April 2, 2010 at 20:08Do people read articles on sites
Those who create and promote websites need not be convinced of the validity of the following postulates. They already know that
1. There should be a lot of texts on the site.
2. The number of these same texts should regularly increase and, preferably, according to the developed plan, and not anyhow.
3. Texts must be unique
4. Well, finally, the texts should be interesting and informationally valuable for targeted visitors to the site.
With the first three postulates, everything seems to be clear. The more texts there are on the site, the higher the effect of promotion on low-frequency queries, and the more likely it is that the representatives of their target audience will more often catch the eye in the top ten search engine results.
But with the fourth postulate - it’s not so simple. Do people read articles posted on websites, or order informationally useful, and, therefore, expensive texts - throwing money away in vain? Maybe there really are enough articles written without grammatical errors, if only keywords were present in them?
So read or not? The question is actually non-trivial.
The need for texts to convince webmasters is not necessary. But after all, they do not need texts so that they themselves have something to read, but first of all, to solve the problems they face. And then an interesting situation arises - the Customer, who wants to promote his site higher in SERP, has to tell why these texts are needed.
There are explanations from the technical side. It is not difficult for a customer who is not versed in technologies for optimizing and promoting websites to justify the need for texts. But with regard to their quality characteristics, everything is much more complicated.
It seems to be intuitively clear - the more interesting the text, the better. However, the material side of the issue is a significant barrier.
If the text as an object for reading is not in demand, then why not spend money on it.
As they say, if you can’t see the difference, then why pay more?
We can say for sure - people read articles posted on websites.
But this should be said with one significant caveat - people read not just texts, but only rich in useful information for them, which helps them in solving certain problems. In order to leave no doubt about this, it remains to consider why they not only read, but also want to see texts that are useful to themselves.
To begin with, we should make a reservation - we will now talk about corporate sites offering a particular product and its delivery offline, although for social resources, the following is quite fair.
The target audience of corporate sites is different. It can be both business potential buyers (representatives of the Companies), and individuals - end users of the product. But with this difference, they have one thing in common - they all visit the site not for the sake of entertainment, but in order to satisfy their need for something.
This, in turn, means that all these people are already prepared for the perception of information initially. Moreover, they want to get it. Moreover, the less knowledgeable a person is in the features of the proposed product, the more he is ready to consume the information offered to him. If there is an ambiguous attitude to the product or its negative image has formed, but there is a need for it, nevertheless, the site visitor will definitely read the article proposed to him.
This potential readiness of the audience to assimilate the materials offered to it is especially beneficial for those companies that have so far reached the brand level. The brand in its understanding, when the credibility of the product and its supplier is so great that the brand company can afford to refuse targeted sales to customers belonging to certain segments of its target audience or postpone such sales.
The “not yet a brand” company can conquer its Clients with the help of texts. And that's why.
Aristotle, the author, who does not need a special presentation, in his “Rhetoric” noted a valuable moment for us:
“Verbal beliefs are of three kinds. The first view depends on the personality of the speaker; the second is to create a certain mood in the audience, the third - as evidence or visible evidence, is contained in the words of the speech itself. ”
In social psychology, one interesting pattern has been established - the higher the personal interest of people in this or that information, the more they are convinced by the perfectly presented reasoning than by the opinion of a specific personality expert.
It turns out that when the topic is directly related to the person, then he draws attention and listens first to the arguments, and the personality and status of the message source recedes into the background. Consequently, the text that contains the arguments, he will certainly read. And the higher the quality of the argument itself, and of the article as a whole, the greater the likelihood of the conversion of the target site visitor to the Client.
This is especially true for visitors to those sites that are focused on the B2B segment. Texts that are useful for potential Clients and consumers can turn into the real buyers that part of them that will look at the site, since these visitors are already motivated to receive information and its perception. Why? Just remember who visits such resources. These are the so-called "business customers", already by definition absolutely far from making spontaneous decisions. These people will carefully select various options, compare and compare the received data, and generally do many other “boring” things that they may not do when they buy something for themselves.
Responsibility for a business or an elementary fear of losing a job forces people from the business to study the market of their product in great detail. Is it safe to say that this work gives pleasure and joy? Maybe. But be that as it may, those who facilitate it will win extra points at the stage of selecting options. Should I give this head start to my competitors?
Of course, texts that add winning points to the site owner and form preliminary loyalty should not only be informationally valuable for the visitor, but unique in essence.This, in turn, means that the creation of such texts should begin with the study of information on competitors' websites. Articles for a promoted site should be at least no worse. But in any case, the information should be presented from a new angle and have its own “highlight”, which, not only can, but also must manifest itself as a presentation of the material.
And, of course, any text intended for site visitors should sell. And it’s not uncommon to sell so that only the owner of the resource, the one who promotes it on the Web and the one who writes this text know that the article is selling.
Why did I decide to write this article ...
Those who promote websites “in a white light”, and I work with such representatives of the adjacent workshop, are well aware that it is the texts that occupy a significant, and often the lion's share in the cost of promotion.
And when creating a site, if its functional purpose is to sell, content plays a tangible role. How many customers take texts for their resources seriously? Someone - yes, but they need this article only in order to once again be convinced of their correctness and finally dispel doubts about the fairness of the investments made. And someone seriously believes that for 10-15 thousand rubles you can get an excellent turnkey corporate website. And they get it. Turnkey, with texts purchased at a cheap price. And then they are outraged that the returns from their site are zero, although it is in the TOP.
It is quite understandable that it is often much easier to not explain anything to the Customer who has “studied” the market and knows best “how much is the site today”. You don’t feel sorry for them. Dozens of content exchanges and the hands (not the brains) of thousands of “specialists” are at their service.
But there are others - those who are willing to pay for high-quality sites that are able to fulfill their tasks. And such customers just want to know if they have to spend extra money.
These customers very often have to answer the question posed in this article. It is not difficult to answer it, if he himself is convinced of the need for “correct” texts. And if not, if you doubt it yourself, or the right words are simply not found? Then the whole negotiation process “floats”.
Some of my Clients solved this question simply - they tell their Customer: “Here is the contact for the copywriter, arrange it yourself.” And in this case, explaining why neglecting the content side of the texts is harmful is my task.
However, this is not always possible.
I hope that what I wrote will help those of you who are no-no, and have to answer the Customer’s “childish” question - do people read articles on websites?
1. There should be a lot of texts on the site.
2. The number of these same texts should regularly increase and, preferably, according to the developed plan, and not anyhow.
3. Texts must be unique
4. Well, finally, the texts should be interesting and informationally valuable for targeted visitors to the site.
With the first three postulates, everything seems to be clear. The more texts there are on the site, the higher the effect of promotion on low-frequency queries, and the more likely it is that the representatives of their target audience will more often catch the eye in the top ten search engine results.
But with the fourth postulate - it’s not so simple. Do people read articles posted on websites, or order informationally useful, and, therefore, expensive texts - throwing money away in vain? Maybe there really are enough articles written without grammatical errors, if only keywords were present in them?
So read or not? The question is actually non-trivial.
The need for texts to convince webmasters is not necessary. But after all, they do not need texts so that they themselves have something to read, but first of all, to solve the problems they face. And then an interesting situation arises - the Customer, who wants to promote his site higher in SERP, has to tell why these texts are needed.
There are explanations from the technical side. It is not difficult for a customer who is not versed in technologies for optimizing and promoting websites to justify the need for texts. But with regard to their quality characteristics, everything is much more complicated.
It seems to be intuitively clear - the more interesting the text, the better. However, the material side of the issue is a significant barrier.
If the text as an object for reading is not in demand, then why not spend money on it.
As they say, if you can’t see the difference, then why pay more?
We can say for sure - people read articles posted on websites.
But this should be said with one significant caveat - people read not just texts, but only rich in useful information for them, which helps them in solving certain problems. In order to leave no doubt about this, it remains to consider why they not only read, but also want to see texts that are useful to themselves.
To begin with, we should make a reservation - we will now talk about corporate sites offering a particular product and its delivery offline, although for social resources, the following is quite fair.
The target audience of corporate sites is different. It can be both business potential buyers (representatives of the Companies), and individuals - end users of the product. But with this difference, they have one thing in common - they all visit the site not for the sake of entertainment, but in order to satisfy their need for something.
This, in turn, means that all these people are already prepared for the perception of information initially. Moreover, they want to get it. Moreover, the less knowledgeable a person is in the features of the proposed product, the more he is ready to consume the information offered to him. If there is an ambiguous attitude to the product or its negative image has formed, but there is a need for it, nevertheless, the site visitor will definitely read the article proposed to him.
This potential readiness of the audience to assimilate the materials offered to it is especially beneficial for those companies that have so far reached the brand level. The brand in its understanding, when the credibility of the product and its supplier is so great that the brand company can afford to refuse targeted sales to customers belonging to certain segments of its target audience or postpone such sales.
The “not yet a brand” company can conquer its Clients with the help of texts. And that's why.
Aristotle, the author, who does not need a special presentation, in his “Rhetoric” noted a valuable moment for us:
“Verbal beliefs are of three kinds. The first view depends on the personality of the speaker; the second is to create a certain mood in the audience, the third - as evidence or visible evidence, is contained in the words of the speech itself. ”
In social psychology, one interesting pattern has been established - the higher the personal interest of people in this or that information, the more they are convinced by the perfectly presented reasoning than by the opinion of a specific personality expert.
It turns out that when the topic is directly related to the person, then he draws attention and listens first to the arguments, and the personality and status of the message source recedes into the background. Consequently, the text that contains the arguments, he will certainly read. And the higher the quality of the argument itself, and of the article as a whole, the greater the likelihood of the conversion of the target site visitor to the Client.
This is especially true for visitors to those sites that are focused on the B2B segment. Texts that are useful for potential Clients and consumers can turn into the real buyers that part of them that will look at the site, since these visitors are already motivated to receive information and its perception. Why? Just remember who visits such resources. These are the so-called "business customers", already by definition absolutely far from making spontaneous decisions. These people will carefully select various options, compare and compare the received data, and generally do many other “boring” things that they may not do when they buy something for themselves.
Responsibility for a business or an elementary fear of losing a job forces people from the business to study the market of their product in great detail. Is it safe to say that this work gives pleasure and joy? Maybe. But be that as it may, those who facilitate it will win extra points at the stage of selecting options. Should I give this head start to my competitors?
Of course, texts that add winning points to the site owner and form preliminary loyalty should not only be informationally valuable for the visitor, but unique in essence.This, in turn, means that the creation of such texts should begin with the study of information on competitors' websites. Articles for a promoted site should be at least no worse. But in any case, the information should be presented from a new angle and have its own “highlight”, which, not only can, but also must manifest itself as a presentation of the material.
And, of course, any text intended for site visitors should sell. And it’s not uncommon to sell so that only the owner of the resource, the one who promotes it on the Web and the one who writes this text know that the article is selling.
Why did I decide to write this article ...
Those who promote websites “in a white light”, and I work with such representatives of the adjacent workshop, are well aware that it is the texts that occupy a significant, and often the lion's share in the cost of promotion.
And when creating a site, if its functional purpose is to sell, content plays a tangible role. How many customers take texts for their resources seriously? Someone - yes, but they need this article only in order to once again be convinced of their correctness and finally dispel doubts about the fairness of the investments made. And someone seriously believes that for 10-15 thousand rubles you can get an excellent turnkey corporate website. And they get it. Turnkey, with texts purchased at a cheap price. And then they are outraged that the returns from their site are zero, although it is in the TOP.
It is quite understandable that it is often much easier to not explain anything to the Customer who has “studied” the market and knows best “how much is the site today”. You don’t feel sorry for them. Dozens of content exchanges and the hands (not the brains) of thousands of “specialists” are at their service.
But there are others - those who are willing to pay for high-quality sites that are able to fulfill their tasks. And such customers just want to know if they have to spend extra money.
These customers very often have to answer the question posed in this article. It is not difficult to answer it, if he himself is convinced of the need for “correct” texts. And if not, if you doubt it yourself, or the right words are simply not found? Then the whole negotiation process “floats”.
Some of my Clients solved this question simply - they tell their Customer: “Here is the contact for the copywriter, arrange it yourself.” And in this case, explaining why neglecting the content side of the texts is harmful is my task.
However, this is not always possible.
I hope that what I wrote will help those of you who are no-no, and have to answer the Customer’s “childish” question - do people read articles on websites?