Is your content easily digestible?
Your content might be grammatically sound and hit all the bullet points in the content brief, but readability is an important part of the SEO equation. Elegant word choices and crisp, easily digestible content that keeps the reader engaged throughout your work are central to its success.
Research shows most people skim the content they read on the web, so your content will need to be concise and deliver the key information as clearly as possible. If you were looking for the information contained in your content, would you find it helpful?
Here a 6 helpful tips to make your content more readable.
- Readability Score: Readability Scores are metrics that determine the audience’s reading level (often based on the United States education system) of the content you’ve written. This is important, as we recommend never writing content that exceeds a 10th-grade reading level. There are exceptions, depending on what the content brief calls for, but if it's general content, this is a reliable guideline. Most of our recommended tools offer a Readability Score.
- Make it skimmable: the more readable something is, the more readers will engage with it. Readability isn’t confined to word choice — it uses design and layout choices too! By breaking your work into [smaller paragraphs] and using formatting tools like bolding, italicizing, and 1. bulleted/numbered lists, you’re making it that much easier for today’s reader to digest your work in manageable bites. Learn more crucial content writing skills in this article.
- Write to the objective: It’s easy to see most content writing jobs as info-dump opportunities. “We want readers to learn about potatoes,” says the content brief. This is where you, the writer, should immediately check yourself before launching into an essay on the history of potatoes. More often than not, the customer actually wants you to convince the reader their potatoes are the best. By writing to the objective, you’ll deliver work the customer can actually use — even if they didn’t quite know how to ask for it at the beginning.
- Read your content out loud: Some people like to describe this tip as “type like you talk”, but given that conversational styles vary, we recommend reading your content out loud with every paragraph you complete. Needless repetition and clunky wording will become obvious when you hear it being spoken.
- Use Scripted Templates: Scripted released a new tool called Templates that allows you to build from the optimal structure and headers for each type of content. These are guidelines that set you up with a solid structural foundation, with headers and bullet points that make it easier for your readers to find the information that matters most. Learn more about Templates here.
- Passive voice: Passive voice is the enemy of all content writers. It tends to make sentences needlessly convoluted and requires more of the reader’s attention to digest. When you finish your content, start back at the top and look for any instances of passive voice, and convert them into active voice. One tip the Scripted team loves is the Zombies test. If you can add “by zombies” to the end of the sentence, and it still makes grammatical sense, it’s passive voice.
Example:
Passive: The content was written and submitted (by zombies).
Active: We wrote the content and submitted it to the client (by zombies).
Remember, the above are not just suggestions. They’re requirements for every job you take on Scripted. Keep your account in good standing by incorporating these items into your workflow!
As usual, please contact us at support@scripted.com if you have any questions or concerns.