It’s not enough to know about seo and how links work if you want sustained traffic. It was never just about placing those keywords at just the right density if you were really interested in getting people to bookmark your site. And even just using all the latest technology like website video marketing and social media won’t get people to hang around unless you know how to write and what people want from the reading they do on the Internet.
Readers That Scan
And I use the term ‘reading’ lightly. It seems that most of the people who surf are scanners more than readers. Maybe because we all grew up watching too much television and ruined our attention spans, or maybe because we all look for immediate gratification in today’s world—either way studies have shown that Internet people scan what they read.
So that means you need to make it easy for them. Don’t intimidate their eyes and short attention spans with long blocks of text they’ll just click away from. Break things up with bullet points and subheads—the print version of the thirty second sound bite if you will.
And don’t meander. Get right to the point. Leave the literary stuff to those more capable. Here you’re writing to make your point fast. Studies have shown that you’ve got less than nine seconds to capture a reader’s attention. Take any longer and you’ve lost them to the ocean of information on the net and you’re sunk.
Short Sentences
So you need to write well. At least in a journalist/seo way. Sentences need to be short and you need to think about a pyramid structure with the most important information at the top. Leave yourself enough time to go through after you’re done and reread out loud. Or get someone to do that for you. What will send a prospect packing just as fast as long winded self importance in your text are grammatical or spelling errors.
And remember who you’re writing for. The whole point is give your reader some information that they can use—solve a problem for them and they’ll come back to see what else you’ve got. Write to show off your skills and you can be sure that they’ll click away and never come back.
In many ways writing well for the Internet means that you need to keep it all simple, and remember you don’t want to bog readers down.
I'm a scanner myself. Thanks for the writing tips!
I think it's important to make it clear in the first few sentences what your post is about. If you don't have their attention, and tell them what they need to know up front, you'll lose your audience
Just by subscribing for several blogs you will learn to be a scanner otherwise you would have to spend hours each day just to filter out good content. By simple checking headlines and the first sentence you will know if the post is worth reading or not.
You're right that people are scanners. It's incredibly important for us to use bold titles throughout our articles, to use bullet points, to use short paragraphs with a line between each paragraph.
We've got to make it easy for our readers to jump through our articles and look for the information that they are looking form.
Can any one check my blog and give me a feedback about my writing style. Please give a correct feedback !
Hi Rob,
Wow – nine seconds to grab someone's attention on the web? I am amazed we still have that long!
I am learning how to write for the web, rather than the overly wordy methods I used while at school and uni but I think I am getting better at it.
The scanning point is a great one and I am getting more into that mindset myself, trying to keep up with over 200 blog feeds on my RSS reader!
David