Blogs and various content sites have proliferated all over the world wide web, giving the average user an wide range of articles, blog posts and content to read and enjoy. But even with the proliferation of content on the internet there is one glaring error that most of these sites commit – enabling their content to become more internet friendly and usable.
One of the biggest culprits when developing content for web sites and blogs is not making your content scannable. What does this mean? The tendency of web site readers is to scan to the left, where more information is located. In fact, the common movement of the eye is F-shaped. By employing a weak title, the first two to three words in the title won’t contain any kind of information or keywords that will compel the reader to click on the link. Even though scannability is something that is also important with the body text, it is of greater significance when thinking of a title for your post. Titles should always be within context.
Consider the title as microcontent – small bits of information that already give users a general idea of what the article or blog post will be. By treating your titles like this, users won’t have a problem determining what the article is about and won’t hesitate to click on the link to read it further. Treating titles like microcontent also has another use – it gives you a better representation when the links appear in search engines, RSS feeds and other venues that are link-generated
Originally posted on September 16, 2011 @ 8:49 am