Optimizing your web headlines
Posted on April 28, 2008
Filed Under Search Engine Optimization, web design, web traffic |
Nugget:
“Hold their attention, whatever the cost”
James has put up his new online business site. He’s gone through the pain of setting up a google analytics account and is looking forward to seeing a high number of visitors. He is overjoyed when his dreams begin to come through and his stats show that he is getting a lot of visitors. he notices another stat - the bounce rate - its also high. He decides to find out what that also means. To his chagrin it means most of his visitors don’t go past the landing page. What is he doing wrong? How can he handle this problem?
The above scenario is one that a lot of online business site owners face. They’ve heard so much about getting the needed web traffic to their sites, but no one has told them the other side of the story.,
Its one thing to draw the visitors to your site, but another thing entirely to keep them there.
Your visitors will decide whether they’re going to stay on your site withing seconds of getting to your landing page. As a matter of fact if they don’t find anything to keep them there they’ll be off, faster than they got there.
Having taken the pain to get to your site (most of them searching for something specific, or at the very least something to hold their attention) they deserve to find reliable information, good content, or useful products and services .
It isn’t enough just to have good content. Good content is as good as those who eventually get to read it. No matter how good your content is you’ll still need to get your readers interested enough to read through.
One of the ways of doing this is by creating headlines that arouse interest . This alone on its own is an art that any one who wants to reduce their bounce rate, and keep their visitors around long enough to sell them something must learn.
I’ve put together 4 tips that will help you come up with the right headlines for your pages.
- First you must ask yourself the question, ‘What words are likely to have drawn visitors to my site?’. Your visitors are not likely to have typed in your sites url mysteriously into their address bar to get to your site. Its clear that one way or the other your visitors would have come across specific keywords that would have aroused their interest enough to visit your web site. By focusing on these words and using them tactfully on your landing page to lure your visitors into reading the important content about the products and services you offer, you’ll be able to get your visitors to read more of your content, and get to see more of your products and services.You can also note here that if you treat each page as a landing page and ensure that you apply this tip to each of your pages you are likely to have your visitors reaching more than 3 of your pages at a go. this will give you more exposure and increase the likelihood of selling a product or service to each visitor.
- Use links within your content. A link takes you from one page to another - obvious fact that could change your fortune. The link is your friend. By linking in as many pages to each peice of content , and by making it easy for your visitors to reach other pages within your site without necessarily having to click some button or the other, you’ll increase the probability of your visitors getting to your other pages. The trick is to make sure that your content are related to each other one way or the other. As long as you keep your content interesting, you’ll be able to add links to products that are related to that content, without looking like your just bent on selling a product or service.
- Do a simple profile of your likely visitors. You don’t have to be a genius or guru at this. Simply put your self in their shoes and ask yourself “What would arouse my interest?”. Using the normal approach may not work for you. By profiling your visitors and future clients you have a better idea of how to phrase your headlines to hit the right note with them. Depending on what you are offering you may realize that a reassuring and caring tone would send across the right message, or on the other hand a strong and assertive tone would arouse the right amount of interest. By profiling your clients you can usually narrow down your list of possible web headlines to a limited few.
- In selling your products and services, always look at them from a clients perspective. Avoid gatting carried away with all the wonderful things YOU think your product or service incorporates. For most of your clients there may just be one or two appealing benefits. Rather than trying to make them see things your way it may be better to highlight these benefits ( you can always figure these out from user feedback), and maybe point out your enhancements to these specific benefits. If you feel strongly that there are certain features that are not so obvious but distinguish your product or service, link to another page where interested visitors can get this information, without loosing the attention of uninterested ones.
I’m sure these few tips will go a long way in helping you come up with the right web headlines for your internet pages. There’ll be more information on this as well as other related topics.
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