Nov
13
Okay. I’m going to go out on a limb and say that if you’re a real estate agent, you probably have a website.
No surprise there.
But let me go even further out on that limb and say you’re probably not sure if it’s a good website or not…
First of all, you’re not sure if people are actually making it to your site. Second, you’re not sure if the people who are finding your website or blog are actually finding what they need.
Am I right?
To make matters worse, it costs money to host your website or blog. [Not a lot. But if you're not making money, even a little money is hard to lose, right?]
You’ve got two options, really. Ditch the hobbling website/blog or make it kick butt.
If you answered “make it kick butt,” then you’ve come to the right place.
1. Make It Big, Simple and Short
People come to a website for one reason and one reason only: To get information. They’ve got a burning question or need–”how do I stage my home?” or “I need to sell…now!”–and you’ve got to answer that question or satisfy that need.
Fast.
See, people won’t look long or hard. More than likely they’ll skim and scan web pages. That’s why you need to make everything you write clear and concise. And the most important details must stand out.
If you want them to call you for a free consultation…spell it out loud and clear on your home page. In fact, every page should include a call to action.
2. Know Thy Audience
Who are you writing for? You should know your audience. And know them well. Only then will you be able to convey a message that will reach prospects personally. Find out what your audience wants to know…and then write to them specifically.
3. Empty Your Home Page
This may surprise you, but your home page should NOT contain the bulk of your information. Your home page is more for branding and encouraging people to find what they are looking for deeper in the site.
The links and short descriptions on your homepage should be clear enough that the reader doesn’t have to guess where they’ll end up. Bottom line: Simplify your home page.
One more thing: It is always helpful to have a search box. It makes the reader feel more comfortable on your site.
4. Think Pathway Pages
Your pathway pages [pages channeling off your home page] contain the answer to your reader’s question–they exist as a path to your reader’s ultimate destination.
Clarity is key here as you drive them deeper, with more specific information. And keep in mind, it doesn’t really matter how many click-thrus you have until your destination, as long as the path is extremely clear along the way.
Also, don’t forget that call to action on every page.
5. Prevent Reader Overload
When thinking about how long to make a web page, think about what the reader is looking for: Are they going to print this page out? Is this too much information?
If it’s too much information on one page, consider breaking your pages down into topics and sub-topics.
By the way: Use PDFs sparingly. PDFs are miserable to read online. They should only be used when a reader needs all the information on the document.
And if you must use a PDF, warn the reader.
Conclusion
Okay, you’re making your website or blog drop-dead easy to find and use. But is it compelling?
If you need help deciding exactly what you should say on your blog or website then join us next week where we’ll look at six guidelines to help you focus your essential message so it’s clear, concise and compelling.
Did you find this article helpful? If so, leave a comment or subscribe to thereal estate marketing Blog by email or news feed.
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Jul
3
Real Estate Blogging: 14 Profound Ideas to Increase Links to Your Blog
Filed Under Real Estate Blogs, SEO | Leave a Comment
Linkbait. Just sounds evil.
But it’s not. It’s nothing more than a label for a content-rich, useful blog content…a blog post that people not only love to read, but more importantly, share.
“Once a great site, great application or trendy post is written about somewhere, it gets picked up and dragged across the web. Social tagging and popularity ranking sites (like the aforementioned Digg & del.icio.us) help to give the document massive visibility to hundreds of sheep-like content creators, who’ll happily link to you.” Linkbaiting for Fun and Profit
In the end, linkbaiting is a beautiful thing. It bring you traffic. Attention. Subscribers. Prospects. And ultimately clients.
So, just launch just one of these linkbait ideas on your blog a month for a year…and there’s a good chance you’ll develop a large following.
Web 2.0 Applications
While mashups, maps and community-like apps tend to be shoe-ins for easy link bait, there’s a hitch. Not for the faint of heart. You must be–or must know–a software engineer. Greg Swann is the king here on this.
Collaborate on Blog Posts
Connect with some other bloggers to create content that’s useful, unique, urgent and ultra-specific. With multiple authors, you tend to get links from their sites to your site, thus drawing their audience to your site.
Expose Wicked Deeds
Uncovering a scandal is sensational. Somewhat suspect. At times, down right dirty. But oh so loved by everyone. Now, having said that, please…be professional. Expose the deed. And don’t make a judgement call. In fact, ask your audience what they think.
Top 10 Lists
Think David Letterman. Numbered lists with tips, advice and steps are great for drawing traffic and links. And it doesn’t have to be 10. It can be 100. Or even 1,000.
Real Estate Related Humor
Everyone–even the top-notch serious–need to bust a rib every once in awhile. But as with “Exposing Wicked Deeds” make sure you use your noggin’ here. Common sense should tell you NOT to use stereotypes or crude language.
Reviews of Events
Reviews of pubcrawls, conferences, product launches, speeches or seminars are exceptional examples of linkbait.
Interviews with Insiders
In today’s globally connected world, emailing an insider is a cinch. Frankly, you don’t have an excuse not to do this. It’s that easy. My recommendation: Email about five people. You raise your chances of getting a response from at least one. And if all five respond–you’ve just got yourself a series.
Surveys or Collections of Data
Survey Monkey makes collecting data child’s play. Simply whip up the survey and post the link. Within days you’ll have a smidgen of data you can build a good post around.
Film or Animation
This is a stretch…but worth a thought since videos tend to be easy targets for going viral. Make it real estate related, and you’re liable to wind up on a high-caliber web site. That’s a promise.
Charts, Graphs or Spreadsheets
For those closest Excel addicts, this is your chance. But don’t forget: you must examine and analyze the data. A summary is imperative. Otherwise you come across as a numbers snob.
High Profile Criticism
Target someone or something that’s in the spotlight–and do a good, honest job of it–and you’re likely to draw links out of the woodwork.
Contests, Giveaways and Competitions
This may smack of coupon cutting (that is, low brow), but numbers and research are not on your side if you resist this idea: Contests, giveaways and competitions draw people. An insane amount of people.
Trend-Spotting
There’s an art to trend setting. Or a science. Whatever you think it is, the bottom line is that it takes time. But picking up on a story before everyone else–even if it’s not identified at first–will make you a star. Just ask Matt Drudge.
Advice from Multiple Experts
If you’re creating an article that offers advice, pulling opinions from the well-known experts in the industry is a great way to make sure links flow your way. The experts themselves will often be inclined to link.
Did you find this article helpful? If so, leave a comment or subscribe to the real estate marketing Blog by email or news feed.
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Mar
11
Resurrect Your Real Estate Blog: The Best Idea You’ll Ever Hear
Filed Under Real Estate Blogs, Real Estate Prospecting Ideas | 2 Comments
Let me ask you a question: Got a blog yet?
Maybe you do. But it’s languishing. No hits. No comments. No subscribers. That’s a good indicator you’ve got a lackluster yawn-fest.
So, without even looking at your blog, I can guess what’s wrong with it. It’s one of three–if not all–of these factors:
1. You don’t care.
2. You’re not very good.
3. No one is listening.
And if you’ve been at real estate blogging for any time, you probably have said this to yourself more than once in the last 24 hours: “Why am I working so hard on this thing? What’s the deal?”
Again, without looking at your blog, I could probably tell you what’s wrong with it: It’s all about you.
If that’s the case, then you can kiss prospects, subscribers–and even clients–good bye. Bottom line: you build an audience, attract prospects and generate comments from consumer-focused content.
With that thought in mind, here’s one of the most brilliant ways to do that: Write short, meaningful posts about people in your community.
In essence, become a local journalist.
That means, every time you are in the car, on the phone or in a meeting with someone…find out something interesting about them. And then ask them if you can blog about them. Keep a notepad and build up a pool of stories.
Once you start posting these stories, email the person to let them know. Then naturally they tell all their friends and family. Pretty soon you’ll have a large swath of people eyeing your blog to see if they made it on there yet.
In fact, you do this good enough, and strangers will go out of their way to meet you, hoping you “interview” them.
Why is this effective? Because people like to see themselves in print. Let me explain.
I got this idea from the book Made to Stick, where Dan and Chris Heath tell the story of a city newspaper that had a readership rate over 100%.
Over 100%? That means people outside of the papers base read it. That’s incredible.
What’s the secret to their success? The editor summed it up in three words: names, names, names. He and his reporters focused on the people of the town–their dreams, ambitions, families, jobs, fears, desires, hopes and lives–not the events.
That means you should do the same. So…what are you waiting for? Get to work.
Did you find this article helpful? If so, leave a comment or subscribe to the real estate marketing Blog by email or news feed.
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Nov
12
How a Cocky, Obsessive CEO of GE Can Make You a World-Class Blogger
Filed Under Real Estate Blogs | 2 Comments
To say Jack Welch is cocky is a gross understatement. Legend has it that some twelve years after he joined GE, Welch announced at his annual performance review his plan to become CEO.
And that was in fact just what the brazen, young engineer did. In 1981, Welch stepped into the roll of GE’s youngest Chairman and CEO ever.
During the first five years of his tenure, Welch cemented his reputation and eliminated employees ruthlessly, earning the title “Neutron Jack”–the people vanished but the buildings remained. From 1980 to 1985, he cut 112,000 jobs.
What was his hang up? Welch was obsessed with dismantling nine-layers of bureaucracy, cutting inventories, shutting down factories, reducing payrolls and cutting lackluster product lines.
He had a ferocious desire for efficiency. And profit.
Introducing the Most Successful Manager of the 20th Century
Some criticize Welch as mean-spirited and petty. Brutal. Apathetic. Others claim he’s quick to judge. Says he used limited information to size people up. And write them off.
But one thing can be said about him: he was successful.
During his 20 plus year tenure, GE’s market capitalization rose from $13 billion to $400 billion. Revenues grew from $27 billion to $127 billion. And earnings grew tenfold.
In 2000, Fortune magazine said Jack Welch was “Manager of the Year.”
The Key to Jack Welch’s Success
What was the key to his success? Certainly more than one factor contributed to his success. But if I was to name one singular and solitary reason for his dominance I’d say it’d have to be his philosophy to cut any businesses that GE couldn’t be #1 or #2 in.
This concept was a simple way to make quick, sound judgments. And to remain focused, lean, fast and competitive.
Ideas, projects or business that couldn’t meet this criteria were thrown on the trash heap. Welch was obsessed with keeping GE trim and in fighting shape. Fat nor sloth were welcome.
How can this idea help you in blogging? Easy. Figure out what market you can enter where you are guaranteed to be #1 or #2.
Why This Is So Important
You have to think about this deeply before you tackle a project like a blog. Otherwise you are doomed to fail. You are doomed to fail for three reasons: lack of audience, lack of discipline or lack of motivation.
Almost everyone you know–including yourself–has failed at blogging. When I say fail I mean they have everyone has at least one languishing or dead blog in their history.
If you don’t, I think statistically you will in the next five years.
Part of the reason behind the failure rate behind failed blogs is because know one is listening. Or you’re not very good. Or you simply don’t care.
When you use Welch’s principle this is what it does: it gets you to focus. And it has one other unintended affect. It demands discipline.
Watch blog launches by successful bloggers and you’ll get the sense that not only did they take Welch’s principle in to consideration–but they in fact live or die by it.
I believe that Greg Swann did this when he launched Bloodhound Blog. And the truth probably holds for Real Estate Tomato Blog. These bloggers launched blogs they were fairly confident they could dominate as #1 or #2.
The same is true for Future of Real Estaet Marketing. Before Inman and Joel Burslem launched his blog there was…well, no one. Lots of tech blogs. Political blogs. Cultural blogs. Some social media blogs. Blogs on real estate marketing. But no blogs dedicated to the impact technology is making on real estate–it was the first.
What If I Can’t Always Be the First?
Real Estate Zebra, well, not the case. Even in May 2006 Daniel Rothemal had a monstrous mountain of competition already on the playing field.
But he defined himself pretty narrowly. You can see this in his zebra manifesto. And no doubt he’s worked pretty hard.
Domination demands positioning yourself to win. And hard work.
So. Wanna start a blog? Or resurrect a languishing one? Or overhaul the lackluster yawn-fest you are working so hard on now?
Then decide what you can write about and dominate the #1 or #2 spot. This may mean launching into a field completely new for you. So do your research.
Regardless, you’ll have to study your market. And then plan.
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Aug
20
The 3 Best Social Media Ideas for Improving Your Sales You’ll Ever Read
Filed Under Networking, Real Estate Blogs, Real Estate Prospecting Ideas, Social Media | 1 Comment
Leads are like molecules. They’re a billion of them, but all so small and insignificant you don’t even pay attention to them.
Leads are like molecules in another way, too. Without molecules, you wouldn’t exist. Same is true for leads.
But maybe you don’t have a billion leads coming in. Would you like a billion leads over a years time? If so, one way to get there is by doing lots of microprospecting.
What’s microprospecting? Just another way of saying “prospect small, and often.”
Microprospecting is sending a personal email to a satisfied client. Crossing the street to meet a stranger. Microprospecting works in the digital world to, like social media.
You can fill your macro funnel with leads by laying hundreds of small social media prospecting lines. And the cool part? Is doesn’t take a lot of time.
In the case of social media, here are the 3 best–and fastest–things you can do everyday that are guaranteed to grow your pipeline.
The Best Blogging Idea You’ll Ever Read
The most obvious choice here is to start a blog. If you haven’t a blog yet, it’s imperative you get one now.
What can you do daily on a blog that will improve your sales? Write short, meaningful posts on the state of your local market.
But I have a much better idea.
Write short, meaningful posts about people in your community. Become a local journalist.
Every time you are in the car, on the phone or in a meeting with someone, find out something interesting about them. And then ask them if you can blog about them. Keep a notepad and build up a pool of stories.
Once you start posting these stories, email the person to let them know. Then they tell all their friends and family. Pretty soon you’ll have a large swath of people eyeing your blog to see if they made it on there yet.
In fact, you do this good enough, and strangers will go out of their way to meet you, hoping you “interview” them.
Why is this effective? Because people like to see themselves in print.
I got this idea from the book Made to Stick, where Dan and Chris Heath tell the story of a city newspaper that had a readership rate over 100%.
What was the secret to the newspaper’s success? The editor summed it up in three words: names, names, names. He and his reporters focused on the people of the town–not the events.
You should do the same.
The Best Recommendation Idea You’ll Ever Read
The next best social media idea is to give people recommendations. But not just any old recommendation.
How can you do that? Join LinkedIn if you haven’t already and search out people you’ve worked with in some capacity. Then, recommend them.
But say something positive and unique about that person. Unique is key. Zero in on something about that person that makes them stand out. Give the recommendation teeth.
I’ve given several recommendations where people have returned with “wow…that really pops out of the page.”
You can learn how to write a good LinkedIn recommendation. It’s really easy and involves a 15 minute investment.
Give one recommendation a day for 30 days and you’ve made 30 people smile. Hopefully you’ll get 30 recommendations in return. That’s not always the case, but 20–even 10–is better than none.
The Best One Night Stand You’ll Ever Have–and the Only One You’ll Ever Have
This goes without saying, but to make the best use of social media, you have to be social. Like Dustin Wax at Stepcase Lifehack said:
Building relationships starts with a friend request or invite — it doesn’t end there. Get to know the people you are connected with. Answer their questions, send them a link or piece of information now and again, and read their profiles.
But if you look at social media as a one-night stand–you’re doomed for failure.
You’ve got to love people. Everything about them. Like Leo at Zen Habits–who I swear doesn’t have a bad bone in his body. He is truly interested in everybody.
[Just follow him on Twitter to see what I mean.]
When you fall over yourself to get to know people–one person at a time–becoming popular is inevitable. And that means you have to spend more than one night with them.
The 90 Day Social Media Challenge
Social media is out there to help you. And it’s perfect for what you want to do–generate leads. Where else can you have access to millions of people in the matter of a few clicks?
So, my challenge to you is this: for the next 90 days try and do these three simple social media ideas everyday.
At the most it should take you an hour and a half. But that hour and a half maybe your best time investment as your social network grows exponentially.
Disclaimer
By the end of that 90 days you won’t have a billion leads. Probably not a million. Or even a thousand. But a hundred isn’t far-fetched.
And if you have one hundred new leads, and got just one lead from each person, your leads just doubled without you having to do anything.
That’s the beauty of compound marketing.
May
15
Social Media Does Matter: Selling Houses During Hard Times
Filed Under Real Estate Blogs, Real Estate Listing Tips, Social Media | 2 Comments
Everyone knows that in today’s market, it’s not enough just to get the listing—you need to have an aggressive marketing plan.
While printed flyers, signage and the basics will always have their place, we all know that over 80% of home buyers begin their search for a new home online.
In fact, second only to over-priced home, no internet marketing strategy is the biggest reason homes don’t sell.
That’s why you need advanced online marketing strategies–social media strategies–to help you create a compelling online presence.
Yet, marketing real estate has never been a hip business.
The people in it might be cool–but the advertising venues that work best for real estate have long been traditional vehicles like postcards, print newspaper ads and signage. Real estate is nothing if not a local business, after all (note the real estate mantra of “location, location, location”)–you don’t buy a house off of the Internet, right?
Maybe not yet.
Tech-savvy real estate agents and developers quickly turned to online and social media tools like video, blogs, and other new media to sell their properties. However, the adoption is so slow for the early majority [or pragmatists], and, of course, painful for the late majority [or conservatives].
Which brings me to my point.
The first step in successful and aggressive listing promotion is to make sure your property is featured where home buyers are looking.
And because offline marketing tools cost money, and money is hard to come by in tough times, its really no surprise that real estate agents to reduce their newspaper print budgets, if not eliminating them altogether.
My belief is that perhaps financial hard times might drive some normally timid, pragmatic and conservative people to finally get online and get with it, crossing that chasm faster than they normally would.
Otherwise they may have to be happy with failing. After call, necessity is the mother of experimentation.
To get us started, here are some basic suggestions to help you get the most out of your web site’s listings:
- Promote listings on your home page—make a featured property listing highlighting a particular property, and make sure there’s an easy-to-access slide show at the ready.
- Keep your hot news hot—announce your newest and most-desirable listings.
- Update your open house page—drive traffic from the web into your open houses.
- Use a hotline number with your listings. This allows you to capture contact information when they call to listen to an audio tour of the home or updated price information.
- Add a summary to your home page—with a dedicated link to your listing page.
Once you’ve secured the listing and published it to your website–the minimum–it’s time to capture other agents and potential buyers. Let’s move on to more advanced online marketing strategies–social media strategies–to help you create a compelling online presence.
Here’s how to get started:
- Create a single-property blog. Is this the most potent listing tool? Teresa Boardman talked about Keeping Local Real Estate, Well…Local, and how blogging can support and express your local knowledge and expertise within the microcosm of your community; establishing relationships with site-visitors and clients. [With Local, I'm speaking in-terms of relationships--referral business, repeat business, becoming known in your community for the all-inclusive services you provide consumers.]
- Add YouTube videos along with other content such as business details, photos, and descriptions to their listings. To do so, simply upload your videos to YouTube and ensure that the ‘embed’ option is turned on. Then, associate your video to your business listing through the Local Business Center.
- Promote Google Map as the new real estate search page. Once you’ve got your videos in Google Maps, then you got to make sure people actually use it.
- Dominate your local search. Back in November I wrote about local search and why you should care and gave you 7 steps to improve your local rankings. The best part: it’s bootstrapalicious [read: doesn't cost any money except your sweat].
- Advertise your business and listings using Facebook. Putting your brand on Facebook is actually a pretty easy process. Just click on the Advertisers link in Facebook’s footer and then Create a Page.
- Brand your listings with Trulia. Quoting from the Trulia blog: “Agents will have access to a self-service tool to highlight up to 10 listings per month for a monthly subscription fee of $50.” So, for less than the price of a typical newspaper classified ad, you can now highlight your listings and connect directly to more than 2 million unique users per month, including a highly affluent group of home buyers, 81% of who are looking to purchase a home in the next 12 months.
- Talk about foreclosures at Zillow. Share vital information with home owners, buyers and sellers on a hot topic. Throw your hat in the ring. Get involved where people are involved. This is a low-entry point to get your feet wet. And it’s free.
These steps will get you to a place where you can offer your visitors the most information-rich experience, and will help them to remember you, and thus to return to your site again and again.
Leave a comment if this post was helpful or if you have anything you’d like to add. And if you like what you read, subscribe to the real estate marketing Blog by email or news feed.
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Mar
6
8 Guidelines for Writing Meaningful Links That Woo Potential Clients
Filed Under Real Estate Blogs, Real Estate Prospecting Ideas, Social Media | 2 Comments
Links play a huge part in online content.
When people scan web pages they automatically look at headlines, sub-headlines and links to judge whether the page holds any interest for them. Based on what they see in the headlines, sub-headlines and links will determine whether they stay or leave. [See, you are doing it now.]
This is called information foraging.
And it doesn’t help this evaluation usually occurs under 27 seconds.
This means that web visitors’ ruthless, critical eye can sometimes overlook important information if it’s not clearly articulated in headlines, sub-headlines, and especially links.
Also, links tell search engines what your web page is all about. Links rank high as one of the factors for good search engine results. And when you have less than 30 seconds to woo a potential client, I think you do what ever you can to make your page stick out from the million others.
As you already know, links can be:
- Sentences: Are you too busy to spend money on advertising?
- Fragments: In Pursuit of Leads: 21 Ideas That Really Work
- Phrases: Red-Handed with a Glamour Magazine
- Call to Actions: Subscribe Now
- Navigation Labels: Homes, Sellers, Buyers, News, About Us
With that in mind, let’s take a look at 8 easy guidelines for writing meaningful and compelling links that please both people and search engines.
1. Don’t Make New Program and Product Names into Links Themselves
For example: Instead of “Every Kid Deserves a Yard” as a link to your new campaign to help families move out of apartments and into a home, create the link on your website into something that both people and search engines will recognize immediately: “Ditch the Apartment” or “Buy a Home”.
The trick is to write links that your visitors—especially your first time visitors—will recognize and understand immediately.
Notice how the British Museum writes their navigation links.
For the most part, the navigation links make sense. But what does “The Museum” link mean?
I’m guessing it’s about the museum—which it turns out to be only partially true. Hitting The Museum link takes you to a page about the history and architecture of the museum.
Better if it was named “History of Museum” or “Museum History” or “Museum Architecture.” [Can you think of something better?]
If it was an About Us page, then “About Us” would work great.
2. Rethink Document Titles and Headings That Turn into Links
When turning print articles into web pages, sometimes you may need to rethink the title of the article. Things don’t transfer smoothly from print to web.
First of all, avoid cute, clever or generic headline titles like The Power of Online Technology. They don’t clearly communicate the content of the article, sales letter or flier. Neither is the title really compelling or enticing to the reader.
What’s bad in print becomes only worse online.
On the web, when visitors are fierce and fast in their judgment, titles, headlines and links need to stand out. Boldly.
Your web document titles, headlines and links need to offer the thing people want most. And the links needs to satisfy a need they have.
High-Tech Cowboys in Real Estate: The Race to Dominate Web Space is one way to rewrite the above link to give people a fullness of the articles meaning. It would work equally well as a page title.
3. Match Links and Page Titles
This is a biggie. So pay attention.
As people move through websites, the first question they ask on each new page is “Did I get where I thought I was going?” They expect the page title to match the link.
When you have links and page titles that match, you reassure your web visitors that they are on a good pathway and have landed on the page they expected.
To write successful matching links and page titles, plan them in both directions:
- As you write the page title, think of how the same link will work on all the pages where the link will appear.
- As you write links, think of how the same words will work as a page title.
For example, if I wanted to patch you through to an article on Realty Times about the current real estate market outlook and how it’s not that bad, best I use the actual title of the article as the link like this: Real Estate Outlook: Housing Better Than Some Reports Indicate.
And when writing page titles, always imagine how they’ll look as a link. See point 2.
4. Be as Explicit as You Can in the Space You Have
And make more space if you need it. The longer the link, the better. See point 6 below.
5. Use Action Phrases for Action Links
“View My Profile” beats “Profile” any day.
“Buy a Home” dominates “Homes to Buy.”
“Subscribe Now” is better than “Mailing List”.
6. Use Longer, More Descriptive Links
Single nouns or short noun phrases can work as labels or as links for general categories and overall topics, but only if your site visitors recognize the nouns you use and give them the same meaning.
[Think back to the British Museum page and “The Museum” link. It probably made sense to everyone involved in building the website, so nobody questioned it. Not so to those who actually use it.]
Descriptive links that lead to specific information are just like headings. Fox News creates compelling, descriptive links that are hard to ignore. Couple it with a powerful image and you have an irresistible message.
Furthermore, in the report Designing for the Scent of Information, usability engineer Jared Spool and his colleagues discovered that links of 7 to 12 words achieved the highest success in getting people to the information they are seeking.
Why is that?
Longer links are likely to have the words your visitors have in minds.
Remember, people scan web pages looking for headings, sub-headlines and links. That’s about it. If they just see The Power of Online Technology in the body copy they’re likely to overlook it. It’s just too general.
On the other hand, if they want answers on how to use social media to generate leads, they’ll quickly gravitate to Learn how to deploy Social Media Marketing to put your business Beyond Competition. That’s more likely to satisfy their quest. [Disclaimer: I do not work for Greg. I just like what he is doing, hence I share link love.]
That link is actually 13 words. Ghastly, you say. Too long. Will muss up your pretty web page? Think about this: people will likely only read your links, because they stand out. Wouldn’t you want them to read the most important and compelling piece to draw them in?
7. Add a Short Description if People Need It
Or rewrite the link.
If you can’t get enough information into the link to create a meaningful link, then you can add a short description about what’s behind the link. Again, I lean to FoxNews to demonstrate short descriptions that follow vague link titles.
8. Avoid Click Here or More at All Costs
I hate these links the most. Why? They add zero value to the people who mean the most to you.
The other day I spent about twenty minutes unsubscribing from email newsletters I no longer read. Of course the the link to unsubscribe was buried at the bottom of every email, but worse yet, nine out of ten publishers created links like this:
To unsubscribe, click here. [This actual link will take you to a Google search results page for the term "click here." These are the people who rank for "click here." Interesting. See point below.]
There are two good reasons why you want to avoid these terms.
First, when someone is looking for something specific on a page—like how to sell a home—and all they see is Click Here, they’re likely to miss the all important Learn How to Sell Your Home that proceeds the Click Here.
The second reason you want to avoid Click Here and More links is because they are meaningless to search engines. Unless you are searching for “click here” or “more.” I guess to some people that’s a legitimate hunt.
Finally, never, ever write links like this: I’m a little late to the party on this one. [Each link goes to Joel Burslem's excellent website simply because I saw him do this but couldn't actually find the page he didn't own.]
I see this a lot on blogs. Here’s why it’s a bad idea: it just plain ticks people off. When I first saw Joel do it, I shared the page with several people and invariably–without my persuasion–they pointed out how annoying that link set up was.
What do you want me to do? Really click all of them to find out what party you were late to? Why, how and when? No thanks.
And what is a search engine to make of it?
This is a subtle ill will builder that costs against you. And all that eventually adds up. [Joel is usually spot on with descriptive links. This one just stood out to me.]
Conclusion
Not only people, but search engines deem descriptive, keyword links to be of high value in telling them what a page is about. And so with less than 30 seconds to win over potential leads and clients, I believe it’s in your best interest to do your best in getting people to not only find your page and stay on your page, but actually convert on your page to a lead or client.