You keep writing, but what if no one finds what you write interesting?— how disappointing it would be to see that nothing good happens to the efforts you make? Unstructured and complicated content with long sentences or paragraphs makes the content difficult to read and understand.
Why is Readability vital in a website’s content?
Readability plays a significant role in making people understand the website content in its true sense. People need not waste time gathering the meaning of what they try to say. Hence, if they miss understanding the meaning quickly, the chances are that they leave the site without finishing reading through. Once the user finishes reading the content, it is also important to let them find you trustworthy enough to follow your future posts— hence blog marketing is not an easy job for even an online marketing agency!
Also, the major blog networks would reject your articles if the content doesn’t follow the style, relevance and various other parameters you need to take care of. How to make the blogs/articles readable? Let’s read further to explore the hacks to trigger the reliability of your article.
1. Add white space as required
Imagine a huge pile of text on a site and a user who hops on to the content to get an easy-to-understand answer for their search. These chunks might appear overwhelming; hence spacing out images, words etc. help users to relax their eyes while reading through the content. Avoid too much white space, and be thoughtful while breaking up the long text paragraphs into a few easy-to-read lines.
2. Cut short the sentences
The length of a sentence improved the readability to a great extent. Long sentences are difficult to perceive and analyze. Breaking up long sentences into simple, crisp, and short sentences can make reading easier. Find areas where you can reduce jargon and contract those texts. Since the readers need not necessarily stick to the long sentences, they wouldn’t return to finish reading your content— so make it as short as possible while being relevant.
3. Give it a conversational punch
Think you speak with someone and give this style to your writing. Writing just like speaking can give the reader a clearer understanding and keep them engaged. Use simpler words, add a human touch to your content and let the readers feel connected while reading through the blogs/articles. A casual tone of writing also helps the readers to find your content reliable for future reference, creating a long-lasting relationship with them.
4. Incorporate bulleted lists
Adding bullet points to organize content helps you break up the information, which makes the content well-presented. It helps readers to figure out the highlighted phrases and keywords which you try to give focus on. It also lets the users get a clear picture of what you wish to say without a great effort. Bulleted lists and numbered lists can help readers to run their eyes through the sections in one go without any risk.
5. Adopt typographic ease
Typography is vital to work well on readability and rendering visual ease for your content. Work on font size– normal font size makes online content easy to read online. Writers generally go for font size 12 while writing the body while using larger font sizes for headings and titles. Easy-to-read font styles like Arial, Times, Verdana, Times New Roman, Helvetica, Courier, and Sans-serif fonts can help you deliver the best readable content to the users.
6. Insert images and videos
Images can display data well and give readers a refreshing visual break from the text. Use videos and images to break the text into visually appealing sections. Make sure that the image goes well with the topic you try to explain and helps readers stay hooked. Let the users engage with the content with more backlinks and high search engine rankings keeping the content as interesting as you can.
7. Encourage active voice to scale readability
A passive voice is not easy to perceive, hence users prefer to read in an active voice. While passive sentences are longer due to the added words such as ‘was’, ‘were’, etc; active voice speaks straight to the point. Avoid sentences being challenging to understand, and don’t use too many words. Since people refuse to read an entire sentence if it’s not built to be precise, then filled words cost you more than you can think of.
8. Select headings carefully
If you wish your audience to read your content, it’s vital to have a clear heading that speaks the best about what your landing page or blog is about. Never mislead the users, and avoid clickbait that sounds too compelling. Keep the headlines short and emphasize the benefits the user gets while you offer a solution to mark the importance of the content you are going to deliver.
9. Include sub-headers as needed
Using sub-headers within paragraphs can help you break up the text in blogs effortlessly. Every paragraph in most blogs is self-explanatory, hence giving each paragraph its header can improve readability. It also gives insights to the readers with the structured format. The readers can also go through the sections that convey information better in the form of points.
10. Guide the readers with a thesaurus
Consider a technical blog or academic research-centric article on your website. People can’t easily find out what you say since it consists of many technical phrases, words, etc. However, it’s important to make sure the readers can understand your article well, with your help. Use a thesaurus, or list out the meanings of the technical terms, abbreviations, etc. you use in the articles to improve the overall readability.
