Unclear Language Damages Your Results

A simple way to make sure your site is easy to navigate is to make sure everything’s labeled in language your visitors understand. Here are four questions you can ask to make sure you’re doing things right:

1. Do your visitors understand what you’re talking about?

‘Asset Consolidation’ might make sense to you, but it won’t to some audiences. If your visitors cannot understand parts of your site, they’ll perceive it as difficult to use. If you’re trying to sell something they cannot understand, they’re unlikely to buy it.

2. Do your links accurately describe what’s behind them?

If you’re a furniture manufacturer & your range of beds happens to be called ‘Da Vinci’, you may decide that all navigation to the beds area of your site will use the link text ‘Da Vinci’. This makes sense to you, and it makes sense to people who know the name of your bed range, but it doesn’t make sense to anyone who doesn’t know that ‘Da Vinci’ = ‘beds’.

3. Do you use the language your visitors use themselves? (unless there’s a good reason not to)

While it’s straightforward to figure out that ‘Immediate Financial Solutions’ probably means ‘quick loans’, using terms wildly different from the words your visitors use is unlikely to pick up much search traffic. If you’re selling burgers, you’ll probably sell more by calling them burgers than ‘meat patties’.

There are occasions when you need to break this rule: While visitors will search for terms like “cheap beds”, “cheap hotel london”, they may be more comfortable actually buying if you use words such as ‘affordable’.

4. Are there better descriptions?

If most of your search traffic finds you via the phrase ’sony laptops’, yet you prefer to use the terms ’sony notebooks’ and ’sony portables’, you’re probably fighting the tide. Question the language you’re using, look for better alternatives & measure the results.