45 replies to this topic

[BrianR]

I cut my teeth in the direct marketing copy school writing for both UK and international campaigns, some targeting the USA. As most of you know, dm copywriting proved time and again that relevant long copy deliver better results than short copy, especially in sales letters.

So now we get to writing for the web, we are told that you should write to max 2 or 3 screen depths - if you've got more to say, break it up onto separate pages.

I'll nail my colours to the mast right up front and say that I sometimes write very long pages for websites if I feel that breaking it up into several pages will lose the flow - all properly written with short paras and frequent crosshead.

Why?

Because I've never seen facts which demonstrate that (a) people prefer to click through to say 4 separate pages rather than ( scrolling down through a single long page in order to read exactly the same text.

To my mind, there are 2 issues here:

1. My schooling tells me that method ( will generate more enquires/ leads than method (a) - but has anyone know whether this has been rigorously tested??

2. Assuming the text is built around say 3 keyphrases, surely the natural repetition of these keyphrases 6 or more times during that long copy will generate a better ranking for the one page that diluting it over 4 pages??

So what do you think?

BrianR

[Haystack]

Hi BrianR,
I agree with your premise. Each time you ask someone to click to continue you're risking losing the visitor. If they're finding your copy interesting they'll keep scrolling and scrolling.

You'll see this most often with direct marketers with pages that tend to go on forever. If you're connecting with your visitor, they'll remained hooked and keep scrolling until you have a call to action such as a subscribe, order form, etc.

It's kind of like watching an infomercial on TV. If they manage to pull you in and keep showing you additional features, hitting you up with different testimonials and selling points, then upping the offer with a free set of steak knives, how can you NOT pull the trigger on the Thunder Stick?

[mcanerin]

From a purely SEO standpoint (which is admittedly different from a user friendliness or view to conversion standpoint) the current wisdom is that anything past 110k on a page gets ignored by SE, including keywords, links, etc.

A 110k of text is a fair amount, but when you add a bunch of code you can lose a lot of it. For example, the page sizes of the threads in this forum are around 100k each. Go longer than that and it won't get indexed.

Should you care? Well, maybe not. After all, if you achieve a good keyword density at the top of you page maybe it doesn't matter that the rest of the page would be ignored. But on an SEO forum, being ignored by a search engine is something I feel obligated to mention.

If your preamble talks about the background and the rest of the page talks about your product, the stuff about your product may never get indexed.

Having said that, in the final analysis, as long as what is indexed gets the visitor to your page, the goal after that is to convert or inform them, and your content should do that - SEO has done it's job and it's marketing that takes over the torch now.

Yours,

Ian

[copywriter]

Hi BrianR. Welcome!

Yes, the battle between long copy and short copy rages on I may be accused of riding the fence (so to speak), but it has always been my opinion that several factors come into play when deciding whether to use long or short copy.Communication Style of Buyer – Primarily Steadiness or Compliance styles within the DISC behavioral profile equals longer copy; primarily Dominance or Influence equals shorter copy.
Man vs. Woman – Primarily men equals shorter copy; primarily women equals longer copy.
Customer’s Familiarity Level With Your Product/Service – Longevity in the marketplace and high familiarity level equals shorter copy; new product/service equals longer copy.
Price Level of Your Product/Service – The higher the price (generally speaking) the longer the copy.
Search Engine Optimization (for Web sites) – As mcanerin stated, longer pages stand the chance of missing out on rankings.
Generally speaking... yes, I agree that long copy pulls better than short (provided it's good). But when you're writing highly targeted copy to very specific groups, you have to be a bit more selective.

What Jill did on one site we worked together on was to have the bottom half of the page created as a graphic. I optimized the 1st 300 words or so and the rest got dumped into a .gif.

I have not seen any "official" stats on whether scrolling pulls better than clicking. I know I've watched some DM's sites change back and forth between the two, but they are evidently keeping the results of their private research... private.

Let us know if you find anything solid on the scrolling/clicking issue, will you?

Thanks!
Karon

[Jill]

IMO, long copy is best for SEO.

And I think it's fine for visitors too. Forget about the 110k thing...that is HUGE and waaaaaaaaaay too long. It takes a whole lot of copy to reach 100k, and chances are it's your javascript and other code that's taking up all the room. Certainly not the copy.

J

[copywriter]

Jill... define "long copy" in your opinion. From what you've always said, "long copy" to you is about 300 words or so.

I think BrianR is talking about sales letters that - if printed out - would be 10 to 14 pages longs.

[Scottie]

My definitive opinion is...

it all depends.

Like Karon pointed out, it's all about knowing your target audience. If I ran across a corporate site that I wanted information from and it bombarded me with screens of text that were 5 or 6 screens long, I'd be irritated.

On the other hand, I wouldn't mind scrolling through information on a product or service that was skillfully done and logically answered my questions in sequence. If a sales letter is NOT well-done, you run the risk of losing the visitor when they realize how much they have to read to get the whole story. IMO, it is much harder to do long copy well.

[mcanerin]

When I am reading an article, I've always considered clicking on the next page to be a real annoyance.

I try to keep basic info in a screen that does not scare the casual surfer, like one or 2 screens, and then from there provide links to longer documents. I really HATE trying to print a document that is on 3 or 4 different pages. If it's likely to get printed, please put it on one page!

I've personally tried to use the Yale Web Style Guide as much as possible for years now.

Ian

[copywriter]

Great resource, Ian. Thanks for sharing that.

Yeah, Scottie... when some people talk about "long" copy, they mean 400 words When DM writers talk about "long" copy, they mean 4,000 words.

[Scottie]

I try to keep basic info in a screen that does not scare the casual surfer, like one or 2 screens, and then from there provide links to longer documents. I really HATE trying to print a document that is on 3 or 4 different pages. If it's likely to get printed, please put it on one page!

Usability alert!

Offer a "Print this Article" option, excluded by robots.txt so that it's not spidered as duplicate content.

FWIW, I do generally prefer an article to be on a single page as well. There are times when it makes sense to break things up, and there are times when it makes more sense to keep it all together.

IMO, there are no hard and fast rules- there's no guidebook you can hand a site owner that says "This is how you do it". Everything is relative. Without knowing your target audience (and their preferences) you can't make effective decisions.

If you don't really know your audience...market research...usability testing... the answers are easy to find. Just ask!

[copywriter]

You nailed it, Scottie. It's all about knowing your target audience.

[BrianR]

Thanks to you all for some thoroughly engaging responses to my original post.

First, a clarification...

As a copywriter, what worries me is the tendency to turn the accepted minimum number of words per page for SEO purposes (250-300) into a maximum. Hence, if you only need 250-300 words for optimisation, then that's all they'll write.

This, coupled with the 'accepted wisdom' that you shouldn't force readers to scroll down more than 2 or 3 screens deep, conspires to break many websites up into a series of disconnected staccato mini-topics. And so, you end up clicking through three or four pages to get 'the whole story' on any particular topic.

I'm not advocating the super-long hyped-up sales letter copy that most dm writers cut their teeth on. What I'm saying is that, from a 'conversion to sale/ action' point of view, 250-300 words is often too little to give the reader enough information to make the decision you want them to make.

I accept that, because this is an SEO/ SEM forum, then optimisation issues are top of the agenda. But, from a copywriting point of view, I maintain that the decisions that need to be made about the text on any web page are:

1. First and foremost: How much do I need to say on this particular page to allow the reader to make the decision I want them to make? And that can be as little as 300 words, but is more likely to be 500-1000 words.

2. Then secondly: How do I weave the chosen keyphrases into the copy so that the page ranks well but without destroying the sales arguments?

Anyway, I'm probably guilty of 'preaching to the converted' here!

By the way, I'm intrigued! Karon said this in one of her posts:

What Jill did on one site we worked together on was to have the bottom half of the page created as a graphic.  I optimized the 1st 300 words or so and the rest got dumped into a .gif.

May I ask why you did that??

Thanks again to my fellow forumists.

BrianR

[sheriw]

Brian,
I agree with you that long copy sells better than short. One way that some copywriters deal with this issue is to break the text up into several smaller pages, but to place a "cliffhanger" at the end of each page, with a link that entices the person to keep clicking. Such as, "He shared one of the little known secrets of increasing sales, which is..."(click here to continue).

While you do risk losing readers at a page break, if done well, you can break a page into several, and people will click through-if they're interested in the subject and the copy. I've written some fairly long sales letters that pulled well, and it wasn't the length, or lack-it was how the subject was treated.

I agree, though, I have had clients who had 50 words of content on their web site, who asked me to make it "really long" at 250 words, because they had heard that this was the 'magic number' for search engines. There isn't a magic number, in my book. It's about communicating clearly and well the benefits to the reader, whether it takes 250 words, which might be enough for some products, although I'm scratching my head to think which ones have so few benefits to be described, or need such light copy, but they could exist, or 25,000 (at which point you've practically written an ebook online).

This is an ongoing debate in copywriting circles, marketing circles, and Internet circles, and probably will be until the day a few years from now when streaming media and audio technology will have us all debating the right length for an online video presentation.
Best wishes,
Sheri

[excell]

Well everyone is different in the way they use their computers.

I have trouble with very long pages because as I am reading my hand is on the mouse pointed to the scroll bar and as my eyes focus on the page my mouse sometimes slips off the scroll bar and hits a window behind or something then I get lost and cannot find my spot on the long page.

I'm not keen on keyboard commands and always use the mouse.

I also get put off by the sheer thought of the time and effort to read a very long page, but if something shorter gets my interest and leads me to want to click for more I am very happy to do so.

Seeing that a section has say 3-4 pages helps me to decide if I have time to digest the whole thing or not or if I am multi-tasking to remember I have already read pages 2&3 so now I go back and read the 4th page later after a break or so.

For SEO purposes there are two ways of thinking... a good long page that is well optimised can work very well, but more pages can be made stronger for different key phrase combinations and more tightly focused for them at the same time as adding strength to the websites overall theme.

But, I totally agree with the thought to concentrate on reader comfort and what will make sense for them rather than magic numbers of words being optimal... I think that is just legend really. :tooth:

[BrianR]

Thanks for your contributions, sheri (I liked your 'cliffhanger' approach)and excell (you're right - 'different strokes for different folks').

In terms of trying to give readers maximum comfort and options, here's how I handle long copy pages...

I'll always break up longer pages with plenty of crossheads and then repeat all of the crossheads at the top of the page in a mini-index of html 'jump-down' links. That way, readers can decide to:

1. Read just the crosshead links at the top of the page to get a good overview of the page's contents and then move on;

2. Or be enticed enough to then read the full text;

3. Or simply 'jump-down' to the crosshead that gives them the info they want and read just the bit of text that is relevant to their needs.

But I'm still intrigued to know why Karon & Jill chose to encapsulate in a graphic the text on each page that was in excess of 300 words!

BrianR