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How to Improve Readability of Your Content: 10 Useful Tips

Bhagwat Prasad | Updated On November 23, 2023

Content creators’ main focus is to enhance the engagement of the content. Many factors play a role in optimizing the readability of the content. 

We are writing this blog to give the 10 useful tips that can improve the readability of your content but first know what content readability is?

What is Content Readability?

Content readability means how smooth it is for the readers to understand and consume the content. Difficulty in reading the content lessens the impact of the content on the readers. 

Difficulty refers to long sentences, hard vocabulary, and a complex sentence structure with multiple clauses. These things make it hard for the user to grasp the content. 

Easy-to-read content includes a simple sentence structure that has short clauses and simple words. As a content creator, you must aim for a high readability score for the content. 

High readability shows that more people are interested in the content you are producing. It depicts the enhanced engagement with the content which in return shows that the content is popular among the masses.

Tips to Improve Content Readability 

Looking for tips to improve the readability of your blog? There is no need to look further. 

We have listed the techniques that can be adopted by the writers to significantly improve the readability score. 

Various types of content are being published on the internet these days. It can be a report, an Ebook, or a blog related to any field of life. 

It does not matter what type of content you are creating, proper formatting is the key to making it successful among the readers. Internet users hardly waste their time on content that is poorly written and formatted. 

By proper formatting, we mean to create content that has clear-cut headings and subheadings. It should be separated into paragraphs etc. 

This is the most important thing to keep in mind while writing the content. If you are writing with the aim of high readability, then make sure to write short sentences. 

Short sentences mean more people will be able to read hence, more people will consume the content. If you have written the long sentences in the content then try breaking them into small and easy-to-read sentences.

As a writer, the aim should be to write sentences with a maximum of 1-2 lines. The use of commas, conjunction, and full stop makes the reading process easy for the consumers.

The use of simple language is another trick that can be incorporated into content to make it more effective. It is a fact that the use of simple language in the content is directly proportional to the higher readability. 

Smaller syllable words also ensure the success of the content. Try to retain the words between 2-4 syllables. The use of long and difficult words will cost you the loss of readership. 

The reason behind this logic is simple. As a content creator, you must keep in mind the fact that readers can be from any geographical space. And not everyone will be equipped with good vocabulary skills. 

Therefore, simple language will attract more readers to your content. If you have trouble writing the content yourself, you can always take the help of writing tools. 

The readability of your content defines how long the audience would spend time on your webpage. If you have used complex wording in your article or the structure is too wordy, it might confuse your audience to skim through it.

In this case, you can paraphrase online with the help of a tool to refine the structure of your content. These tools will change the complex words and phrases with relevant synonyms to enhance the fluency of your content with a different writing style.

Online paraphrasing tools are straightforward, and some support free access under a limited word count. Such online tools can also help you to enhance vocabulary and learn different writing styles that meet the understanding and readability of your targeted audience.

If you think that using fancy and attractive fonts will bring more readership to the blog then you are wrong. On the other hand, research shows that this can reduce the readability of the content. 

Also, you can read: Best Practices to Make Your Presentation Font Stand Out

The reason is that fancy fonts are difficult to read and are hard on the eyes. Therefore, it can result in eye strain. Use the most popular fonts that are widely used by the blog writers such as Arial, times new roman, etc. 

The speed of the website impacts the readability of the content. Most of the readers will quit the website if it takes time to load. 

The audience decides right away what they think about the brand judging from the speed of the website. Therefore, it plays a decisive role in the success of the content. 

Users consider the information more authentic and professional if the speed is good. Inversely, if the speed is low, the user will bounce back immediately to a faster website that is more suitable for them. 

Images play a huge role in differentiating good content from an average one. Relevant images to the content are necessary to keep the interest of the readers. 

The ideal situation is to use the image every 100 words but it is even good to use it every 500 words at least. Images play a good role in breaking the monotony of the text. 

Images segment the content in a good way. Graphs, data charts, and GIFs are other forms of infographics that help in improving the readership of the content. 

It is not a hard and fast rule to keep a conversational tone of the content. But it always helps with the engagement of content. 

Readers can relate to the content more if the tone is more conversational. Readers think that the writer is talking to them while they are reading. Conventional tone naturally uses shorter sentences. 

Content backed with research will always hit with the audience. Research about the type of audience and why they are searching for this content. This will help to gain a large readership. 

Do thorough research on the topic as well. Readers will always catch the hint of surface-level information and the data that is well researched. The difference between these two will be obvious. 

The research will add validity to the content and readers will take it more seriously. You can create a story to engage the audience. 

Proofreading helps to get rid of any jargon that is written while writing the content in the flow. Writers often find it difficult to reread the content therefore, it is good to have someone else proofread it. 

Getting the text proofread by someone will give you a second opinion. Proofreading is the last chance for the writers to check the file one last time and check grammar errors if there are any. Mistakes are always bound to happen. This will be the chance to eradicate them. 

Measurement of Readability Score

Content readability is calculated through different measurement methods. A simple formula that is used to check the readability is given below;

0.39* (Total Words/Total Sentences Used) + 11.8* (Total Syllables/Total Words Count) – 15.59

This metric method is called Flesch-Kincaid Readability Score. It is obvious from the formula that including short words and sentences gives high readability to the content. 

The score is measured from 0 to 100 where a score of 60 is considered good and above is always better. 

Conclusion 

In short, we can say that the content should be precise and concise for it to gain a good score from the readership. Above are a few useful tips for the writers to enhance engagement with the content. 

Improving the readership is not very difficult if you follow some of the rules of writing the content. Though it takes some time and effort for the content to get a good readership.

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