Active vs Passive Voice

Active vs Passive Voice Quiz

Like many writers using the Yoast SEO plugin for WordPress, Active and Passive Voice was a new concept to me, and I didn't quite understand it at first.  Yoast was always giving me warnings that my posts had too much passive voice.  My short form articles with lots of bullet points and lists seemed to naturally trend towards the active voice. But what became especially annoying is that the better and longer I felt my writing was, the more passive my posts would become! That's why I started practicing using the Active vs Passive Voice Quiz, and finally made a break through in my understanding.

So what is the passive voice exactly?

In Passive Voice, the subject of the sentence is acted upon by the verb. Conversely, a sentence written in Active Voice has the subject perform the action stated by the verb directly.

 ActivePassive
 The builders remodeled the house to help it sell. The house was remodeled by the builders to help it sell.
The captain will give you orders.Orders will be given to you by the captain.
The biology class viewed the frog.The frog was viewed by the biology class.
Martin posted the funny cat video on Facebook.The funny cat video was posted on Facebook by Martin.
No one responded to my new sales ad.My new sales ad was not responded to by anyone.

Why does good copywriting avoid passive voice?

Articles that are well written and easy to read avoid using passive voice.  The problem with passive sentences is that it can be hard to determine who or what is acting. The result is very removed writing that also pulls the reader out of the story even if they understand what is going on.  You should avoid passive voice or anything that makes your articles hard to read whenever you possibly can.

Are there times when it makes sense to use passive voice?

There are going to be some times when using passive voice is unavoidable.  If you are writing a scientific manuscript or guide, it will be very hard to avoid using the passive voice.  There are also instances where you could easily avoid using the passive voice, but you go with passive because it sounds more like natural speech.

And using passive voice is also a technique that is commonly used to subtly avoid responsibility.  A child might say, "The dishes got dropped," when a more accurate active sentence would be, "I dropped the dishes."

How To Get Better At Writing in an Active Voice

Looking at lists of examples can be an effective way to start intuiting the pattern of active and passive voice.  It can also help to write using software like Grammarly to make your writing better.  But it didn't REALLY start clicking for me until I started practicing with quizzes based on those example lists.

Below is a quick quiz you can use to see if you have a good understanding of this concept or determine if you need a little practice like I did.

Active vs Passive Voice Quiz

 



Can Google Stop Pop Up Ads?

Is there still a need to stop pop up ads?

Popups have been annoying users since the dawn of the internet, maybe even before that.  Many of us thought that the publisher's process to stop pop up ads would be natural.  We thought that when designing for user experience became a priority for the web, that it meant the death of the pop up.  As many readers of Forbes will be familiar with the example below, the death of the pop up was greatly exaggerated.

Forbes please stop pop up ads

Just as the first wave of viagra promoting insanity boxes finally began to vanish from the internet, they were replaced by the second generation of popups.  These popups were more aesthetically pleasing, and they let go of the contrasting colors and often blinking text. The new pop ups focused on being a normal advertisement but they blocked you from the content you were looking for.

This article isn’t just about how horrible pop ups are or how to stop pop up ads. It is about why pop ups were created in the first place.  How have pop ups have evolved with the web?  And what will come next to fill the void when popups leave?

Pop up ads are not evil.  They are simply a bad solution to a problem that every website owner has. This article is about what happens after we stop pop up ads.

Why businesses need to use pop up ads.

Popup ads have been used by websites to help grow their email list, promote their services, or in any way imaginable to monetize the content that brought you to their site.  The worst popups actually will get in the way of a user who is trying to buy a product on the site, by distracting them and trying to get them to look at a different product. This is something you still see commonly on Shopify websites that are run by small businesses who don’t have experience in customer experience design.

It’s not easy to get a user who has come to read an article to give you their email address for repeated interaction. Forcing them to give you their email address to view the content is actually a viable strategy to achieve that result in the short term.

The problem is that it's similar to forcing someone to give you their wallet by pointing a gun. The user has two choices, they can give in to your demand or they can run away. The gated content exchange also doesn’t look at the relationship from a long-term perspective. Just because you have someone’s email, does that mean they really want you to email them? What do you think the difference is in rates of fake email address and spam reports from emails gathered through forced popups vs freely given email addresses?

Pop Up Gif

The response to the pop up

Popup blockers like AD Blocker have grown like crazy in an effort to stop pop up ads.
  • Ad blocking estimated to cost publishers nearly $22 billion during 2015.
  • There are now 198 million active adblock users around the world.
  • Ad blocking grew by 41% globally in the last 12 months.
  • US ad blocking grew by 48% to reach 45 million active users in 12 months up to June 2015.
  • UK ad blocking grew by 82% to reach 12 million active users in 12 months up to June 2015.

This is a disaster for publishers. These blockers are installed to block intrusive and unwelcome advertisement, but they also block out all the good faith efforts that marketers are making to present a well designed and relevant ad experience to the users.

Newspaper publishers are trying to figure out how to make their businesses viable online. These blocked ads can make the difference between continuing to exist or failing completely.  In the end the website visitor wants the content of those websites and they do not want them to go out of business.  The email exchange just needs to reflect the relationship both parties want to have.

Proposed Solution - Google punishing websites

Google is now going to be ranking websites based on how those websites use of obstructive popups. Google calls pop ups "interstitials". They will actually not penalize websites for using them for very specific reasons, like age verification for alcohol brands.  This is great because it may make browsing the web better for the end user, and it may also reduce the number of users installing ad blocking software. (This is probably the long term reason Google is doing this)

There will still be really great ways to remind the user to give you an email address if they enjoy your content. Products like HelloSign lead to users who sign up and are excited to hear from you! The main difference is that the website owner must actually take the time to think about their customers. What emails they will be sending to their list? Why would a customer want to receive these emails?

Websites will then sell the idea of joining an email list for a certain benefit.  Which is much better than exchanging an email address just to view the content of the page you are already on.

Confession: this article was written by a former pop up ad creator and abuser.


Google Amp Logo

Google Amp - What it means for your website

What is Google AMP?

Google Amp is a new project designed to speed up the internet for Mobile users.  AMP stands for Accelerated Mobile Pages Project, probably because the acronym for Mobile Acceleration Project (Google MAP) was already taken.

How does AMP work?

AMP displays versions of your page to Google without any extra formatting, and in a way that greatly reduces their time to download by stripping out all but the most essential information.

When will the Amp update Happen?

Even though AMP has been around since last October, AMP is important for your search engine rankings NOW because Google has begun to adjust your position in the rankings for Mobile viewers based on Amp.

Does AMP effect me?

Amp pages are not important for every web site.  Amp is not even important for all pages within a site. But if you are a news publisher or have an active blog it is important that those pages are AMP compatible.

Does Google AMP block ads?

According to Matt Cutts of Google AMP does not effect well behaved ads.  Which could be great for everyone, both readers and publishers if websites are rewarded for having quality ads.

What should I do now?

WordPress has already released an easy to use plugin to convert your pages to amplified ones.  Shopify and HubSpot have not commented on a AMP update to their systems, but business that want to get ahead of the AMP curve have options to do their own upgrades. Contact Harness if you have questions about upgrading your site. 

Conclusion - What does AMP look like?

google-amp-project-logo-amptemplatescomGoogle will be displaying AMP pages with a lighting bolt logo, so keep an eye out for it while you are browsing on your phone to see what you think of AMP pages and decide if you like the update. Do you want to see what AMP pages look like right now? To see the AMP version of this page just click our link for our Google AMP example.


5 Animated HubSpot CTA Buttons

HubSpot CTA:  Doesn't Need To Be Sad and Boring

Default HubSpot CTA button styles can be pretty limiting,  but they don’t have to be!

HubSpot CTA button code can be adjusted to do almost anything.  This makes it really easy to bring a professional looking design to your HubSpot pages.

Take a look at these 5 Hubspot CTA’s with Rollover Effects, CSS Transitions, Hover Animations and unique styles.  These buttons are all done with pure CSS.  Which means there are even more fun possibilities when we look at HubSpot CTA image buttons.

If you see a button that you wish could be a CTA on your site, leave a comment and we will try and HubSpotify it for you and add it to our list. 

Additional Design Resource: Adding Custom Styles to my CTA

Awesome CTA Gif

Hover Square HubSpot CTA

See the Pen HubSpot Hover Effect Button by Joe Henriod (@joehenriod) on CodePen.

Pro Tip: HubSpot Techniques. 

You may want to delete the “background-color: #0fc;"  or change it to have it match your site.

Do not write your button text in the text editor.  Hit the Source Code button “<>”, and then cut and paste this code.  If you need to change the CTA text, make your edits in this mode or Hubspot will strip important information when you save.

If you wish to change the color of your link text, make that the last change you do.  You can edit the color with the normal “Text Color” button in the Design panel.  Your colors get set back to black every time you make a change in the Custom CSS panel, so you will need to do this again if you made any changes to the css.

The Fancy Click CTA

See the Pen Fancy Click Hubspot CTA by Joe Henriod (@joehenriod) on CodePen.

Pro Tip: HubSpot Techniques. 

You may need to adjust or completely eliminate: “margin-top: 6%” so that the button is where you want it on the page.  This line puts extra padding above the button.

Do not write your button text in the text editor.  Hit the Source Code button “<>”, and then cut and paste this code.  If you need to change the CTA text, make your edits in this mode or Hubspot will strip important information when you save.

If you wish to change the color of your link text, make that the last change you do.  You can edit the color with the normal “Text Color” button in the Design panel.  Your colors get set back to black every time you make a change in the Custom CSS panel, so you will need to do this again if you made any changes to the css.

Animated Transition with Text Reveal Hubspot CTA

Pro Tip: HubSpot Techniques. 

Do not write your button text in the text editor.  Hit the Source Code button “<>”, and then cut and paste this code.  If you need to change the CTA text, make your edits in this mode or Hubspot will strip important information when you save.

If you wish to change the color of your link text, make that the last change you do.  You can edit the color with the normal “Text Color” button in the Design panel.  Your colors get set back to black every time you make a change in the Custom CSS panel, so you will need to do this again if you made any changes to the css.

Hubspot Rollover and Click Effect CTA

Pro Tip: HubSpot Techniques. 

Do not write your button text in the text editor.  Hit the Source Code button “<>”, and then cut and paste this code.  If you need to change the CTA text, make your edits in this mode or Hubspot will strip important information when you save.

If you wish to change the color of your link text, make that the last change you do.  You can edit the color with the normal “Text Color” button in the Design panel.  Your colors get set back to black every time you make a change in the Custom CSS panel, so you will need to do this again if you made any changes to the css.

Hubspot Red Pill vs Blue Pill inset click CTA

Pro Tip: HubSpot Techniques. 

Do not write your button text in the text editor.  Hit the Source Code button “<>”, and then cut and paste this code.  If you need to change the CTA text, make your edits in this mode or Hubspot will strip important information when you save.

If you wish to change the color of your link text, make that the last change you do.  You can edit the color with the normal “Text Color” button in the Design panel.  Your colors get set back to black every time you make a change in the Custom CSS panel, so you will need to do this again if you made any changes to the css.

Remember to leave a comment with your favorite button - so we can HubSpotify it for you!


The Anatomy of a Landing Page

Traffic acquisition is only half of the marketing equation.  In addition to bringing visitors to your website, you need to keep them there. Not only that, you need to transform them from interested prospects into customers. Your marketing needs to move that relationship forward at each touch point.  Conversion optimization is the process of transforming new website visitors into paying customers — and first-time customers into repeat buyers. A landing page is a single web page that appears after a user clicks on an advertisement. These can be used to capture leads, communicate information, or generate website sign-ups.

Here are 9 aspects of the anatomy of a landing page:

landing_page_anatomy

  • A consistent message between ad headline and landing page headline. For example, if someone searched for “Marketing Tools,” your landing page has a far better chance of converting if the headline mentions “Marketing Tools.”
  • The secondary headline leads to the content. This section needs to compel the user to continue reading. Short, sweet and to-the-point, it should give a clear reason that speaks to the user’s pain point.
  • Perfect grammar. This goes without saying.
  • Trust signals. Testimonials, security seals and other badges that show that the user will have a secure, satisfactory shopping experience
  • Strong call-to-action. Download, Free, Get, Create and other options have been shown to perform better than weaker words like “Try.” Stronger language and active verbs compel people to take action
  • Buttons that stand out. The button needs to be able to catch the user’s eye, so make it distinctively different than the rest of the color scheme on your page.
  • A lack of links. Keeping users on the landing page and moving them through to the call-to-action should be your primary goal. Linking out to other sites or other pages of your own site that aren’t tied into the landing page can distract the user from taking the action you want them to take.
  • Images and video that relate to the content. Adding images and video that give customers a quick understanding of the product/service or explain the basics can all bolster the message.
  • Fit the message within the first third of the page. This is known as “above the fold” and greatly increases the chance that visitors will take action since they don’t have to scroll.

Clear, concise information drives users to take action is the take-home message here.  A single call-to-action on landing pages allow you to gather information or generate conversions with the highest impact across all of you digital outlets.


25_tips_for_seo

25 Tips for SEO

Earlier this year, John Rampton put together an excellent article for Forbes capturing advice from 25 top professionals in the search engine optimization field. Some of these authors include Joost de Valk, CEO of Yoast, and Rand Fishkin, founder of Moz - a solid lineup of knowledgeable individuals.

Many of these tips point to information that we often share with our clients - content is king. There are many things you can do to on the technical side make your site visible and available to Google, which tell search engines that the site is technically proficient, provides a smooth user experience, and is mobile-friendly. If you are not adding value to your user's day, you are only interrupting it

After that, it is about providing value to users. If you are not adding value to your user's day, you are only interrupting it (this should be a mantra for all sales people in this day and age). Interrupting a person's day without providing something valuable in exchange means that you are going to be unfollowed, unsubscribed, or hung up on if you are making a traditional sales call.

How do you provide value on your website and at the same time optimize for search?

The answer: by creating content that entertains and solves users’ problems.
The truth is that many search engine optimization “professionals” have attempted to create a mystique around the practices supposedly required to optimize a site. It is true that some technical requirements are beyond the scope of most marketers and they involve coding and design that streamlines the flow of information, but beyond that SEO is about content that is valuable to your visitors and is easily shared.
There is a great deal of wrong information on SEO that has been shared on the Internet featuring tips that may have worked a few years ago but will now get your site penalized by search engines due to unethical link building or other areas that create a bad user experience.

Here are some questions you should be asking yourself: 

  1. Which problems are your customers and future customers hoping to solve? For instance, are they looking for entertainment or to find reviews on the latest tech gadgets? Do they need to find a solution for an engineering issue in their plant?
  2. How can you provide information to solve these problems?
  3. What phrases might they be using to search for those answers?
  4. What is the best medium to provide this information?

By answering these questions before ever writing a word of content, you are better able to cater to your users’ unique needs. Define the problems that your prospects are hoping to solve and which terms they are using to find this answer. By building your content (in a way that makes sense without forcing it) around those search terms, you are more likely to provide value and useful information that Google will prioritize.

But what about the medium?

Remember that consumers will reach you in a variety of different ways from both mobile and PC. Visitors are going to consume information in the way that makes the most sense to them at the time. For example, one user may prefer to read a blog post while at work because she is unable to watch a video at the office, but that same user prefers to watch a video over reading articles while on her iPad at home.

People are finding you on mobile, which accounts for over 60% of website traffic on average, will most certainly prefer to watch a video rather than reading a long blog post on their phone. Google and Facebook are giving more weight to video because it adds tremendous value to user experience. On Google, you are 50 times more likely to appear on the first page of search results if you feature different video on your site. On Facebook, you will see as much as 80% higher engagement with your content that features video.

By utilizing written, graphical, and video content, you can capture a wider breadth of a user while providing a deeper user experience. Google sees this and rewards the sites that are willing to make the investment in creating quality content for their users.

It can get confusing with all of the information that is available on the Internet about this topic. Feel free to reach out to us directly if you have any questions regarding SEO as part of your larger strategy.