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The 4-Point Content Framework That’ll Hook Your

Readers and Double Your Time on Site
Written by Neil Patel on July 14, 2016

Did you know that 81% of marketers want to increase their use of original written content?

The problem is that creating more content alone won’t help businesses. Consumers want to
read engaging and useful content that creates a memorable experience for them.

In its 2014 report, LookBookHQ revealed that 44% of marketers find content production to be
their top challenge.

Forget crafting ENGAGING content.

That’s why there are so many articles written on how to create epic content.

Tell me honestly, though:

Have you found the perfect formula for hooking your readers yet?

I doubt it.

You might have integrated copywriting principles, good formatting and research techniques
into a few posts to improve your blog’s engagement rate. But, falling back to your old writing
habits is easy.

I don’t claim to give you a magical framework for crafting sticky content in this article, either.

Content Marketing is an iterative process that involves constantly learning, forgetting and re-
learning your audience preferences.

Then, what is this article about, you might be asking?

I want to give you a simple framework that distills all of the great content creation advice that
you’ve read. You can trust this simple checklist, when you’re confused about the quality of
content.

Ready to save time and make your content effective?

Then, let’s start with point #1 of the simple framework.

1. Catch the reader’s attention with a relevant and enticing headline,

followed by a captivating introduction

How do you decide if a content piece is worth your time or not?

By its packaging.

You’ll need to open the article to absorb its value.

Unless I convince you to click-through on my article link, I’ll lose your interest.

That’s why the headline is the most important part of your article. Most social media shares
come from people that don’t even read past the headline.

Viral websites, like UpWorthy and BuzzFeed, have exploded in popularity, due to their
enticing headlines. UpWorthy, in particular, is known to experiment with up to 25 headlines
per article.

If you look closely, you’ll also find that most of their headlines create a curiosity gap.
UpWorthy lists, ‘not giving it all away,’ as a headline rule.
I recommend that you to stay away from clickbait titles that make huge promises and leave the
reader annoyed. Tricking the user for a short-term click will hamper your brand image.

As per Larry Kim’s analysis on engagement rates, a higher bounce rate also correlates with
lower search engine rankings. So, annoying visitors will hurt your SERP positions.
Alright, so how do you attract the attention of your audience with your headline, without
going overboard?

I’ve got you covered. Read these two articles:

The step-by-step guide to writing powerful headlines

The simple guide to writing social media headlines (that people click)

Once you’ve gotten a prospect to share your article on social media, or to click-through and
land on your website:
Are you in the safe zone? Will visitors no longer drop off?

Sorry to break it you, but web users don’t linger. Typically, web users’ visit durations follow a
negative weibull-distribution.

As you can see, there are visitors falling off of your website every second. 55% of visitors
won’t spend more than 15 seconds on your website. Even if you get your audience to share
your article on social media, it doesn’t guarantee higher reading engagement.
So, unless you manage to grab the attention of a new visitor within the first 10 seconds, you’ll
probably lose them.

How do you convince the reader to stay on your website, past the initial few seconds?
By giving a preview, in the introduction, of the immense value that you’re going to provide inside
your article.

A brilliant formula that Brian Dean uses at Backlinko is his APP formula.

First, he gets the readers to agree on their pain points.

Then, he makes a shiny promise that the readers can achieve.
And, finally, he gives his readers a little preview of what to expect inside the article.
There are other magnetic ways of attracting the attention of your target audience in your blog
post openings, including the copywriting classic – AIDA (Attention, Interest, Desire and
Action). I share such alternative introduction formulas in this post.

Further, you can also consider increasing the font size of your opening paragraph. This will
lead to fewer characters per line while reading and gives your audience a great head start.
Smashing Magazine regularly use bigger font sizes for their opening paragraphs.
2. Break your content with pictures, videos, sub-headlines and stellar
formatting

Alright, so now that you’ve got the reader to stick around your website for more than 30
seconds with a powerful headline and scintillating introduction.

What next?

You need to optimize the user experience further down the page. High-quality content can
lead a visitor to spend almost ⅔ of their time below-the-fold.
Unless you’ve been living in a cave, you must already know that an average web user doesn’t
read articles word-by-word.

In their 2008 study, NNGroup found that an average user has time to read 28% of the words
on the page. And, that’s valid under the condition that they devote their complete time to
reading.

Practically, an average user reads about 20% of the text on an average page.
So, if users habitually scan web pages – you can’t sweep them off their feet with stellar
research and value alone.

How can you get them to consume a higher percentage of your content?

By making the process of reading your high-quality content easier.

Don’t overwhelm a visitor with large chunks of text, zero media assets and indistinguishable
subheadings.

Instead, give mental breaks to your reader, by implementing the following four techniques.

1. Keep most of your sentences within 14 words – 90% of readers will comprehend what
you’re saying. Shorter lines also means less work for the readers.
2. Generously use whitespace to declutter
your page, give breathing space to the
reader and increase the comprehension
of your readers by almost 20%.

3. Give choice to the reader, for

consuming relevant sections, by creating
a table of contents.

If you’re on WordPress, you can simply

install the plugin, Table of Contents Plus
and you’re good to go.

If you can play around with CSS and HTML, then try creating a colorful and visual table of
contents. Getvero used it in their email marketing article to increase the perceived value of
their post.
For creating a table of contents, you’ll need to create compelling sub-headers first. Don’t
consider them as mere tools to break up your content. They are a great way to re-engage the
lost reader’s attention.

So, spice them up with the benefits of reading independent sections of your article, like Brian
Dean does.
4. In their analysis of 100 very popular blog posts, Blog Pros found that these articles had one
image for every 350 words. I shoot for one image per 200 words, if it makes sense in the
article.
You can also try embedding relevant videos in your article – internet users love consuming
them, especially on mobile.

For further reading on formatting, I recommend the following articles:

9 Formatting Tactics That Will Double Your Readers’ Average Time on Page

12 Writing and Formatting Tactics That’ll Get Your Longest Posts Read

5 Advanced Formatting Tips to Maximize Time on Site and Conversions

3. Immerse the reader by deconstructing your research into a naturally

flowing cohesive story
Suppose you pick 10 articles and 2 academic papers to use as research for your newest article.

Now:

How do you distill your research into an enjoyable experience for your audience?

Sure, you’ll need an enticing headline,

snappy introduction and easy-to-read
formatting. But, leaving aside the
structure, what about the actual content?

Unfortunately, most content marketers

believe that simply making their posts
lengthier and incorporating all of the
arguments that they found during
research equals standing out.

Far from it.

You rob your audience of the immersive

reading experience, by including irrelevant details in your article.

Great content serves your audience’s interests with every word and flows flawlessly from one
section to the next, until the conclusion.

For example, look at this incredibly well-written viral post by Jon Morrow.

He grabs the attention of the reader with the headline, drawing them right in.
Then, he sets the stage for his inspiring story.
And, he keeps the reader’s attention by addressing every question from his headline.
Jon ends the article with his personal belief about writing.
If you observe closely, the post doesn’t list many actionable strategies. Yet, it manages to
capture your interest with incredible storytelling.

GrooveHQ also managed to get 300% more people to read their content, by incorporating
storytelling.
I’ve already written about how you can leverage storytelling in your content to emotionally
connect with your audience and increase your conversions.

For starters, though, I recommend that you learn about audience interests, demographics and
pain points. By getting inside your readers’ heads, you’ll be able to craft engaging content
with stories that address your audience needs.

I’ve already listed 8 tools to help you get inside your readers’ heads and a guide to creating
reader personas.

You can also try Zazzle Media’s content flow tool, to check if your content connects with your
audience. It asks you for content ideas and resources required in creation, thereby
understanding how it flows.
4. Give final touches to the content before it’s shipped

You’ve already put in the hard work and crafted a great content piece by following the
aforementioned three pointers.

Now, don’t ruin your efforts with bite-sized errors like misspellings, typos and bad grammar.
Here are 3 tips for eliminating anomalies and letting your content shine.

1. Hire an editor

A professional wordsmith can focus your writing tightly on the subject and ensure that it
maintains your audience’s attention. It’s easier for a professional to find any ill-fitting,
exaggerated or irrelevant sections in your article.

I use professional editors on all of my blogs.

It’s always nice to have a fresh pair of
eyes to view your content before
publishing. If your budget allows, then
you can hire professional editors by
posting an ad on the Problogger job
board or UpWork.

2. Eliminate fluff using the Hemingway

App

If you can’t afford professional editing

services, then this is a great editing tool
for finding the fluff in your content.

You just need to copy your content inside the tool. Once it processes your writing, it will
highlight instances of hard to read sentences and words with simpler alternatives.

It also gives you a readability score, representing how easy it is to comprehend your content.
I copied a chunk of content from one of my guides inside the tool and found six instances
where my content was hard to read.
After simplifying my writing and using bullets, the readability of my content went down from
grade 8 to grade 7.
3. Make your content interactive, by including tweetable quotes

Interactive content is a great way to engage and educate your audience. It adds practical
value and gets your audience to take action. Quizzes are the most popular type of interactive
content. They get shared widely on social media. There are these other types of content that
also do well, though.
With your regular text-based content, you can include the highlights of your content as
tweetable quotes. This encourages sharing and makes your content more readable. For
creating such tweetables, you can use the Clicktotweet or CoSchedule plugins.
You can also create short quizzes, for free, using Qzzr and embed them later in your blog posts
(the tool also offers a WordPress plugin).
Stitch Fix asks their users to fill a form and take a style quiz to determine the products that they
would like the most.
Conclusion

Producing engaging content every time you publish is a herculean task. But, it’s the only thing
that will connect with your audience and help you reap the benefits of content marketing.

The next time you get stuck with creating sticky content, I encourage you to implement the
simple 4-point framework I’ve shared in the article. I am sure you’ll come out with flying colors.

Do you think I missed any critical aspect of great content? I would love to hear about it in the
comments below.
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Comments (27)

July 14, 2016 at 8:02 AM

Neil Patel
Hey Everyone,
I forgot to mention that I recently released a webinar that shares my7 best marketing tactics.

Would love to know what you think...it's filled with over 60 minutes of marketing tactics... all for free.

Click here to check it out. Let me know what you think. :)

And if you still need more help growing your business after you watch the webinar, contact me and I will
personally help you.

July 14, 2016 at 8:41 AM

Nekraj
How you can missed any techniques! You are guru of all Internet Marketer.

REPLY

July 15, 2016 at 11:48 AM

Neil Patel
Subscribe to my blog Nekraj

REPLY

July 14, 2016 at 1:09 PM

Bican Valeriu
Man…this information is golden. Thank you.

REPLY

July 15, 2016 at 11:51 AM

Neil Patel
 REPLY

July 14, 2016 at 1:51 PM

Will Chou
Neil I want to use GIFs but I don’t want any chance of legal action. Should i? Are they say?

REPLY

July 15, 2016 at 11:51 AM

Neil Patel
Yeah, you should be fine, if you’re worried, just link to the source

REPLY

July 14, 2016 at 5:01 PM

Sreeram
Hi Neil, Got a quick question, Is there any specific pixel of white space around the top navigation?

REPLY

July 15, 2016 at 11:51 AM

Neil Patel
Nope, why do you ask?

REPLY

July 14, 2016 at 10:26 PM

Deepika
Nice article Neil. I had a question that can we implement this 4-point technique in any websites or only on
blogs? I think it will work mainly on informative website

REPLY

July 15, 2016 at 11:52 AM

Neil Patel
Yes, this would work with any kind of blog Deepika

REPLY

July 14, 2016 at 10:34 PM

Sumit
Hi Neil,

I appreciate this post, Really like it. I would go for such techniques for my website/blog. Keep Writing..!!

Best Regards,
Sumit Singh

REPLY

July 15, 2016 at 11:53 AM

Neil Patel
Glad this was helpful Sumit

REPLY

July 14, 2016 at 10:58 PM

Kelly Clark
Got a few good ideas for a post I’m working on. Thanks Neil.

REPLY

July 15, 2016 at 11:53 AM

Neil Patel
You’re welcome!

REPLY

July 14, 2016 at 11:51 PM

Lily Carroll
Yeah, making heading impressive of your content can help to catch the reader’s attention. This is such a
informative stuff.

REPLY

July 15, 2016 at 11:53 AM

Neil Patel
Glad I could help Lilly

REPLY

July 15, 2016 at 12:39 AM

Ronald
Hey Neil,

At one of your fantastic blogs (can’t remember wich one) you said to boost organic traffic on your site, you
can update and reshare an existing blog post.

What do you exactly mean by ‘reshare’?

Do you mean: update and change the date of the blog so it will be on your first page again.

Or do you mean: update and republish (doesn’t that count as the same content for Google as most of the
content is the same?)

Kind regards,
Ronald

REPLY

July 15, 2016 at 11:54 AM

Neil Patel
Yeah, make the post relevant again and publish it as a new post

REPLY

July 15, 2016 at 8:22 AM

Josh@RDWM
Nice post…I’ll implement these as I write =)

REPLY

July 15, 2016 at 11:58 AM

Neil Patel
Sounds good Josh

REPLY

July 15, 2016 at 10:38 PM

Krishna
Nice post and I have one question for you, All of your posts are very detailed and lengthy. How much time it
takes you on average to write each post?

REPLY

July 17, 2016 at 11:04 AM

Neil Patel
It can take a few hours, but I have a team that helps

REPLY

July 16, 2016 at 12:31 AM

jeffy
Hi sir,
Really nice information here. The content is important for promoting our sites among the customers. And it
will be important for the crawling through search engines. So definitely it will be useful for many peoples. I
hope it will be much useful at the time of creating the content. And i am eagerly waiting for more articles.

REPLY

July 17, 2016 at 11:15 AM

Neil Patel
Be sure to subscribe to my blog so you can get posts delivered straight to your inbox every day

REPLY

July 18, 2016 at 1:36 AM

NetSuite ERP
Nice post and I have one question for you, All of your posts are very detailed and lengthy. How much time it
takes you on average to write each post?
 REPLY

July 19, 2016 at 8:43 AM

Neil Patel
It can be a few hours give or take. I have a team that helps me too though

REPLY

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