How to Improve Your Blog Readability
WriteCollective
If you know a lot about your industry, you should have a blog to build your authority and establish yourself as a credible voice. However, your readers usually won’t have the same knowledge. If you’re not careful, you can come across as too specific and technical, and your blog readability will suffer.
Readability — or the ease with which people can read your content — revolves around how you present your content. Chances are that you’re a professional with significant value to offer your readers. The problem arises when you stuff too much detail and technical knowledge into your blog, resulting in content that your audience can’t understand and leading to reduced conversions.
So how do you write impactful blogs for businesses without overloading on detail? How do you balance proving your industry knowledge and creating easy-to-digest content that your target audience can relate to? Thankfully, several factors can impact the readability of your blog. If you keep these tips in mind, your blog will keep your readers coming back for more.
Blog Readability Tips
How do you know if you need to improve your readability? Look for the typical signs:
- Your visitors bounce after less than a couple of minutes
- Your blog posts aren’t focused
- Your posts read more like technical manuals or journal entries
- You think SEO is more important than writing for readers
If you recognize these signs, the good news is that there are several steps you can take to make your posts more readable.
Avoid Bulky Blocks of Text
You might think that the right move is to dump everything you know into a blog to show off your knowledge and prove that you know everything about your industry. But when people see a wall of text, it only comes off as intimidating.
Instead, it should be quick and easy for readers to skim your page and gain value from your posts. You can start by breaking up your text more frequently, increasing the white space on your pages.
Consider a short paragraph structure, with an average of 2–3 sentences per paragraph. A good rule of thumb is to use no more than 4–5 sentences in most cases — and you should keep these long paragraphs to a bare minimum.
You can also break up text and add white space by inserting section headings, numbered lists, and bullet points. To keep things interesting, change it up now and then by adding some professional graphics.
Consider Your Typography
The font you choose can add to or detract from readability, as can the spacing, kerning (spacing between letters), and other features. Did you know that visual effects and traits that work well in print often don’t work the same way online, and vice versa?
Consider serif and sans-serif fonts, for example. Serif fonts have decorative embellishments added to the edges of characters — little lines that hang off the ends and add visual flourish. This font type is easier to read in print but harder to read on a computer monitor or phone screen. Of course, you can choose to use these more decorative fonts if you want, but it could detract from readability from a purely practical standpoint.
Finally, adjust spacing and kerning to achieve optimal readability. When characters are too close or too far apart, it makes the content harder to read and distracts the reader.
Layout and Design
How you arrange your pages can greatly impact readers’ ability to digest your blog posts.
However, it can be difficult to plant out a layout if you have no experience with design or professional writing, so you might want to leave the layout work to web designers and outsource blog writing to professional content writing services.
Web designers are trained to create a visual layout and design that is artistically appealing to viewers, and professional writers can plan out the flow of your content in an aesthetically pleasing manner that delivers information in impactful ways.
Optimize for Mobile
With more people consuming content on their phones every day, it pays to optimize your pages for mobile users. No one wants to adjust page sizing on a phone or tablet to read text, after all. And since search engines prioritize pages that are optimized for mobile devices, it’s in your best interests to adopt a mobile-first mindset.
Simplify
You might understand all the industry-specific lingo and acronyms, but these terms will only confuse most of your readers.
It might pain you to “dumb down” the information you spent years of your life studying, but you don’t want to risk losing your readers’ interest. It’s far more important to write at a 7th- or 8th-grade reading level and retain their attention spans. That’s how you make sure they read until the end of your post and take action.
Cut Superfluous Words
Be careful not to ramble. Not only are you wasting readers’ time and annoying your followers by adding “fluff” (intentionally or not), but you’re also needlessly cluttering up your content and making it less readable.
There’s something to be said for imaginative prose, but don’t mistake filler for colorful writing.
Consider Alternative Formats
A higher word count doesn’t necessarily mean a higher-quality blog post. Instead, mixing in charts, graphs, photos, drawings, or videos might be the best and most engaging way to get your point across.
Remember that the internet is largely a visual medium, and a wall of text can only capture someone’s attention for so long. Consider what you could gain by appeasing your readers with interesting, eye-catching media.
Leave Blog Readability to the Pros
Blog readability is difficult to master, and you have more pressing issues to take care of. If you want a professional blog with minimal effort, let Write Collective handle your blog posts. Browse our content marketing packages and get started with high-impact copywriting today!