Ever have that moment where your eyes goes fuzzy while you’re skimming a web page. So much small text! We’re all suffering from Information Overload (neatly described by Monika Mundell) anyway, so its not surprise that lengthy web content can make your eyes roll back into your head.

We all want our websites to be user-friendly so here are some tips on how to tell what content on your site or blog important. We’ll identify two types of information.

Must-Haves

• Answer the “What?” question. Either in your landing or about page, give people the quick and dirty of what your site is about.
• Reader’s requests. Ask your readers, via email, twitter or even a blog posts what they want to read.
• Relevance. You know the goal of your site, put information relevant to it up. this includes news, trends, f.d.q.s (Frequently Debated Questions) and your own thoughts.

Superfluous

• Anything written for your ego.
• Long-winded content when something short but juicy will do.
• Out-dated content

With all writing on your website, both blog and site  content take time to identify what things are “must haves” and what things would you “like to have”. The important things have to take priority. There are lots of things you’d like to write, or see on your site, but if its not something your readers say they “must” have, it will have to take a backseat or even be cut.

Keep it short. This goes for web content especially. What you can’t fix on your site, take it to your blog. Short, frequent posts are much more effective than one long-winded post a month. This goes back to the point at the top, “must” vs. “like to”. Trim the fat off your site, just post what your readers really need to know.

We’ve talked about using your audience to gauge the effectiveness of your content, what other ways do you use to decide what to keep or cut?

Today I want to chat a little bit about why “non-techie” people should blog more. As my example I want to spotlight a new client of ours, Sharon Jones who owns Guardian Pet Sitters and has just started her own blog for pet lovers.

I chose this blog because it has nothing to do with programming, technology or the internet. Right now its hard to tell how many tech blogs are out there but the percentages are high. Personal blogs, news blogs and tech seem to take up the largest chunk of the 78,703,197 blogs identified by statistical websites (source from blogpulse).

In the past two months here are the percentage of posts that Blogpulse has tracked with the keyword “Internet” compared to the keyword “Pets”.

But let’s compare that to the number of people in America who own pets. The National Pet Owners Survey 2007-2008 cites 63% of U. S. Households own pets (source: APPMA). So the number of people who might be interested in tips on pet care far out weighs the number of blogs marketed towards them.

Many businesses have something unique to offer the blogging community. They offer a service or information about something that not many other people are blogging about. Even less cuddly businesses like lawyers, technicians, or CPAs have plenty of worthwhile information and very little competition. In fact I would subscribe to an interesting blog on any of the above topics because they meet a need in my life. Check out Sharon’s blog and consider what unique perspective your business could bring to the table.