Have you ever walked into a restaurant and instantly known you shouldn’t order anything there and leave the place? Maybe you didn’t like the interior, it smelled terrible, the music was too loud, or you just felt it wasn’t for you.
Every day people have a similar experience on your website. If you want more of them to stay, you need to pay attention to content readability.
Writing content or an article for your website may seem like a simple thing.
However, making it entertaining, engaging, and readable for your audience can be more challenging. Using long sentences and heavy, complicated vocabulary are some of the main problems encountered in writing readable content.
Table of contents
Let’s first understand what content readability is.
In simple words, readability is the ease of reading and understanding the content.
Content that is difficult to read will likely suffer from low engagement, even if it is well-researched and offers valuable information. Visitors may abandon it quickly, resulting in a high bounce rate.
Many bloggers try to optimize their keyword density, keyword decoration, meta tags, and hundreds of other on-page SEO. But they often overlook the readability of their content. This is probably because it is not 100% confirmed that content readability is a specific ranking factor.
A blogger needs to understand that good readability actually plays a major role in content marketing and can greatly improve your SEO results.
Years ago, the Google algorithm was only able to understand keywords. But now, it can recognize when content is of quality and when it is not. This means it is no longer enough to just optimize in Google Search Console. Additionally, search engines can interpret what the user likes to read. Therefore, focusing on the user experience will help you improve your SEO positioning.
The content quality is dependent on various parameters, for example:
• vocabulary used,
• sequence of presentation (one thought follows from another, or the narration is chaotic),
• the complexity of constructing sentences (they are short or take up half a page),
• structure (is the content broken into paragraphs, are there subheadings),
• how well the text is written (are there any errors or typos).
How to write content that people want to read?
1. Plan your content
Content written without a plan resembles a stream of consciousness. It is impossible to grasp its central idea and extremely difficult to follow the development of thought.
So, start by properly planning your content with the targeted audience and goal in mind. And then, write according to the plan so that the article is understandable and logical.
2. Use short paragraphs and sentences
You should break your content into sections. Structure your content into short paragraphs and divide it with subheadings.
Most visitors rarely read Web pages word by word. Instead, they scan the page while only reading sections of their interest.
An easy-to-read paragraph should contain only 5-6 short sentences. You don’t need to make all paragraphs’ lengths the same. So the text looks monotonous, and users want to avoid reading it.
Also, use short sentences in your content. Short sentences improve readability, reduce overthinking and allow readers to quickly and easily understand the information. However, some sentences in your content will inevitably require more words than others.
Use tables and lists to structure information. People like to skim a page, and bullet points make that easier.
3. Use an active voice
The use of passive voice can give a distant and less clear tone. Using an active voice reduces the length of sentences. It also makes the content less complex to understand. In this way, you will also achieve greater engagement with your readers.
4. Add some pictures and visuals
You can improve the readability of your content by using relevant images, videos, graphs, charts, or other graphics. These visuals don’t just enhance the appearance of content; they improve its readability.
Eye-catching visuals make it easier, faster, and clearer for readers to understand the information than just a cluster of written words. Besides, content with visuals is easier to remember. Visuals also serve as stopping points, giving visitors a momentary break from reading.
Just make sure the images and videos are relevant to the section of the content where they are added.
Use Readability Test Tool:
You can use readability test tools for a second opinion on the readability of your content. These tools will help you assess and improve the readability of your SEO content. Some of them are listed below:
- Yoast SEO
One of the most familiar reading score analysis tools is the Yoast SEO plug-in. It is a free WordPress plug-in that many digital marketers use to check the basic SEO of their content. But it can also give you a content readability score.
The current readability checks available in Yoast SEO are:
• Flesch reading ease,
• use of transition words,
• paragraph length, sentence length,
• subheading distribution,
• use of passive voice,
• consecutive voice, and
• word complexity
- SEO Writing Assistant
This tool helps optimize your website content on the go. With SEO Writing Assistant, you can run SEO content analysis, adjust your copy’s readability, check its originality, and maintain a consistent tone of voice – before or after publication.
This content checker helps you
• analyze your copy for complexity and compare it against your top 10 organic rivals,
• find complex words, sentences, and paragraphs,
• discover word count and reading time
- WebFX Readability Tool
This tool primarily focuses on the readability of your content. It provides a quick and easy way to test the readability of your work.
You can test by URL or direct input in which you copy and paste all content directly into the tool. It uses the following scores to help you better understand how easy your content is to understand:
• the Flesch Kincaid reading ease,
• the Flesch Kincaid grade level,
• the Gunning Fog score, the Coleman Liau index,
• the Automated Readability Index (ARI), and
• the SMOG index.
You’ll also be able to see:
• how many sentences your content has,
• number of words, number of complex words,
• percentage of complex words,
• average words per sentence and
• average syllables per word.
Conclusion:
In conclusion, readability may not be a direct ranking factor for search engine optimization (SEO). Still, it is an increasingly important factor in improving the organic position in your blog or website search engines.
Content readability helps you
• reduce bounce rate on your site,
• improve reader’s time on page,
• conversion rate,
• page scroll depth,
• revenue generation,
• subscriber retention, and more.
It also makes readers share that content, which ultimately helps you reach more audiences. In addition, reading such an engaging article makes them go further into your site, and they keep coming back.
