All online content should be written with a specific purpose. Be aware of the audience you want to reach with your work, make your message interesting, and most importantly, ensure that your message can be decoded and easily understood. Readability is a major factor in online content and can greatly increase your site’s search engine optimization (SEO) levels. Readability is the practice of making your writing understandable and easy to digest for your target audience. Marketing to your audience is critically important. When your website’s content is clear to the targeted audience, they will learn about your service or product, and in turn, search engines will favor the site and rank it higher. Here are some tips on how to make your article more readable for both your audience and search engines:
- Less is more: Keep your article content concise and interesting, with the most important information at the top. People don’t have time for excessively long articles.
- Short paragraphs: Shorter paragraphs are easier to read and give the reader some time to take in the information without being overwhelmed at its length. Readers will stay interested with short paragraphs because it seems that there is less to read.
- Use descriptions: Incorporating headings and subheads increases readability for the audience and search engines by categorizing information and letting them know if what they’re reading contains the specific content they are looking for. Use header tags <h1> – <h3> for keywords to improve reader experience and SEO rankings.
- Use the right font: Ensure that the audience can read the message easily. Don’t use small fonts or complex font themes. Keep the appearance of the text simple and align the text so that people can skim though it with ease.
Implementing the proper visual elements within an article is also important. Online visual content that accompanies writing is meant to be interesting and increase readability:
- Throw in some color: People respond well to information presented in different colors. Add just enough in order to make the content appealing, while highlighting key points of the article.
- Add some images: Pictures and infographs help to demonstrate and drive home points made through writing, so including these images in an article only makes sense.
Clean, colorful, and easy to read messages will help your audience learn more about your product or service. It is important to find the right balance between writing for clients and writing for search engines. Use easily understandable keywords and manage bounce rates in order to maintain good SEO rankings. These SEO rankings take readability statistics into account as well, signifying just how important clear articles are. Check your website’s readability level by using the readability tool in Google and then apply the tips provided as necessary. Open Google and type in the name of your website and then click on the “Search Tools”. Click on “All Results” and then click “Reading Level”. Readability statistics will appear and then you can form a strategy to make your site content more easy to understand. Does your company understand the importance of readability for your target audience and for SEO purposes?
As a full service marketing agency, The Belford Group creates branding, websites, marketing, social media and search engine optimization solutions to assist our clients in finding and reaching their ideal audience.
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