5 Easy Ways to Improve the Readability of Your Website Content
Readability is a very important aspect of copywriting that is often overlooked. Yes, it is important to write blogs and other website content. However, you are doing yourself a disservice if that content is not properly optimized.
What is Readability?
Readability is the basic measure of how readable your content is. Readability has a huge impact on user experience. Consequently, it also has a massive impact on your SEO. Google recently made changes to its algorithm that prioritize user experience. Googles crawlers read the content on your website and measure its readability. Poor readability can also impact your websites performance, which will also negatively impact your SEO. So here are 5 easy ways to make your content more readable:
1. Reduce Sentence Length
You probably learned about run on sentences in grade school, but for some people this is still a major issue. Run on sentences make your content hard to follow for the reader. They also look unprofessional and hurt your SEO. Yoast recommends keeping sentences under 20 words. In some cases this is not always possible. However, being mindful of this while writing copy will help you limit the use of long sentences.
2. Use Headings
Don’t insert unnecessary and unrelated headings just for the sake of using a heading. When used properly, headings will improve the readability of your content. Headings can be used to break up large chunks of content and control the conversation. This makes your copy easier for readers to read, positively impacting the user experience. As we mentioned, this also helps with your SEO. Make sure your headings reflect the topic of your content, and include some of your researched keywords and keyphrases. Perfect execution of this could result in the coveted “Featured Snippet” on Google Search.
3. Reduce Passive Voice
Passive voice refers to the construction of your sentences. Normal sentence structure promotes active voice. With active voice, sentences feature an actor (the subject), who does (the verb) something to either a person, animal or thing (the receiver). For example: Mom hugged me. With passive voice, the actor and receiver are switched around. Example: I was hugged by Mom. To learn more about passive voice, visit this Yoast article, which is where I got the aforementioned definitions. Passive voice is wordy and the sentence structure is more complex, hence why it reduces readability.
Yoast recommends that no more than 10% of your copy uses passive voice.
4. Limit the Use of Complex Words
Obviously, the more complex your words are, the more difficult your content is to read. It is important to remember not everyone reads at the same level. Basic vocabulary for you may be beyond the comprehension of someone else. This is why it is important to know your audience. If you are in a more complex, technical industry, the use of some big words may be unavailable. However, your audience might be highly knowledgeable in the field and understand perfectly. Google on the other hand, might not be so understanding.
Googles algorithm deciphers word complexity through character and syllable count. Keep that in mind when writing so that you can limit your complex word count. However, don’t let it deter you from using them when necessary. The importance of connecting with your audience is likely greater than the negative impact of a couple big words.
5. Use Transition Words
Transition words improve readability by helping readers connect your thoughts and ideas. Some examples include “so”, “but”, “how”, “however”, and “because”. It is recommended that you use transition words in 20-40% of your sentences. We often find that transition words are something we go back and plugin after re-reading and identify opportunities to insert them. To learn more about Transition words, check out this article.
In Conclusion
By implementing these practices into your everyday copywriting, you will improve the users experience and positively impact SEO. Making a conscious effort to follow these practices while writing is much easier than going back and trying to correct content. As you may have noticed, we are big fans of Yoast SEO at 1707 Creative. They have an awesome plugin available for WordPress users that allows you to monitor everything we discussed in this article. We used it to check the readability and SEO of this article! If you manage your own WordPress site, we’d recommend downloading and using the plugin on your website!
If you are looking for expert advice on how you can make improvements to the readability and SEO of your website, you can book a strategy call with us here. You can also send an inquiry to jacob@1707creative.com to learn more about our services!
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