How Much Content Comprises A “Proper” Web Page?
Content Length Misconceptions – Learn What Not to Do
Yesterday, I had a conversation with a prospective client pertaining to issues revolving around the lack of informative, quality content on each of the pages on their website. This is not the first time over the years, that I’ve had to address this matter with prospects. And in all cases, I kid you not, each person has strongly defended the lack of content, telling me that either: a) they read “somewhere”; or b) their web designer “instructed them”, that the correct length of the content on each web page should be entirely visible above the fold, and NEVER below the fold. So they did everything correctly and “web proper”. Sigh …
The term “above the fold” is used in web development to refer to the portions of a web page that can be visible on the monitor without scrolling.
Umm … so based on the conviction of “a” and “b”, that means when we land on a website, only the portion of your computer monitor’s screen should have the content. So why, pray tell, is there a right side vertical scrollbar visible on practically every web page we visit?
A scrollbar is a graphical object which allows the user to view continuous text, pictures or anything else that does not fit into the space in a computer’s monitor screen.
Because of this most recent conversation, I dug back into my memory bank, and thought I’d educate those of you who are new to having your own website by sharing an experience I had with a client of mine about a year ago.
I was hired as an SEO and online marketing consultant by a real newbie. Bless her heart … she had absolutely no idea about what it would take to get her service related business online. She shared how, because of her naiveness (which of course ANY newbie would have, I completely understand that), she got suckered in to paying someone $200.00 to design a website for her. Oh yes … what a “deal” she thought she was going to get!
Without going into the whole story, let’s just say she got exactly what she paid for! A very crappy poorly coded antiquated-design mess of a site, if you could even call it a “site”.
As a matter of fact, this $200.00 design job was supposedly done by someone who had told her they really understood HTML coding. HA! What a joke! Let’s just say anybody could have done a better job by going online and researching basic HTML coding structure.
After I explained to her everything that was wrong with her site, the content, the SEO, etc., she begged my helping in redesigning the site, which I did handle for her, but for a fee of course.
If I seem like I am going off track here with the topic at hand, that being “How Much Content Comprises A “Proper” Web Page”, well I am … sort of. But I’m telling you this first part about the website design fiasco because this same “expert” gave my new client some of the most ridiculous information about website content and how much you should write for each page that I’d heard in a long time.
My New Client’s Understanding of Proper Content “Length”
My client had provided carefully written content for the 5-pages she wanted on her website that would promote her business. Part of my job was to research the keyword phrases to target for her niche, and to properly SEO the tags. Along with that, I coached her how to tweak her content so that it incorporated the keywords into each web site page of content.
Her pages definitely needed to utilize the keywords I’d chosen for her, but I also mentioned she needed to flesh out the content a bit more, too. Reason being that I knew her website visitors would be more prone to stay on her site and hopefully place an order with her, if she wasn’t so sketchy with the on-page information. I told her they’d probably click right off her web page and go back to the search page to find another site to visit.
In regard to this conversation she emailed me saying:
“My understanding of a ‘page’ is what you can see when strolling [sic] down before the page ends, and I was told that it was better to have it all in that area only.”
Ummm … okay … say what? 
So … she believed that a web page’s content ought only to be visible above the fold. Or another way to put it, to only be visible on a computer screen without needing to scroll down in order to continue reading the rest of the page.
Wrong! (Like I said before, bless her heart! She was trusting this other ill-informed person to steer her in the right direction.)
So, to straighten her out, here was my email reply to her:
About web page length … I believe I understand what you are trying to explain to me about “what you can see when scrolling down before the page ends”. This is referred to as “above the fold”. Whomever the person is that told you that is quite ill-informed. Please know that a web page is however many words of informative and well written content and/or images it takes to complete that page and to make sense to the person reading it, and to provide the information they were hoping to find when they landed on that web page!
Think about it … how many darn websites do you go to that you do indeed keep scrolling down to continue reading the content? It is very rare that we land on a website that has just a couple of short paragraphs on each web page!
So, if you are brand new, or even more than a little new to getting a website up and running, please know that each page of content you write should be everything and more for your visitors! If a short page is all that is necessary and does the trick, then fine. If it takes many many words and images to provide a great web page, then fine! Scrolling down a page to keep reading the content is NOT even an issue!
I believe wholeheartedly that it is much better to over-deliver in the information you provide on each page. I personally maintain this attitude for almost everything I write for my websites and blogs. I do not take into consideration it’s length. I focus on quality of content!
I suggest you adopt this same attitude, too. You can’t be wrong by doing so, and your web site content will be all the better because of it!
Not sure if your website could use a little tweaking or a major over-haul in order to better promote your products or services to a larger target group of customers? That is why I am happy to offer a free 30-minute SEO phone consultation to you. To learn more or set-up a call with me, please go to: Complimentary Consultation. I look forward to chatting. My goal is always to help my clients achieve all they desire via their website and online marketing efforts!
How to Write Effective Landing Pages
Grab Their Attention & Keep Those Prospects on Your Webpage!
Landing pages are very important web pages for your internet marketing website. Why? Because these pages serve as clear and concise pieces of “call to action” information for your website visitors. Landing pages are responsible for helping your visitor decide to engage an initial conversation with you, so they can investigate a specific product, or service, or free offer, etc. that you are promoting.
It is a proven fact that your website has a large influence over prospective clients and customers in deciding if they want to make the next step and learn more from you. A landing page is a vehicle that gives specific information on one topic to your prospect.
However, more times than not, most of the internet marketing websites that I have visited or have been hired to help improve, have poorly focused landing pages. The content is written in a manner that causes the visitor to end up either overwhelmed with too much non-specific information, or deciding to leave the website because they couldn’t find what they were hoping to find.
Write a Landing Page that’s Focused and Specific to Only One “Call to Action”
Without an effective landing page for each and every ad campaign you undertake, you’re wasting money and customers. As examples, whether you’re trying to build up your mailing list by offering a free download or promoting a special “Get to Know Us” discount on your professional services, the bottom line is all the same. You want positive results. You want prospects moving forward in their decision making process, not clicking off your website.
So, while your ad, special offer, etc. attracts your prospect’s interest, the landing page is supposed to pick up where the ad leaves off. It should lead the prospect to complete the desired transaction . The time it will take you to write clear, concise and compelling text for a landing page is an investment in success. There’s no getting around this fact.
Don’t think that landing pages are only limited to sales pages. They also include pages designed to get visitors to subscribe to an e-mail newsletter or to leave contact information on a lead generation page. A/B split-testing can also be employed to determine usability, to refine elements of a home page, or to develop a navigation system that visitors can understand.
Create a Great Landing Page to Capture the Attention of Your Prospects
Stick to one theme, one offer, one message: The tendency of most internet marketers is to say “Hey, I got them to my website, why don’t I give them information on all of my different services, or tell them about all the clients I’ve serviced in the past, or I think I ought to create links to all my other web pages”. You get the idea.
Your landing page should have one specific action that you want the prospect to take. To register for an event, or complete an information request form, or download a whitepaper, etc. Distracting prospects with other information or additional offers will drastically reduce the number of leads you are able to capture.
Create a clear call to action. Do not hide the call to action at the bottom of the page, making the prospect scroll down to get to it. The action you want them to take should be the main focus of the page. Create a clickable button beginning with the action word corresponding to what you want them to do – register, contact, download, buy, etc.
Prominently place this button above the fold on the page as well as in various places as they scroll down. The call to action button should be visible at all times as the prospect scrolls down the page.
Capture your prospect’s information! Regardless of the offer, create a response device to capture the prospect’s information. For instance, if you are offering a free downloadable eBook, also create a short form they must complete before they can proceed with the download.
If the prospect is interested in what you have to offer they will be happy to exchange a small amount of information about themselves. Normally all that is requested is their name and email address. I’m sure you’ve filled out many of these simple email “capture forms” yourself when registering for a free product; more information; free webinar, etc.
Additionally, those visitors are pre-qualifying themselves as interested prospects giving you legitimate reason to follow up. Do not ignore this valuable marketing step! Depending upon your offer, it might be something as simple as a “Thank You” email with a link that points back to your website. Or your follow-up might be a once-a-week for seven weeks email course.
I use and recommend Get Response autoresponder email system to all my clients. It’s affordable and not to hard to learn how to use. It allows anyone to easily capture their prospects information and also set up all different sorts of email campaigns. A serious internet marketer cannot be without an autoresponder system!
Match your ad campaign with your website copy. Make sure the look and feel of your landing page is consistent with the marketing piece that drives the prospect to it. If possible, use the same images, design elements, and colors. Repeat the copy and offer. This helps to build credibility, reinforce your message and the benefits, and increase awareness and conversions by reassuring the prospect that they are indeed in the right place.
Keep your prospect on your landing page. Keep navigation and links to a bare minimum if at all possible. Once they’re on your landing page, the last thing you want a prospect to do is click out to another page on your website without completing the desired action.
To help curtail this, simply strip the page of main navigation and keep the amount of links to a minimum. Only links directly relevant to your offer should be included. If you do offer the option of directing them off your landing page, allow the link to open up another browser window. Keep that landing page open!
Search Engine Optimization Considerations for a Landing Page
As a final note I must touch upon the SEO strategy for a landing page. Simply stated, definitely keep your landing page keyword focused and written with compelling copy. Make your visitors and the spiders happy.
However, there are many times when a landing page is a temporary situation, such as when you are offering something for a very short period of time and there would be absolutely no way search engine rankings would materialize in that limited time frame. In this situation, still utilize the targeted keywords throughout your copy and stick to sound content writing principles. Why not? It just makes good sense.
(Necessary) Duplicate Content On Your Site Can Now Be Controlled
There is an Ethical Way to Handle Duplicate Content
Good news everybody. Just the other day, Google, Yahoo! and MSN came together to “endorse” an acceptable way to handle the issue of “necessary” duplicate content on your website or blog. When I say “necessary”, I mean it is unavoidable that multiple URLs may show up for the same content.
It’s called a Canonical tag, which looks like this example:
<link rel=”canonical” href=”http://www.example.com/product.php?item=swedish-fish” />
This simple bit of HTML coding sits up in the <head> section of your website and “tells” the spiders how to deal with the page if it is a page of duplicate content that you want to control as far as indexing is concerned.
There are various reasons that may dictate the need to have duplicate content. One possibility (and quite a common one) could be due to the fact you have an e-commerce store. As an example, you may have to provide the same information about a product under different categories on different pages, thusly different URLs will be generated.
As long as you aren’t producing duplicate pages of content out of sheer copywriting laziness to utilize a keyword phrase you’re trying to rank highly for, then I have nothing against one of my clients having duplicate content on their site. As long as the duplicate content pages are serving a useful purpose for the website visitor, then there is no getting around the need for it.
However, it used to prove to be a not-so-good thing SEO-wise. There were other work-arounds, but things just got a little easier. Now there is a great solution!
I don’t need to repeat great information that is already sitting out there on the web, so I’ll give you a taste and the link to this full article:
Specify your canonical
Google Webmaster Central Blog; Thursday, February 12, 2009 at 12:30 PM
“Carpe diem on any duplicate content worries: we now support a format that allows you to publicly specify your preferred version of a URL. If your site has identical or vastly similar content that’s accessible through multiple URLs, this format provides you with more control over the URL returned in search results. It also helps to make sure that properties such as link popularity are consolidated to your preferred version.”
“Let’s take our old example of a site selling Swedish fish. Imagine that your preferred version of the URL and its content looks like this …” To read the full article: Specify your canonical.
And for a quick watch here’s a great interview with Google’s own Matt Cutts discussing the subject:
Creating Great Website Content: Write Like You Speak
Writing Good Content Usually Means Keeping It “Real”
More often than not, I must coach new clients to help them get their website content whipped into shape. This just happened with one of my clients whom I’ll call “Sue”. Though Sue is a pretty good writer I could see many areas where, with a few tweaks and improvements, she’d do a much better job at “talking to” and really relating to the visitors that will land on her website.
In many instances, I found her content rather stiff and boring. It didn’t get me too excited about her really great products. Since I so often see this mistake in my client’s website content, I thought I’d touch upon it in today’s post.
Project Your Unique Speaking Style Into Your Written Words!
If you were standing face-to-face with a customer, you would certainly know how to talk to them; how to explain the benefits of your products or services; why, you’d even be able to answer any objections or concerns they’d raise, right? Sure you would.
Well then, since the content on our sites is really our only way to communicate to a potential client … do you understand how to effectively translate the spoken words (your conversation) into great written words? Is your content written in very much of the same tone and demeanor as it would be if you were actually speaking face-to-face with the person? I highly suggest that it should be.
You know, I often am complimented on the way I write. Whether on my hobbyist websites, business websites, or right here on my blog, I tend to use the same tone and attitude with the written words that I would be using if we were chatting. I do my darndest to impart “Claudia” into all aspects of my written words.
I receive compliments because there is genuineness to what I write. I’m not stiff in the way I say things. Think about this … don’t you find it easier to read content where the person writing it seems to be letting the words flow from their mouths, rather than stiffly from their “heads”?
Loosen Up and Keep It Real
I just want to remind you today to loosen up a bit when you write content. Try to pretend you are in the room with your visitor, having a friendly conversation.
As example, if you knew me personally you’d probably say that I use lots of hand gestures, facial expressions and voice inflections when I communicate. We’d call that “demonstrative”. I don’t think anyone would accuse me of being “dry”. But that’s OK, that’s me. 
Thusly, I use a lot of punctuation and italics and such that perhaps you don’t normally see in other people’s online content. But I do this for a reason … I’m trying to get my verbal style of speaking and communicating across to the person reading my posts or articles.
Remember … I did tell you my readers really like my style. So for me, my approach works.
And along with this, I try very hard to type those words out as close as I can to the way I’d be verbalizing it. Yes, this often can be hard, and yes it may take those of you heeding this advice some extra time, but I guarantee if you try the “natural” approach to your writing, you will get the hang of it in not too much time.
Sue caught on quickly, and when she sent me back her tweaked content, it was dramatically improved. I was able to tell her that now she sounded like she was writing in a style and language that I knew her prospective customers would truly relate to!
So, as I said in the beginning of this post … as much as it makes sense and is possible … write it just like you’d say it!
