that explains this. And I've also linked to the more technical W3C article as well. In short, it has nothing to do with "above the fold" explicitly because different computers have different resolutions, and so on. It has more to do with the browser reading the DOM elements to the extent a FCP can be attributed. So basically, if you are calling too many scripts or too large of images early on in your page, it will take longer for the page to reach the FCP threshold.
Google has an article that explains this. And I've also linked to the more technical W3C article as well. In short, it has nothing to do with "above the fold" explicitly because different computers have different resolutions, and so on. It has more to do with the browser reading the DOM elements to the extent a FCP can be attributed. So basically, if you are calling too many scripts or too large of images early on in your page, it will take longer for the page to reach the FCP threshold.
Since I don't have the webmaster skills or access to the server or deep backend needed to make substantial improvements to how my pages load, would an effective strategy be to put the items with 'JavaScripts and other slow loading items' towards the middle or the bottom of the page and leave the top of the page with text and easy loading pictures?
