Click here! Click here! Click here!

Everyone knows that you shouldn’t ever hyperlink the words ‘click here’, right? Well that’s all wrong, believes Brian Clark of Copyblogger. As he explains,

“I’ve always been a big proponent of having actionable anchor text for links when I really want someone to click. From a copywriting standpoint, it’s a no brainer—it’s been proven time and time again that if you want someone to do something, you’ll get better results if you tell them exactly what to do.”

But although that attitude implies that Brian thinks his readers are thick, in his opinion it’s actually the desire to hyperlink with anything other than ‘click here’ that demonstrates stupidity:

“Another reader once chastised me for wasting anchor text with the words “click here,” even though my primary goal for the link was to get people to click (shocking, I know). This is when I first realized that Google is truly making people retarded. Somehow, this person no longer saw links as navigation for actual people to use; they only exist to pass on “juice” according to an algorithm that no one fully understands.”

Brian quotes some statistics from an experiment on a marketing newsletter which tested different click words. It seems to back up his theory: linking the words ‘Click to continue’ improved the click-through rate by 8.53%, ‘Continue to article’ improved the rate by 3.3%, and ‘Read more’ decreased the rate by 1.8%.

However, there are three major flaws in his argument.

Firstly, the statistics quoted are meaningless are we have no idea how many people took part in the experiment, how many times it was conducted or what kind of control they used. And 87% of scientists agree that without this information your stats are useless.

Secondly, the purpose of links is not simply to lead people to somewhere else. Readers scan pages online, looking for keywords. Since links are almost invariably highlighted in a different colour and/or underlined, making key phrases and words links helps readers find what they need.

Thirdly, as Brian acknowledges, links make Googlejuice. And what, exactly, is so wrong with writing copy that benefits both readers and search engines? So what if your click-through rate to another page on your website is down by 1.8% because you don’t link with the phrase ‘click here’. Boo hoo. Your Google rank for that page will be higher, and your readers will find it much faster. I think that’s more than a fair trade-off.

In conclusion, the only time you should really have to link the word ‘click’ is if your design is so utterly confusing that you have a button that doesn’t look like it will link anywhere, and you need to actually tell people to use it. Copywriters don’t work in a vacuum. It’s not crazy to think that we should work with rather than against web designers and web developers to produce readable, effective websites.

When online ads go wrong

Kev the online marketing pro had an interesting response to my post about clicking on blog ads, in which he said that the beauty of google ads were that they were obsessively customisable. Which may be true, but it seems that few advertisers care enough to set up intelligent ad campaigns.

As I mentioned before I read a lot of feminist blogs, and I’ve lost count of the number of times that keywords seem to get picked out for all the wrong reasons.

This ad, for example, was illustrating an article about abortion rights:

And this one was on an article about unrealistic beauty expectations:

Such stupid ad placement is obviously infuriating to the reader, embarrassing for the blog and inefficient for the advertiser.

At least some blogs are taking a slightly more intelligent stance – The Curvature, for example, recently changed its ad policy so that offensive ads don’t get through, and they even ask readers to let them know if any do slip in.

Do you click on blog ads?

I read a lot of blogs, especially blogs about writing, web geekery or feminism. At one end of the scale are ones like Kev Price’s SEO blog. It’s a one-man job with no ads, and the blog is clearly an interesting supplement to his day job, rather than being his actual job.

At the other end of the scale are blogs like Crafty Crafty or Shiny Shiny, two of about 40 blogs (not all of which have repetive names) owned by an umbrella publishing company. These are very obviously pretty successful pro blogs, as they employ a lot of full-time writers, and they’re jam-packed with adverts.

In the middle of the blog-ad spectrum are blogs like The Curvature. This is where I’m guessing most blogs are sat – owned and written by one person, and displaying a few ads and maybe a tips jar in the hope that they can earn enough revenue to blog all day and still pay the rent.

Click-to-thank

If I’ve read a good post, I click an ad. Is that wrong? I see it as a way to thank the writer. ‘You’ve worked to produce something I’ve enjoyed’ I think, ‘and while I’m too stingy to give you money for that pleasure, I will do something which costs me maybe 2 seconds of my time so that someone else give you money.’

I realise that in the long-term economic view of the web what I’m doing probably isn’t very helpful. When companies realise that yes they’re getting click-throughs, but no they’re not selling anything, they’ll probably stop advertising. Then my talented blog-writers will have to go back to growing potatoes or cleaning wheely bins, or whatever it is they used to do before they spent their days tapping cleverly at a keyboard.

But then again, if I don’t click at all I’m still not buying anything, and the big advertising company could still draw the same conclusion and pull out of the blog market. At least if I click I’m giving them a chance to drag me in to their shopping system with promises of pretty things.

I do realise that this is a vastly simplistic view of what is probably a hugely complicated issue, but in the absence of a more informed understanding of blog economics, I just want to know – do you ever click on blog ads? If so, why? If not, why not?

And in case you’re suspicious, no I’m not planning on installing ads on this blog. The pennies I’d make wouldn’t be worth having butt-ugly ads imposing everywhere.

Obligatory ‘weird things that you’re googling to get here’ post

What’s the best thing about blogging? Knowing that people other than your friends and family (Hi dad!) read your blog. And I know strangers read this because I have thousands of readers. (well, ok, tens usually… but thousands if you count that time I got 9,500 views in a day thanks to a weirdly popular reddit story.)

But the point is that thanks to the power of WordPress I know that there are people I don’t know personally who stumble upon this. So…

Hi there! Judging by what you’re searching for when you find this I’m not entirely sure I want you to stick around. Only kidding! I love you. I love all my readers. I’m desperate for attention. Never leave me, ok? I’ll give you everything you ever want. Which incidentally happens to be:

“wincy shek“. What is this? I have no idea. But a few people have found Hookjab by googling for it. Which is strange, as I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned it before now.

“how bad is the Tornado F3” Really? I think it’s kinda cool.

“Kylie” “KYLIE” “Kylie Minogue” Not really what you were looking for, huh.

“a word for ”Im right and your wrong‘” …and yet without an apostrophe you’ll always be wrong.

“hookjab” “hook jab” Writing that ‘hooks’ you in to ‘jab’ you with ‘punchy writing’! Geddit? This is a blog about writing that uses boxing terms as weak puns! how clever is that.

“some of my best friends are graphic” Is this a confession or a boast? I’m intrigued.

“Address for May & Kilner, Solicitors” Sorry, never heard of them.

“Press release” “How to write a press release” “tips for writing a great press release” Actually something relevant! Consider this my gift to you.

“Animated clipart of boy writing” Not here, not now, not ever. Go away.

“bbc 1997 website” Hilarious isn’t it.

“writing email on hotmail and lost it” Aw, bad luck. And you came here looking for help presumably, and I gave you nothing. So have some retrospective sympathy.

“catriona irving you are so beautiful” Yes she is, but she’s also a good friend of mine and it’s weird that you’re pouring your heart into google. She can’t hear you through the internet, y’know, and for that I am glad. Now back off, weirdo.

Content makes up half of all time spent on internet

Content really is king on the internet. Research issued by the Online Publishers Association (OPA) found that people spend more than half of their internet time browsing content, whether that be video, audio or humble ol’ written words.

Specifically, 50.9% of internet users’ time is spent on content (any sites or applications that provide news, information and entertainment); 30.4% is spent on communications (such as email and forums); 14.1% is on commerce (shopping websites) and 4.6% is on searching (getting to all of the above).

Not only are we all absorbing more content than anything else, we’re doing it waaaay more than we used to: in July 2006 just 39.6% of time was spent on content.

According to the OPA, there are several reasons for the increase in time spent consuming content:

• Improvement in searching, allowing consumers to find the exact content they want faster and more easily
• The increased popularity of video
• A more accessible and faster internet means more time spent online in general
• Simply far more content on the internet than there used to be
• More efficient communication methods like instant messaging, which mean that communicating via the internet just doesn’t take as long as it used to

Personally (and unscientifically, of course) I think the increase in high quality content also has a lot to do with the proliferation of huge news websites (eg BBC Online, Guardian Unlimited) and sites such as Wikipedia have helped ordinary, nervous people to trust what they read on the web. The internet is no longer second fiddle to the printed page when it comes to accessible trustworthy information; and as a result people use it more.

I’d also be interesting to see more detailed research – the media breakdown of different content types, for example, or exactly how social networking sites are messing up the neat content/communication distinction.

But in any case, there are still three massive problems with the research.

1. The first is that it discounts quite a huge proportion of websites: all .gov, and .edu were excluded from the study. It’s not exactly clear why, or why only governmental and educational sites from the US were excluded, when those of other countries were presumably still counted.
2. Secondly, pornographic domains were also excluded. Why so coy? This isn’t a matter of morals. If we’re talking hard facts (ahem) then it’s important to note that last year 13% of all websites visited in the US were pornographic. So why not tell us how this fits in to the wider picture?
3. And thirdly, the problem with the research is… well I’m kinda embarrassed to admit this, but I found it on the internet. So it’s probably not true.

I’m on yr facebk, lolling yr wordz

I’m on Facebook, of course. To my surprise I recently got an out-of-the-blue from one of my old friends:

“yr is multipurpose. get over it”

I’m guessing that was his response to the fact that one of my Facebook groups is ‘If you can’t tell the difference between “your” and “you’re” you deserve to die’.

But then I am also a member of the group ‘im n ur facebk loling ur pix’, ‘I support the campaign to make “James Blunt” cockney rhyming slang’, ‘I’ve licked the end of a battery just to see what it was like’ and ‘I don’t use my Wii-mote’s wrist strap because I live life on the edge’. And I don’t even have a Wii. (Although my ex housemate did, and it’s true I didn’t use the strap when I was feeling particularly reckless).

But I suppose it’s no great surprise that my friend thought I was being too pedantic. After all, on this very blog I’ve seethed with anger over misplaced apostrophes on estate agent boards and mocked spelling mistakes on websites. You’d be forgiven for thinking that I really care about using English correctly.

And I do. But – and it’s a big but – only when it matters. Websites, public signs, adverts, emails to clients: these matter. Bad use of standard English in your job makes you look like a twerp, basically.

But for everything else – personal emails, texts, even post-it notes – I really don’t care. You can fling your apostrophes up your bum if you like; I’ll be cool as cucumber. I’ll only deathwish the ‘your/you’re’ offenders during the hours of 9-5.

And as for ‘yr’ – yes it is multipurpose, and I happen to like it very much. So there, Paul-Simon Geddis. I can be all crazy and unpredictable too. Just ask anyone who’s seen me on the Wii.

If you’re going to write your own damn copy, at least do it right

Bad web writing hurts your readers’ eyes and your website’s credibility.

A website – nay, the entire internet – is nothing without good solid content. And even counting Youtube and iTunes, the vast majority of the content on the net is written. So why is the copy always at the end of the queue when it comes to building a website?

You can have the most beautifully designed website in the world, complete with the fanciest of applications and gizmos, but if it reads like it’s been written by a sugar-stuffed chimp then wave goodbye to your sales, search rankings and bottom line.

You want me to give you a juicy example, right? Try alteredstatesuk.com. The homepage copy is made up of 86 words. This includes two spelling mistakes, five punctuation errors and 10 faults concerning capital letters. And that’s not even counting some really nasty formatting and sentence formation.

At this point I should say that I’m not trying to kick down a small business out of sheer malicious pleasure. Neither am I touting for business. Yes, of course I could polish it up into sparkling, elegant copy, but that’s not the point. (I do, of course, believe that hiring a good web copywriter is the single most useful thing you can do when you need a website, but I’ll leave that particular topic for another day.)

Maybe you think you’re some webby hotshot and have built your own site. Maybe you’ve already spent all your website money on some fancypants designer. Maybe you’re just cheap. Whatever the reason, if you insist on writing your own damn copy, consider these five tips my gift to you. Together we can make the internet a less painful place.

5 tips for writing good web copy

1. Don’t write as you talk. A friendly, chatty tone is surprisingly difficult to get right. Get it wrong and you sound flippant and sarcastic. But don’t be getting all fancy either. Long words when short ones would do fine make you look arrogant, not clever.

2. Keep it short. Short words, short sentences, short paragraphs. Reading web pages is a lot slower than reading printed pages, so your website visitors will get impatient faster.

3. Give us what we want. This is a pretty big point, but it basically boils down to this: people come to your website for info, not waffle. Don’t write what you want to say, write what they want to read. Don’t know what that is? Well ask them, stupid!

4. Spelling, grammar, punctuation. These three guys are your new best buddies who will instantly make you look a whole lot smarter and more professional. If you’re not sure who they are, then maybe it’s time you were reacquainted.

5. Proofread. Print out what you’ve written, and give it to someone else to check. Don’t do it yourself, as your brain will ignore the mistakes it made the first time round. Don’t let your friend check your copy on a screen, as I guarantee they will miss something. Give them a big red pen so they feel all official too.

So there you have it. You too can be a copywriter. Of course, if you really write like a chimp or you just can’t be bothered, I am (ahem) available for hire…

Access all areas

Nothing makes me seethe with anger quite as much as reading something like this on a website:

“This site is best viewed using Internet Explorer 5 or Netscape 6, or later versions”

If I’m visiting your website, I’m the customer. So why should I have to go out of my way simply to have the dubious pleasure of using your site? Why should I be forced to use a substandard and irritating browser just because you’re too lazy and/or incompetent to make an accessible website? (I use Firefox for most things, by the way – hardly the most radical and unusual of browsers).

Just as bad, if not worse, is how a surprising amount of sites don’t work properly for Mac users. They seem to work fine, but then as soon as I try to do something slightly more complicated – fill in a form, maybe – the site panics and has a breakdown.

Accessibility needs to become more than just a buzzword.

What if you strapped a camera to a cat?

I’m away for a couple of weeks now, so don’t be thinking I’m lazy for not blogging! I will be very hard at work eating my way around Italy.

If you’re at a loss for something to do, may I recommend:

Find out why playground tactics are the perfect metaphor for search engine trickery

Read a smart exploration of how the new 2012 logo screams 1985 like a dodgy set of legwarmers

and see the amazing adventures of a prowling cat via a very nifty cat-cam.

Get cape, wear cape, write

Time for a spot of self-indulgence, if that’s ok. It is? Great!

For the last 3 months or so I’ve been working as a freelance journalist for a higher education portal called HERO (higher education and research opportunities).

It’s a lot of fun – I basically get to write articles about anything that’s related in some way to higher education.

We work months and months in advance, which means that only now is any of my stuff up. Of my 16 articles now online, you can read all about… how one-molecule computers are going to rock your world, what it’s like to have a baby while at uni, what a toaster that wants to be an iPod looks like, why students are boycotting Coca-Cola, how much you could earn by writing essays for lazy students, and what Jeremy Clarkson did to get hit in the face by a pie.

And if you have anything higher education-related that you think should be a HERO feature, drop me a line!