The early days of search engine spiders ruined many content writers. Those that studied how to clearly convey a message began stuffing keywords into website content to improve a website’s Google positioning. To avoid issues with duplicate content, the thesaurus was a handy reference tool, but the content was now just boring with different words. This lead to well optimized websites that were essentially a nightmare to read.
Before I bore you to tears I’ll get to my points. From now on the first paragraph needs to be a summary of what the page is about if it is 200+ words. Web readers are scanners and they will lock on to this if it stands out. Literally, have a summary for a professional biography, one for a standard piece of content, and one for the service/product, or wherever it can be utilized. The summary length is at your discretion, but just keep it short.
Break it down like this:
- Here is what this page includes
- Here are the unique benefits to the reader
- Here is how the reader can learn more, and why they should learn more
4 More Points:
Lose the filler words in the content. Pretend all your readers have a hyperactivity disorder and ran out of medication this morning. Keep it simple and direct – vocabulary only impresses (or is understood) by your English teacher and the British.
If you think there is barely a chance of confusing your reader with buzzwords, dumb it down. Internet marketers say PPC, CPC, SEO, SERP, among a bunch of other silly acronyms and terms that have different interpretations. Will someone create and international committee and get this all settled please?
Keep the business promotional fluff to a minimum. If a reader is on your business’ website and you are going on and on why your company, law firm, medical practice, or web company (ahem, Obu) are so great, it’s not going to convince anyone. They’ll get bored and leave, and the reason they left is only because they are bored.
Lastly, when this post began it was 543 words. After deleting a bunch of the junk we are down to 392. Use the “Red Pen Rule” and try to cut out 30% or more.
Cheers,
Landon