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Every blogger knows that it’s crucial to provide readers with informative and interesting content. But is content value the only thing that matters? No, it’s not. Textual content also should be easy to read and easy to understand.
If you run a blog, you should try your best to improve the readability score of every post. It will help you to satisfy your readers and get your blog to the top of Google search. Here is a list of tools and tips, which will help you to measure and boost the readability of your texts.
Readability Index
So, do you know what readability is all about? It’s as a measure of how enjoyable and easy text is to read.
The point is that users avoid reading articles, which consist of extremely long sentences and contain lots of complicated words. They prefer to read posts written in simple language, which is understandable for every high school child.
If you want to improve the quality of your blog posts, you should measure the readability score. There are five computer-calculated indexes, which may help you to figure out whether your texts are readable enough:
- Flesch-Kincaid Reading Ease
- Coleman-Liau Index
- Gunning-Fog Score
- SMOG (Simple Measure of Gobbledygook) Index
- Automated Readability Index
List Of Tools for Improving Readability
Obviously, you can’t measure and improve readability score without necessary tools and services. Here is a list of reliable online resources, which you may use.
Yoast SEO
You can install Yoast SEO plugin and measure the readability score directly from your WordPress dashboard. The system automatically calculates Flesch Reading Ease, as well as the number of long sentences, transition words, and sentences written in passive voice. Using this plugin, you will find it easy to identify readability issues and fix them.
WebFX
This is an online tool, which allows testing readability of textual content by URL and direct input. Also, it helps to check a whole page or a single area of the page by refers. WebFX calculates six different readability indexes and average grade level.
Hemingway
This app has a great user-friendly interface. Hemingway calculates the readability grade and highlights the hard-to-read words and sentences. It helps to detect the phrases, which have simpler alternatives, and adverbs, which might be omitted.
Grammarly
It’s a popular online grammar checker, which also helps to improve readability. In contrast to previous tools, Grammarly not only detects the complicated words and phrases but also suggest simpler alternatives to use instead.
Trust My Paper
If you can’t increase the readability score on your own, you may use this online service. Professional blog writers will check your work and fix readability issues. Trust My Paper is an extremely useful service for beginner bloggers.
Tips for Improving Readability
Now let’s talk about major readability rules, which you should follow. Keep them in mind, while crafting your next blog post.
Keep Sentences Short
No one loves to read long sophisticated sentences, and that’s a fact. So you should use short, simple sentences instead of long compound ones. Remember that the length of a perfect sentence doesn’t exceed 20 words.
Obviously, it’s impossible to follow this rule strictly because not every idea may be expressed in simple words. But still, you should make sure that share of the long sentences in the text is less than 25%.
Use Simple Words
You should avoid rarely-used words, sophisticated phrases, and idioms, especially when you don’t know what they exactly mean. Try to use simple, well-known words to make sure that every reader will be able to understand your article.
It’s a bad idea to overstuff your posts with terms, jargon, and slang, which only a few people with a background in the field can understand. If you want to have a wide audience and drive traffic to your blog, you should keep everything simple.
Add Transition Words
Even though you should keep your sentences short and simple, you shouldn’t forget to use transition words. They will help you to connect different ideas and improve writing flow.
If you want to put your ideas in chronological order, use such linking words as first, additionally, last. If you want to provide an example, write phrases like to illustrate, for instance, indeed. Don’t skip transition words, and you will increase the readability score.
Keep Paragraphs Short
Huge blocks of text scare the readers away. For this reason, it’s important to pay attention to the text formatting and break articles into the paragraphs. Experts state that every passage should consist only of two or three sentences and express only one specific idea.
Use Subheadings
Also, you shouldn’t forget to add subtitles. This is an easy way to make your blog well-structured and scan-friendly.
And please, don’t use random subheadings. Every subtitle should describe the main idea of the paragraphs and contain the keywords.
Use Bulleted Lists
The best way to highlight major ideas and structure the post is to create the bulleted lists. It helps to draw the readers’ attention to the main takeaways.
Avoid Passive Voice
It’s much easier to read sentences written in an active voice. So, you should avoid passive voice where it’s possible. For instance, you should write the phrase “the book I wrote” instead of “book written by me”.
Don’t Overuse Adverbs
You should not use adverbs, which do not add any value to the text. You may omit such words as just, simply, quickly, etc.
Simplify Everything
Every time you write a sentence or phrase, try to think whether it has a simpler alternative. For example, you may substitute such a phrase as “on a daily basis” with one simple adverb “daily”.
Also, you can simplify some verbs. Instead of writing the long phrase “has the aim to achieve”, you should better say “aims at achieving”.
Wrapping It Up
Now you know what tools to use and which rules to follow to improve the readability of your WordPress blog. Don’t hesitate to apply all these tips in practice and you make your blog extremely popular.
What do you think about these Tools and Tips to improve the Readability if your blog? and What techniques are you using to make your content more readable? Tell me in the Comments Box!
