How To Make Your Content Readable

Making sure your content is readable is naturally very important. Readability helps your content to rank, so if you want to increase your chances of what you create landing in front of the right people, it’s something that you must pay attention to.

While readability calculators can help you to a point, if you take them too literally you could ruin the flow of your writing. So how can you make sure that your content is more readable? Here are some useful tips. 

Don’t use clickbait titles

People are so aware of clickbait nowadays that using a clickbait title will lose your readers. Anything over-exaggerated or revolutionary is going to have readers rolling their eyes and ignoring your links. It’s fine to be creative, it’s fine to command attention, but tricking, exaggerating, and patronizing your readers just won’t go down well.

Pay attention to keyword use

Keyword stuffing is a massive no-no, we all know that. But yet some of us still try to do it ever-so-subtly. Use your keyword when it’s relevant. Google now doesn’t take keyword density as an indicator that a piece of content is a quality piece of information or indeed that is relevant, so go easy on them. There is nothing more off-putting to a reader and even if your article is good, and overuse of keywords will make it difficult to see that. 

Don’t pad out your content for no reason

If you are writing an article that can be covered in a few paragraphs, keep it a few paragraphs long. No one needs to read a piece of content 5000 words long on “how to use a knife and fork.” Stop bulking out your content in order to reach a particular word count. Over-explaining will render your article dull as ditchwater anyway. Respect your reader’s time and make sure that your content is valuable and worthy of reading, whether it’s going to take 1 minute or 30 minutes to do so. 

Go easy on the formatting

It’s good to have white space, it’s good to break down lengthy paragraphs and have headings and bullet points and so on. However, there is such a thing as overdoing it. Too much formatting will likely distract your readers from what you are trying to say. So bear this in mind and format sensibly, even if you are tempted not to.

Link at your own risk

Lots of links will ultimately distract your reader from reading your piece. It’s good to back up your work with research and link where appropriate but lots of blue underlined phrases will make your content less readable and also encourage readers to come off your article and head somewhere else. 

Make sure humans (not computers) can read it

Remember you are writing your article for human beings, not search engines, so make sure that it’s them you have in mind when you create and polish your piece. If you are genuinely trying to write a smart, well-researched, thoughtful, engaging article, you can’t go too far wrong, and will likely be naturally rewarded by search engines anyway because people will actually want to read it!