Should You Shorten Content? - Why Isn’t Your Content Popular?
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Never forget your market. Content on the Internet isn’t at all the same as content you’ll find in print media. Even in news stories, the phrasing and words used online versus in the paper can be very different. Why? Because Webmasters have learned how to tailor their content for their market -- namely, online readers.
Online readers aren’t at all like readers of the paper. Internet users, so used to high speeds and quick page loads, find that they have very little time to linger on pages. According to a study conducted by Nielsen//NetRatings in August 2004, the average Internet user spends around one minute studying a single page.
That gives them enough time to read maybe a single paragraph of content in full (so much for all your hard content-writing work). The truth is, most Internet traffic doesn’t sit and read. They sit and skim. When they glance quickly at your site’s content, what do they see?
Are their eyes treated to links which scream for attention, engaging video, flashy images and banner headlines? Because it’s important to include all these features with your text-based content. Let’s see if we can’t get that 60 seconds to stretch at least a little longer, yes?
Use engaging visuals not just to draw the eye, but to draw the traffic in. Readers are much more likely to react to an amusing or intriguing image than they are to seven blocks of black and white paragraphs. And if a picture really is worth a thousand words, you should start exploring another important site concept: shortening your content.
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