Do you know what is content readability and why it is important? In this article, we will tell you how it can be improved. If you want to create content that ranks highly in the search engine, there are several factors you need to consider. Whether you write yourself or prefer to give your work to an SEO agency, it is important to ensure that the content has data-driven insights and best-fitting keywords. However, another factor that people forget is the content’s readability scores. If you want your work to be on top of the game on search engine results, it’s essential to take readability into account. Continue reading to find out more.
What is Readability?
Readability is how well your content is easy to understand and interpret. If you want excellent readability scores, strive to write something easily understood by the larger audience segment. Writing easily understandable content ensures that your audience enjoys your site and hence spends more time on it.
Will Readability Affect SEO?
Yes, it does. But how do readability scores affect SEO? A page that has an inviting layout and great content ensures that the users have achieved their goals. Users feel satisfied when the content is well understood. Your work should also have a practical page layout, good structure, and good readability scores.
Readability affects SEO both directly and indirectly. If your sentences are grammatical and have an enticing plot, you directly influence your audience’s motivation. Easily understood content influences the reader to continue staying on your site. Additionally, readability increases if your website has good formatting and visual style hence affecting SEO indirectly.
Which Factors Affect Readability
Simple HTML & CSS does not cut it anymore with users. Websites are now incorporating a variety of features that help improve the visitor’s experience. Many factors affect your content’s readability, which includes:
Vocabulary
People understand your content through vocabulary. Complex vocabulary can affect your readability because it makes the content harder to understand. It would help if you used the words that your target audience uses. This makes your content easy and comfortable to read and makes your target audience more receptive to your content.
Visuals
Readability can also be affected by the images and videos used on your page. Are they helping the reader to understand your content? Placing visuals in the right place increases your content’s assimilation.
Sentence Length
Long sentences make it harder for your audience to understand your sentences. Using short sentences makes your content easily digestible. People do not have to read your sentences twice or thrice to understand what you are trying to explain. Your sentences should also flow to help your users have an easy time on your website. Additionally, ensure that sentences with new meaning should go to the next paragraph.
Grammar
Grammatical errors are a sin in content writing. It is crucial to use proper grammar in your articles. Lousy grammar lowers readability scores hence affecting your audience’s experience. Even if it is not a ranking factor, it can indirectly influence SEO since it affects your content’s overall readability.
Headings
Using headings improves content readability. They make the content easy to read and increase your user’s engagement and motivation. They want to know what comes next; hence stay longer on your site. The words on the headings also affect your ranking because they influence what Google takes away from your content.
Website Colors
The colors on your website can greatly affect your content’s readability. Some colors are too much for the eyes, making it harder to read the content. Non-contrasting colors can also affect readability. Ensure that you pick colors that are user-friendly and interesting for the readers. You can use different colors to represent different parts of your content.
Page Layout
A good structure layout ensures that your audience easily accepts your content. Small factors such as horizontal scrolling for texts fitting in their bounding box can affect readability. Are all the margins throughout your text equal? Did you ensure to put across the main point of the article at the beginning? All these factors will affect how your users easily read your article and whether they want to stay on your site or look for another.
Ensuring that your content ranks highly on Google is one of the most worthwhile things for content creators. It may not be easy to ensure that your readability is exceptional, but it heavily impacts SEO. To increase readability, ensure that your content is easily understood and people do not have a hard time scrolling through it.
