Search Engine Optimizing Your Blog: Making Your Content Scannable

Com­pleted So Far:

Key­words have been cho­sen and ana­lyzed so that I now have a list of pow­er­ful key­words. I am using these key­words to cre­ate use­ful and unique con­tent that will draw vis­i­tors to my site, and, hope­fully, keep them com­ing back.
.

New Devel­op­ments:

Read­ing mate­ri­als that has been posted on the Inter­net is very dif­fer­ent from the way we read mate­r­ial that has been pub­lished in other media.

Jakob Neilson’s “F-Pattern” for scan­ning websites*

When we read a novel, for exam­ple, we gen­er­ally start at the begin­ning of the novel and then read word for word until we reach the end. We don’t want to miss a nui­sance or a descrip­tion, or a twist in the plot, or any of the action. But most peo­ple don’t read a lot of nov­els, choos­ing instead to read mag­a­zines, Inter­net web­sites and blogs. When we read these media, par­tic­u­larly when we read any­thing on the inter­net, we tend to scan the mate­r­ial rather than actu­ally read it.

Guide­lines for Scannable Web Content

The fol­low­ing guide­lines will help you cre­ate eas­ily scannable mate­ri­als for your web­site or blog:

1. use lots of head­ings and sub­head­ings — use head­ings and sub­head­ings to present an idea of the con­tent that fol­lows. Use key­words in head­ings and sub­head­ings, draw atten­tion to head­ings and sub­head­ings by using bold, ital­ics, under­lines, CAPITAL LETTERS, or a dif­fer­ent color.
2. use lots of white space — read­ers often feel over­whelmed when con­fronted with solid block of text. White space makes even long arti­cles eas­ier to read.
   
3. use graph­ics, pic­tures and videos — use the media capa­bil­i­ties of the Inter­net to make you web pages attrac­tive and enter­tain­ing
   
4. peo­ple scan in an ‘F’ shape — impor­tant infor­ma­tion should be placed down the left side, across the top, and in the mid­dle (pro­vide extra high­light­ing by leav­ing extra white space around this infor­ma­tion, or fram­ing the material)
5. use short sen­tences and short para­graphs — these are eas­ier to read and scan through
6. break long arti­cles or posts into chunks — small chunks are eas­ier to read and focus on.
   
7. use links — use hyper­links to con­nect sec­tions of longer arti­cles, to con­nect arti­cles or posts to other mate­r­ial on your site, to con­nects your arti­cles or posts to mate­ri­als on other sites.
8. cre­ate lists — lists are easy to read and pack a lot of infor­ma­tion into a small space.
   
9. don’t bury your points - the lead sen­tence of your para­graphs should be the most impor­tant point you are mak­ing in your para­graph. The remain­ing sen­tences of the para­graph gen­er­ally sup­port or explain this first sen­tence. You might even try using the journalist’s ‘inverted pyra­mid’ for­mat — place the most impor­tant infor­ma­tion at the begin­ning of your post, with pro­gres­sively less impor­tant infor­ma­tion mak­ing up the remain­der of the post or article.
10. high­light impor­tant words and phrases through­out your post — using bold, ital­ics, under­lines, CAPITAL LETTERS, or a dif­fer­ent color draws the reader’s atten­tion to the impor­tant infor­ma­tion. Try not to have too much infor­ma­tion high­lighted through your con­tent as that only con­fuses read­ers and makes the con­tent hard to scan.

Incor­po­rat­ing some, or all, of these guide­lines into your con­tent helps cre­ate an attrac­tive, easy to read web­site that not only attracts read­ers, but helps keep them com­ing back to read more.

.

Next Step:

One of the most impor­tant search engine opti­miza­tion tech­niques is the use of links. Wednesday’s post will look at inter­nal links — con­nect­ing posts to pages, pages to posts and posts to posts in your website/blog.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

If you liked this post, you can read this series on Search Engine Opti­miz­ing Your Blog from the begin­ning by going to the Intro­duc­tion post.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

* Jakob Neilsen’s arti­cle F-Shaped Pat­tern for Read­ing Web Con­tent can be found at: http://www.useit.com/alertbox/reading_pattern.html

~~~~♦~~~~♦~~~~♦~~~~♦~~~~♦~~~~♦~~~~♦~~~~

If you enjoyed read­ing this post, maybe you’d like to sub­scribe to our RSS feed, or sub­scribe via email (enter your email address in the box at the top of the page, on the right) so you don’t miss any future posts. Thank you for visiting!