You have honed your writing style, incorporating lists and other article styles, providing fresh information, and writing expert analysis on your subjects. You have connected with all the search engines, joined blog directories, and you have spent countless hours "socially networking" aka commenting on other blogs leaving your url all over the blogosphere.
Yet something is missing? Your articles pay homage to the great American novel, look more like a dictionary unabridged addition, or the text is flat with no highlighting or emphasis placed on passages of importance.
What Do You Do aka What To Look For In Your Readers?
A very effective concept in understanding how to generate successful blog traffic is the “F Shape” theory a common reading pattern people employ to read a blog articles. Real Estate Tomato’s Chris Hotz wrote a fantastic article on the “F Shape.”
“A recent study using eye-tracking equipment demonstrates how internet users navigate their way through search engines, websites and online data. After tracking how 232 users read thousands of web pages, one common attribute became apparent, an F-shaped reading pattern. This pattern is characterized by three common attributes:”
Attribute #1: People reading your articles will begin by reading in a horizontal left to right movement across the top of the site. This becomes the top line of the “F” pattern. Consequently this is usually the “Headline” area.
Attribute #2: People read-browse down a bit and then move left to right across the page. This pattern fills in the lower section of the “F”shape and is usually where a writer wishes to make their “Killer Opening” statements.
Attribute #3: People will browse the left side of your article in a vertical up and down pattern looking for “Keywords.”
Analysis
According to Hotz, this pattern teaches bloggers that readers do not read “everything” written in an article, the first two paragraphs of an article should contain the article’s most important points, and keywords need to be employed at natural breaks ie. bullet points-new paragraphs-sub headers-bold sentences.
The goal of most bloggers is to write articles which inform, provoke thought, and create return readers to the blog. By studying the “F Shape”, bloggers will have a better understanding how to make this concept a reality.
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Very interesting, Dean! I have also found that the posts that have photos are read and commented on more often. The post can have THE best content but, no photos and it doesn't seem to do as well as the less fact-filled posts that have one or more photos.