Keep It Brief

Typical internet users don’t want to read a lot of textual content when exploring a given website. Though it may be tempting to upload every single detail about your business to your online presence, the attention span of an average web surfer is incredibly short and they’re likely to become disinterested in your offerings if you bog them down with too much information. Keep things short, yet succinct, and try to avoid overly-descriptive grammar. If you can transcend your key selling points in 2 or 3 sentences per page, you’re more likely to drive engagement and keep people clicking through to deeper pages.

Strong Headings & Subheadings

A bold, powerful heading is often the first thing that catches an internet user’s eye when they arrive on a website. This is mind, its crucial that you don’t waste this space with fluffy or irrelevant language: Every word counts. Your headings and subheadings are meant to compel readers into moving onto the body text, where you’ll presumably house the meat of what you’re trying to say. If your heading is weak or confusing, there’s a chance users may not even bother reading on and leave immediately, which increases your bounce rate (not a good thing). The key is to tease them with something that leaves them wanting more, then delivering it to them immediately below the fold.

Bullet Points & Lists

Given that web users’ attention spans are notoriously short, bullet points can be an effective way to call visual attention to specific copy points that you want to be noticed. Let’s say your business offers a wide range of branded products, but that some of the brands are more popular than the rest: Highlighting those brands with bullet points as opposed to rattling them off in the form of a paragraph increases the likelihood of them being seen. Lists in general are a great method for promoting minimalist content that alleviates the need for unnecessarily lengthy chunks of text. If your products and services speak for themselves with strong visuals, there’s less need for detailed copy.

Image Credit:  Thoughts On Internet Marketing

If you’re a business owner whose website has lost traffic as a result of these algorithm updates, you’re likely not concerned with the technicalities behind the drop, and more with how to fix it ASAP, however, understanding the basic inner workings of SEO is key to mapping out a recovery strategy. Here are some tips to help get you back on track:

Understand The Difference Between On-Page & Off-Page SEO

This may sound obvious to those already aware, but you’d be surprised at how many small business owners with websites don’t even know what SEO stands for (it’s Search Engine Optimization, by the way). The two main types of SEO are on-page and off-page. In a nutshell, on-page SEO refers to changes made physically on your site (eg. writing new copy, assigning meta tags), whereas off-page refers to how many other websites, social media platforms and blogs are linking back to your site as an indicator of quality content. To be clear, Penguin 1.0 and 2.0 affected peoples’ off-page SEO significantly more than their on-page (if at all) because the algorithms’ main purpose was to punish websites who engaged in black hat back linking techniques. By running an on-page SEO checklist for your own website, you can officially rule out the issue being an internal problem and focus on what’s really keeping you down.

Be Prepared To Write & Reach Out

With the Penguin updates, Google has essentially backed business owners into and corner and forced them to reevaluate their existing traffic-driving strategies. If you were buying links pre-penguin, that’s now a no-no, so you should be prepared to dedicate resources to things like blogging, social media and link exchanges with reputable websites. The new SEO revolves around content, content, content, and it’s your responsibility to produce and market the kind of content that is both interesting to your target audience and relevant to your business. Run a sports shop? Write a weekly blog about the latest equipment or industry trends and encourage your readership to comment on it. Own a restaurant and want more customers? Start a Facebook page, regularly update it with your daily/weekly specials and encouraging people to click through to your website for a deeper look at the menu. Want to expand your link portfolio in an honest, white-hat way? Reach out to other local businesses and encourage them to do a link exchange with you (it’s win-win). Always be thinking of new ways to write intriguing copy and reach out to your clients and/or potential customers.