is content readability? How to make your content easier for readers to understand

The content that is not read is worthless.

How can you write content that your audience actually reads (not just skims)?

Make it easier to read.

It’s not as simple as it sounds.

The readability of your content will influence everything, from how many people engage with it to whether they return to read further.

What is content readability? How is it measured and how can your content be made easier to read for the reader?

This guide has it all.

What is the content readability of a website?

Content readability is a measure of how easily your content can be read by your audience.

• Readable Content is easy to read, understand and skim.
• difficult to read content is also hard to understand and skim.

The main difference between unreadable and readable content is the value that your reader can get from each.

Reading content is a great way to convey information. Your reader will learn something new, make a discovery or solve a problem.

Unreadable content does not do any of these things – the reader cannot learn anything because the sentences and words themselves are unintelligible.

How can you determine the readability of content?

The readability of content is subjective and objective. The readability of content is both subjective and objective.

• Your content’s vocabulary and word choice.
• How many common and uncommon words do you use?
• Your sentences and paragraphs should be structured and written in a logical order.

There are many readability tests that evaluate your content based on the factors above and provide you with a score to tell you how readable it is.

The following are some of the most popular (and current) tests for reading comprehension:

Flesch-Kinkaid Grade Level Formula

FleschKinkaid may be the most widely known readability formula. The formula measures the readability by comparing the number of words per sentence and the number of syllables per word.

This formula will grade your content according to the U.S. grade that can easily understand and read it.

If you score a 6, then people who can read easily at the 6th grade level or above will be able read your text. This is an excellent score for online writing.

Microsoft Word, Hemingway Editor and Readable are all tools that you can use to check your content.

After you have run the spelling and grammar checks, Microsoft Word displays readability statistics:

Lexile Framework for Reading

The Lexile Framework is another well-known system for measuring readability. It’s primarily used by schools. The Lexile Framework is divided into two parts.

• Measure text using word frequency and average sentence size.
• Measurement of a person’s level of reading.

A higher Lexile score will be given to content that is harder to read, such as long sentences or words that are used infrequently. The score for content that is easier to read will be lower (i.e., short sentences with frequent words).

Nine tips to improve your content’s readability

Now we know that readable content is content of high quality.

Let’s say that you have tested your content with a few different readability checkers, and found out that it is mostly difficult to read.

What next?

Improve your content and make it easier to read. Here are nine tips to help.

1. Shorten your sentences

Simpler sentences are shorter. They’re easier to read because they’re shorter.

Longer sentences are more likely to include multiple thoughts or ideas. Your readers will find it difficult to decipher your sentences if you stuff them with information.

Shorten these sentences. If you are prone to writing long sentences, go through your draft and look for these. Break them up into smaller pieces.

Use Hemingway editor to highlight long sentences.

2. Your paragraphs can be broken up into smaller sections.

As you shorten your sentences, shorten the paragraphs as well.

Your paragraphs should not contain more than 3 sentences .

It’s intimidating to read a long, dense paragraph. This is great for a novel, but not for your blog.

A wall of dense, long text will kill your reader’s interest.

One rule to follow when breaking up paragraphs is: Each paragraph should contain one idea or thought. Once you have moved on to the next thought, start a new section.

Remember that the “enter” key (or “return”) is your best friend.

3. Use active voice

Next tip for readability: Use active voice.

Active Voice is the way you phrase a sentence. You clearly state both the verb and subject when you use active voice.

Example: “The ball was chased by the dog.”

Dog = subject. Ran = verb.

Passive Voice is the passive voice you use when phrasing a sentence. The subject of the sentence may be unclear.

Example: “The dog chased the ball.”

Notice how the dog is hidden at the end of this sentence?

passive voices can be used to highlight the action in the sentence rather than the subject.

Let’s say, for example, I wanted to share with you a car theft I experienced. I would say “My car got broken into last evening.”

The subject (the person that robbed my vehicle) is irrelevant. I do not know who it was. It’s important that you convey the fact that the robbery happened.

Be careful. Active voice is usually easier to understand and read than passive. When editing your content, make sure to emphasize this.

4. Word play is a great way to mix up your vocabulary

It is tedious to read content that contains the same words repeatedly. It also looks like keyword stuffing.

Does “hard to read”, “boring” and “hard to read” mean the same thing? Not exactly. It’s not exactly.

People who are bored by your content will not read it all. They’ll bounce.

It’s important to mix up your vocabulary when writing. Your sentences will be more lively and engaging.

5. Use lists

Lists can be a reader’s best friend.

If your content is easily skimmed, it will also be easy to read.

To avoid this, whenever you are tempted to create a list with many items, separate by commas or a number, make it a bulleted or numbered list.

The same technique can be applied to:

• The steps in a series.
• A collection of similar items, concepts, or ideas.
• In a long paragraph, you can use points to make it more readable.
• You can highlight any other information that you wish to separate from the main text.

What did I do there?

6. Signposts are a great way to help your readers.

Signposts are also used to guide the reader.

Descriptive headings, for example, help your reader to understand the organization of your content and what information will be covered in each section.

Use bold text to draw attention to important ideas, words or phrases.

The humble table of content is another great way to indicate long form content. The table of contents allows your readers to jump to the sections they want to see in your article.

Ahrefs, a company that frequently uses table of contents in blogs, has a great example:

7. Avoid industry-speak and jargon

Our goal was to increase traffic to our landing page, and earn ROI by generating sign-ups.

What is the meaning of this sentence?

You might be a marketing professional.

Welcome to the world (also called jargon, industry-speak or slang) of industry-speak.

Insider language is used by people in the same industry or niche to communicate with each other.

It sounds like gibberish to everyone else.

It’s a sin to use it in content meant to be directed at your audience. You should not use in your content unless there is a specific reason.

8. White space is important when formatting your pages.

This is a task that may fall to your web designer. However, it’s still important. Make sure your pages are filled with space between the text and content.

This is the space between elements on a webpage.

The “room to breath” will make your pages easier for you to read, as the elements of each page won’t be packed together.

9. Read your content out loud to check for errors

You can check the readability of your content by reading it out loud.

You may laugh, but it’s amazing how different the content of your speech sounds when you speak out loud.

You’re more likely, when you read out loud, to stumble over complicated sentences or paragraphs. Or to notice if your words are tangled.

Try to simplify them when you encounter these situations. They should be rewritten to make them easier to read.

It’s worth a try. You might find that it changes the way you edit your content.

Readability is key to better results.

It is important to ensure that the content can be read.

Your audience will be able to get more value from your content if it is easily readable. You’ll either learn something, gain new knowledge, or find the answer you were searching for.

A hard-to-read content will prevent them from performing any of the above. They will be bored or frustrated.

A bored and frustrated audience will not stick around. This is the opposite of Content Marketing.

You will get better results if you improve your reading ability.

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