How To Keep Your Reader's Attention

The only way to keep your reader involved with what you have to say is to give them what they want.

To show the reader that your article matches their interest, you need to let them know what to expect in the first sentence.

If they see that it's what they want, they will keep reading. That's the best idea to grab reader's attention that I have discovered.

Writing articles on various topics on HubPages has given me the opportunity to experiment and learn techniques that work.

I've learned that search engine ranking is based on keeping the reader’s attention.

It's useless if people hit your page and immediately go away. That means only one thing, that your article had nothing of value for them.

It's important to understand what kind of traffic you want. You only want those readers who were searching for your subject. It has value to them. That's how to gain the reader's attention, and their loyalty.

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The first goal is to get past that first few seconds of uncertainty. This can be done by quickly showing the reader that the subject matter matches perfectly with what they are looking for. You need to grab their attention.

Taking that into account, it is important to avoid keywords or tags that may be too general. That will only attract people who were searching for something else, but had used one or more of your keywords in their search.

Once they hit your page and see that it is not what they want, they leave in a hurry. That short visit actually causes the search engines to reduce your ranking a tidbit each time it happens. This is because it indicates that the information on the page was useless to the person doing the search.

If you have too many cases like that, it can push you way down. Down to the point where you may never come up in a search at all.

One the other hand, if readers stay for a long time, then your content must obviously be useful and meaningful. So you get some extra points in your ranking. The more of those, the higher you go and eventually you will discover more traffic being sent your way.

Another way to grab attention is to pique the reader’s attention with a visual as well as an introduction. The introduction should be very short. Remember, you don’t have their attention yet.

Make sure the web page that does not look intimidating. Use short sentences and short paragraphs. Leave some white space and don’t crowd the text. They see that before they even start reading.

A visual image that represents your subject is useful. It is a quick way to show the reader they have found something related to the subject matter they are interested in. An image will be noticed before they start reading.

If anything chases them away before they even start reading, you’ve got to fix it. Google Analytics shows you when that is happening. I see some hits in my report that show 2 or 3 seconds for a visit. I am sure that means that something scared away my reader. Unless I get really fast speed-readers!

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The search engines monitor how long visitors stay on a web page. The longer they stay, presumably reading, the more appropriate the page must be to the search that was requested.

The search engines use that information to improve their response to keyword queries. In essence, this affects your ranking.

If you are a website developer, a blogger, an online newspaper or magazine article writer or if you are a freelance writer, you can put this to good use and improve your rank in a search by doing things that keep the attention of your readers.

How can this be done? Well, the most obvious method is to provide high quality content. You already know that. But the reader will not know if it is good quality or not upon first hitting your web page.

You've accomplished the first step... grabbing attention. Now you need to keep working with quality all the way through.

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Okay, we discussed a few ideas for grabbing the reader’s attention. Now let’s discuss how you keep your reader around as long as possible.

1. Visual eye candy is helpful. As a reader reads, they need to take a break every once is a while to rest their eyes. You can give them that by using images. But these images must be appropriate. They must relate to the subject. If you just randomly place anything on your page for images, then the visitor will see those before they start reading, and you’ll lose them for thinking they stumbled upon the wrong thing. Also be careful about copyright if you are using images from other sources. Always check the copyright. Even Creative Commons has rules. Many times they ask that you display a credit to the originator.
2. Useful and easy-to-read content are important. Give the reader something in return for visiting, either information, tips, ideas, anything to provide a return for visiting your page. As they read, they realize they are getting something and they want more. So they will stick around and keep reading. When you complete a blog, hub, business web page, or whatever, go back and read it completely from start to finish. Pay attention to your writing from a reader’s point of view. Are you rambling on? Are you going off on tangents? Are you unclear with things? Are you failing to make your point? Any of these things can cause a reader to become frustrated and go away. You want to focus on keeping their attention. That's what I've been trying to do here. How am I doing?
3. Embedding a video or two that reinforces the subject matter can also be useful for two reasons. It adds to the information, and it keeps the visitor on your page that much longer. The search engine doesn’t need to know what they are doing. Just the fact that the reader has your page in their web browser. The longer the better for your Search Engine Ranking.
4. Help the reader read with a good writing format. Separate thoughts into blocks of text in such a way that it becomes easier for the reader to grasp the meaning. Use helpful headings for sections. You might find it helpful to separate various thoughts into numbered or bulleted paragraphs like I did here.
5. Make sure you don’t have any misspelled words. So often I see a writer thinks “alot” is a word. There is no such word in English. I see that a lot. And I bet if you allot more time to spell checking, you’ll do better with ranking. Ahh, did you catch that? This “allot” has TWO l's and a totally different meaning. I also see improper use of “there” and “their” and “they’re.” There are times when they're not paying attention to their spelling.

I often wonder if misspelling causes search engines to lower one’s ranking. I wouldn’t be surprised that they do.

So if you are bad at spelling, use a spelling checker. No one has to know. Most word processors, such as Microsoft Word, include both a thesaurus and a spell checker. Use them.You can also pick up a copy of a Writer’s Handbook from your library. I found this to be a great source of information.

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Search engines also rank by repeat traffic. Google Analytics reports show how many hits are unique and how many are repeat visitors. So I assume they are also using that info to determine how useful your page is.

If people are coming back, it is a surefire indication that you have good and useful content that the reader wants more of. So the search engines will oblige.

Once again, these things take a lot of time for the search engines to build up upon. You need to be patient. Monitor the Anaytics reports and be ready to make changes when you see the need. Just don’t become manic with it. If you start changing things every time you think you found a problem, you will never know what is working.

So take it slow. Keep a close eye on the extensive information you get from those Google reports and learn from it. Try to discover what's working to bring back repeat readers, and then continue to do whatever works.

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Get to know the Google Analytics Reports and all the information in them. That information is a goldmine.

You can even see your AdSense revenue associated with your individual hubs. You can see where visitors came from, what keywords they used to find you, how long they stayed and where they went next.

The Analytics Reports can keep you busy in a worthwhile way. You'll discover if your readers clicked to another of your hubs, or if they exit away altogether. That tells you that you may need to change something to keep them around.

If you haven't already had your Google Analytics code in your HubPages, you need to sign up for Google Analytics and add your Analytics Affiliate Code to HubPages. Then let it track for a few weeks to have any kind of useful information in your reports.

Getting and holding web traffic is based on hard work and using the tools I mentioned. It's a way to let the search engines “learn” if you are worthy of the traffic. If you are, they will be glad to send people your way. But as I said, it takes time for the search engines to learn. Be patient and stay on top of things. Good Luck!

If you found this helpful, check out my Table Of Contents of all the support topics I've written to help other Hubbers.

Copyright © 2009 Glenn Stok

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