The 5HITS

Fact 1: The cost of publishing online is cheap. If you are too tight to even pay for hosting, you can use blogspot or even Google sites, but hosting is essentially free these days.

Fact 2: Content is cheap and getting cheaper. The going rate for very at times average articles from India is around $10. That is cheap.

Fact 3: Google keeps on saying, “Write unique content for your users, or that people will link to, or that people will enjoy”

So how can we differentiate content. Huge slabs of content are daunting when a user lands and yet all too familiar. Users are lazy, full of self interest and are arriving at a remote server, with no word of mouth referral and you expect them to read 1,200 words in a single paragraph. Don’t let the click hit the close tab button before you’ve had a chance to get your message across. Getting people to your site takes effort and actions. Why waste this?

First things first. make sure you have done your keyword research and ensure your site is logically structured to allow people arriving to find familiar keywords and that the site hierarchy supports great search engine optimisation (SEO) for data retrieval and indexing purposes by the search engines.

Then think about what makes great content:

• Using headings
• Using bullet points to break up facts
• Using numbered points to show prioritised lists
• Short paragraphs and bolding to facilitate scanning
• The clever use of images to keep the reader engaged, not just smiling faces which add no value
• Conversion placements and options
• Alternate user paths to navigate the path from any page

When a user reads a page on your website, what do you want them to do?

Generally you want to communicate a certain point, and then get them to perform an action. In many cases unfortunately this action is seeing the footer and being not sure what on earth to do next.

Engage with your users, let them get value from your content and finish the page with a need for more.

A KPI alwasy available and seldom used is pages viewed and time on site. Surely, this should increase as your content improves? Look at the time on site for a specific page, look at the number of words on the page and calculate how many users are actually reading at an average reading rate of around 250 wpm. You may be shocked. If you are serious about user engagement, its not always about the biggest website but increasingly about the stickiest content. Watch Google make it so in coming months.