Welcome to the Escape Blog

Imagine that your web page (just one out of your whole site) is a book in a book store. A potential buyer goes into the store, to the section they are looking for and are confronted with a bunch of books - all very similar - and yours is in there somewhere.

Well, firstly, you need to make sure that your book is in the right section. This is down to the book store owner based on the content of your book. Let’s call that book store owner Mr Google.

So, Mr Google has placed your book in the most appropriate section because he can understand the content of your book by looking at the words you have used - the name of the book, etc.

So, Mrs. Customer comes in to buy a book, walks to the right section because she knows what she wants and is confronted with a number of books on the same subject.

All of the books are faced sidewards so all she has to go on are the Titles of the book. One of those titles grabs her attention and she slides the book out of the rack. She looks on the back of the book for the quick summary description of what the book is about. That doesn’t grab her so much so she puts it back and picks another book. She looks at the summary and this one looks more promising so she opens it to have a quick scan of the book before she buys it.

All of this judgement on her part has taken place before she has left Mr Google’s shop.

She may transport herself (not literally) into the book by opening it up and looking at the headings in the table of contents, the first page of real content; she may even quickly scan through the book or read a paragraph. If she doesn’t like the book at this stage she will transport herself back out of the book - back into Mr Google’s shop - and perhaps put the book back on the shelf.

Now, what is the moral of this story? Well, you need to make sure your book has the right content for starters so it ends up in the right section of Mr. Google’s shop. You need to have the right Title and the right summary (meta description) that describes what your book is about, and, so they also stand out on Mr Google’s shelves when competing for attention.

You also need to make sure the insides of your book are clear, attractive and organised, with a relevant Heading (H1) so that if someone does scan, they stick with your book, rather than going back to the book store.

Oh, did I mention that Mr. Google’s book store holds billions of books?