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Don't Overlook the Importance of "You"

Your SEO articles, blog posts, and optimized sales pages are not formal
research papers. The best way to get results out of them is to make each
reader feel like you're speaking directly to them. Luckily, you can do that
by focusing on one little word - "you". Writing in the third person (using
"he", "she", or "they") is impersonal; writing in the second person (using
"you") brings your SEO content to a personal level.

Take a look at this sentence:

"People have a hard time driving traffic to their websites because they
haven't defined a target audience."

It's not a bad sentence. It contains an important fact that is easy to
understand, and it's certainly better than some of the gibberish you see
floating around out there. Your readers will look at this sentence and
probably agree with it. Unfortunately, though, there's no personal
investment on their behalf. Instead, they'll probably think, "Sure, 'people'
probably do have that problem. So, what does that have to do with me?"

Now, change the same sentence ever so slightly, to:

"You have a hard time driving traffic to your website because you haven't
defined a target audience."

You're making the same point and using the same fact. The only difference is
that you're not talking about other people. Instead, you're speaking
directly to the reader and telling him exactly what his problem is. By
phrasing the sentence this way, your reader is much more likely to think,
"You know what? She's right. That is my problem! Let me keep reading to see
if she has any tips to help me fix it."

Just like that, you've encouraged someone to read your SEO content all the
way to the end. Assuming the rest of your SEO content is full of important
information, readers will get to the end and think of you with more respect.
You can't ask for a reader to be more engaged than that!

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