Is your Content Readable?

| January 21, 2016

Is your Content Readable?

Content is one of the best ways to build your authority, earn the trust of the customers, and improve your search engine rankings. Content will also bring organic traffic into your website and your blogs. There are different kinds of content that you can create but the written format is the most common as it requires the least amount of work. You just need an idea and the skill to write. However, most people make mistakes when they’re writing content that can compromise their audience’s ability to read it easily. Here are some tips to help prevent that.

Get the Formatting Right

There are some business owners that just write a big chunk of content without playing much attention to format. They ignore the need for paragraphs, for points, for sub-headings, etc, and create a body of text that would take longer time to read than needed. It shouldn’t surprise you that such content is generally ignored for people.

Online readers don’t really go through the articles thoroughly, reading every line. They just skim the content and give up the relevant points to get the gist. If you want your piece to be read, you need to help your readers skim it. That means, you need to divide your content into paragraphs, use bullet points, sub-headings, and a good, clear font.

Mind the Colours

This is connected to the previous point but it focuses on the overall design of your website. Some designers consider it a bright idea to use pale coloured font against a pale background. That’s never a good idea, especially if you want people to read your content without straining their eyes. It’s a better idea to use a dark background and light font or a light background and dark font. You want the words to be clearly visible and easy to read. That won’t happen if you use the light on light or a dark on dark font colour and background colour combination.

White Space

White space is the space on a particular document that doesn’t demand attention. This includes margins, gaps between paragraphs, gaps between words, etc. You need to ensure that your post has plenty of white space on it. This enhances the reading experience. It also ensures that your article looks neat and organised.

Decide the Subject Matter, Word Count, and Tone Carefully 

The ultimate goal of generating content is to draw organic traffic and showcase your authority. You also want to establish a personal connect with your readers. That means, you need to plan every article carefully. Choose the subject you want to write about carefully. Bear in mind that the article should have the ability to retain attention from the start to end. One way to ensure this is to keep it short unless the subject matter doesn’t permit it.

For example, if you just want to write about the benefits of using a particular product, you can keep the word count down to 400 to 500 words. However, if you want to explore how a particular piece of technology works, your word count would exceed that limit.

If you keep these suggestions in mind, you’ll be able to create readable content for your company’s blogs.