What is Content Readability, and Why is it Important?

Unreadable content is useless. Learn how to create content your audience will read, not just skim.

One of the keys to building a successful content strategy online is to make your content readable. So what is content readability, and why is it important?

Content readability measures how easily your target audience can read your content. Readable content is clear, understandable, and easy to skim. Content that is difficult to read will be unclear and hard to understand. Good content helps the reader learn something new, discover, or solve a problem.

What is Content Readability, and Why is it Important?

There are many methods to measure content readability. These methods depend on both the reading level and intelligence of the individual. They are based on objective factors such as the word choices used in your content, how often and rarely used words are used, and the structure and length of your sentences and paragraphs.

How to Measure Content Readability?

There are many methods to measure content readability. These methods are based on an individual’s reading level and intelligence and on objective factors such as the word choices used in your content, how often, frequently, and rarely used words are used, and the structure and length of your sentences and paragraphs.

What should you consider to make your content more readable?

Here are some tips you should pay attention to in this regard:

1. Shorten Your Sentences: Long sentences often contain multiple thoughts or ideas and can be difficult for the reader to decipher. Therefore, try to shorten your sentences.

2. Divide and Shorten Your Paragraphs: Your paragraphs should usually contain no more than 2-3 sentences for online content. Paragraphs that express a single thought or idea make your content more readable.

3. Use Active Voice: Active voice makes the sentence more precise and understandable. This is very, very important, especially in English content.

4. Use Different Words: Repeating the same words over and over again can make your content boring. This can also be perceived as keyword stuffing, which can have adverse effects in terms of SEO.

5. Avoid Using Jargon: Using jargon and complex expressions makes your content more difficult to read. Consider using a more common or better-known term or description instead.

6. Make Listings: Lists are a skimming reader’s best friend. If your content is easy to skim, it will be easy to read. So when you want to write a long list separated by commas, turn it into a numbered or bulleted list.

You can apply the same technique to the following:

• Steps in a sequence.
• A group of related items, ideas, or concepts.
• Points in a long paragraph.
• Other information you want to emphasize or separate from the main text.

7. Create Useful Content: There is no other subject that harms your site as much as writing content to be written. Especially after Google’s Helpful Content system, I even witness that Google does not index content that does not answer user expectations and questions. So do not produce meaningless content with the concern of producing content.

8. Give Importance to the Introduction Paragraph: The introductory paragraph should briefly summarise the subject you will explain in detail in the sub-section and pass to that section. You should not include topics irrelevant to the subject you will write in this section; your article should be around the same subject.

The readability of the content is an important issue.

When your content is readable for your target audience, it will be easier for them to get value from this content. They will learn something from it, take away something new, or find the answer they seek.

On the other hand, content that is difficult to read will prevent them from doing any of the above. It will bore or frustrate them.

And a bored, frustrated audience will not find your site worth their time. This is the antithesis of content marketing.

Work on your readability, and you will see better results.

In this article by Search Engine Land you can find some suggestions about content readability for English content. If you have English sites, I strongly recommend you to read this article.