You spent a lot of time and energy creating your website. The text you created for each page is valuable and useful information, But the question you need to ask yourself is this: Once a person get to your website, are they reading your content? Or are they ignoring most of what you wrote?

    Statistics suggest that most people do not read all the text on a web page. Rather they tend to Scan down the page for something that catches their eye. For instance - as you looked at this entry, what did your eye notice first?  Statistics suggest that, whether intentional or not, you first noticed the larger bold colored text 'most people do not read...'

    The text does not have to be larger or bold to catch the eye, but it does need to stand out from the rest of the text..


                                                                       (... perhaps like this.)


    But catching a person's eye is only the first half of your job. The second half is to give them something short and sweet and to the point because drawing their attention to something is pointless unless it also arouses their interest. In fact it might even be considered irritating if you draw their eye to something and they decide that it is not interesting, or worse, that you're rambling on and on... Do you see how this long, drawn out example of large bolded colored text is not nearly as effective as the original short example above? 

    So draw their attention to a section of your page with a short concise heading. If the heading arouses their interest, then they are more likely to read the paragraph or two of regular you have written about that topic.

    Search engines also love short, relevant headers. They should be placed inside Header tags (if you don't program your own site, ask your webmaster about Header tags) for greatest effect.  So let's say you have a section on left handed Widgets. Perhaps it would look something like this:

Left Handed Widgets Cost Less

    It has long been know that left-handed widgets are rarer than their right-handed counterparts, but what may not be so widely know is that you can  save an average of 15% when buying left-handed widgets... Here at "Widgets R Us" you can find all your widget needs, assuming, of course, that you actually need widgets, which you may not... In fact you probably aren't even reading this far into the paragraph, particularly if you clicked the link to go buy a left-handed widget, so I'll just blather on endlessly... blather blather blather... but hopefully your eye was attracted to 1) the header and 2) the bolded colored text. In fact, what I really wanted was for you to click on the link and go buy some of my left-handed widgets...

    Get the idea?  What we really want is for people to be drawn to the topic "Left Handed Widgets Cost Less".  Not everybody will care about left handed widgets, But those that do care are more likely to read the paragraph. 

    And within the first sentence or so, give them another eye-catching bit of text. In this case it's a link which would take the reader to go buy a left handed widget. So they don't have to read the entire paragraph if they don't want to (and many won't want to.)  AND WE DON'T CARE... what we really want is for them to go buy a left handed widget.   

    Okay, don't get upset with me. The rest of the text should be valuable and relevant.  But you should also understand that the people who read down that far are less likely to buy your left handed widget. And, after all, what is the primary purpose of  your website? To inform or to sell?

    Have a safe and happy new year.