The main goal of a marketing strategy is to reach the target audience. That is why your online content should be written in a specific way so that it is comprehensible to the right readers. It should convey your message in a way that your customer base can decode them easily. Readability has a huge influence on the search engine optimization of your website. The higher the readability is, the more comprehensible the content is. A high readability rate makes your content more understandable and easy to digest for your niche audience. As the content of your website becomes easier to understand, the more traffic it gets. As a result, your website ranks higher in the search results of your target audience. In order to increase your SEO, you must create content with a high readability score.
What is the readability score?
The deciphering quality of content is called readability. The less complicated your writing is, the higher the scores are. There are different factors that affect the readability of writing. The factors that impact readability are:
Language
Readability depends profoundly on what kind of language you use. If you use overly complicated language, even it is right, you will score low. The goal is to create content that is understandable to almost everyone. The readability tool decides if the content can be comprehended by a 5th grader or a 12th grader and such. A good readability score is always above 60 percent, which is at the reading level of a 5th grader. Do not treat your content as a literary piece. Keep it simple so that the message you want to convey can reach everyone effectively.
Sentences
Readability heavily depends on the sentence length and structure of the content. The reading can get complicated if you use lengthy sentences. The use of complex sentences also affects the readability of your writing. Most people use their favorite jargon in their writings. It can be understandable and witty for the writer themselves, but it could go over the head of the readers. An ideal sentence for online content should not contain more than ten words.
Paragraphs
How you relay your paragraphs, has a huge impact on the readability. Long paragraphs are practically boring to read. According to a survey, most people tend to avoid lengthy paragraphs no matter how interesting the content is. Paragraphs should contain 3 to 5 standard length sentences without any complexity and jargon. Smaller portions tend to attract more audience engagement online.
Subtitles
Most of the world’s population have one thing in common and that is a short attention span. If your content has lengthy paragraphs, there is a chance that your readers will get bored halfway through. A bolded subheading has the ability to pull them back to the content. Subheadings tell the readers what the following paragraph is all about. It piques their interest in reading the whole content. It also makes the content more SEO-friendly as it categorizing information and let the search engines know what the content is about. If your content has what the readers are looking for, it will rank higher in the search results.
Fonts
An appropriate font can change the entire outlook of your content. Some fonts are overly complicated and difficult to read. One of the most popular and widely used fonts is 'Times New Roman'. It is used almost in every online page due to its simplicity and clarity.
Layout
The layout of your content is as important as the above-mentioned points. A well-designed layout can give your content a professional outlook separating you from the crowd. It makes it more appealing to the readers. It helps people to go through the entire content easily without losing the true spirit of the writing.
Add colors
People are more attracted to a website that is more aesthetically pleasing. To make your content more appealing to the readers, you can present different information in different and vibrant colors.
Add images
Pictures and infographics convey any message more efficiently than plain texts. They are also used to keep the readers hooked without getting monotonous. Adding some relevant images and infographics in between the paragraphs of the content makes it irresistible to the audience.
How readability improves SEO?
Content runs the internet. With millions of content existing simultaneously on the web, search engines use a certain algorithm to rank them in the search results. It depends on certain factors. Google takes notice of the time spent on each web page. It observes the formatting and what the visitors do after they have visited the particular page. The more readable the content of your website is, the more time people are likely to spend. The more visitors, the higher the SEO ranks.
Try to write as simply as you can. Think about your audience rather than your own writing style.
