It’s too technical.

Describing your complicated technical product in all its glorious technical detail may make your CEO happy—but does it make sense to your customers? If the product you sell is very technical, think about who makes the decision to buy it. If it’s a middle manager with no specialized technical training who cares more about cost-savings than technical specs, make sure you emphasize in simple, easy-to-understand language how much money they could save by buying the product.

It’s about you — not them

Your website talks about your company—what it does, how many years it’s been in business, its list of industry awards. But your readers don’t care. They care about their own problems—and effective sales copy explains how you solve those problems with your product or service. Go through your website copy and count how many times you use the words “I” and “We,” as well as the word “you.” If you use the former more than the latter, it’s a sign your website copy is too self-involved.

It’s missing key information

Businesses sometimes leave out crucial information because of a simple lack of planning—or knowledge of how their visitors are using the web. Many prospects go online to quickly and easily find out as much about your product or service as they need to know—well before they’re ready to buy or hire. Make sure you’re including all the information you need to move them as far along in the sales process as possible before they contact you.

The headlines aren’t effective

Online, it’s likely that the headlines are all your visitors ever read. Online readers have the entire Internet to distract them from your message, and if they can’t pick up your message in a glance, they’ll head to a competitor’s site. If your headlines are not persuasive, you are missing an opportunity to get their business or plant a key message. Be sure all your headlines communicate a strong benefit that’s easily understood without having to read the copy underneath.

If your website copy makes these kinds of mistakes, you could be leaving money on the table. Check over your company’s website to see whether it’s really selling your company effectively. If not, it may be time for a copy overhaul.

It’s the biggest factor used by search engines and readers alike to determine what your content is all about. It makes perfect sense. The title of the page is what grabs the attention of readers when they do a search on the web. It’s a virtual book cover.

Make it easy for others (including the search engines) to figure what your article/page/website is all about. I’m not advocating stuffing every keyword into the title. Just focus it around your highest priority keyword or phrase. (For example, ‘keywords’ was the priority keyword for this post.)

In addition, it is wise to put your priority keyword as close to the beginning of the title as possible. A good rule of thumb is to work you keyword in by the fifth word. (See above.)

Using Keywords in the Subtitle

The second most important place to put your keywords is in the sub-titles (H2s and H3s). Again, search engines are reading more and more like humans every day, and as was pointed out in an earlier post, people typically scan the pages before they read.

Sub-titles are what the eyes scan for as they move down the page, so you’ll want to include your secondary keywords or phrase in addition to the primary one here.

One More Keyword Search Tip

Beyond the titles and sub-titles, placing keywords in the first and last sentences of an article can also be beneficial in helping them rank well in search engines.

What they found is now known as the F-Pattern. Using cameras and infrared emitters hidden in a seemingly ordinary computer, the Neilson Norman Group conducted eye tracking on 232 users. Though the types of content ranged from search engine results pages to product reviews, the way users read stayed the same for the most part.

Reading Behavior

The name F-Pattern comes from the eye tracking heat maps that showed 3 core components of user reading behavior which roughly form the shape of an F.

1. First users will typically read horizontally across the top of the page from left to right. (One reason why headlines matter so much.)

2. The eye will then move down the page a little bit, again moving horizontally from left to right.

3. As the reader moves down the page their eye path stays to the left in a more vertical line just skimming the first bit of the lines.

Exceptions

Of course there are exceptions to the rule; sometimes the pattern resembles more of an E for those who read more than they scan, and at the opposite end of the spectrum the really quick readers will often make a single horizontal sweep across the top then sweep down vertically making the shape of an L flipped upside down.

The takeaway

The title of the content on the page is extremely important since this is the most likely to get read in its entirety, opening lines of the opening paragraphs should grab attention and contain useful information, and content should always be left aligned including sub-heading and bullet points which are easy to scan.

Why “How To” Works

Users search for particular subjects and information at a speed that should appall all those writers who painstakingly perfect their articles and posts. That’s where the headline comes in to hook them. A “How To” headline immediate conveys that there’s knowledge to be gained just a click away.

In our busy world people want easy access to quick information that will give them something for their time. You can maximize the affects of a “How To” headline if you focus on this quick and easy mentality.

How to Improve Search Rankings Within a Month

This also means that headlines which clearly state the benefit to the reader will likely fair better than those that only imply benefits. For that reason “How To” headlines tend to be easier to write because the benefit is already set up in the “How To” you’ve just got to drive the benefit home at that point.

One last trick for “How To” headlines – put an “and” in their for double the benefits.

How to Work Less and Make More

Just remember, you worked hard to get the click through so make the most of it by producing what you promise in your headline and you’ll get a satified reader that’s more likely to share your work with others.