Does Readability Affect SEO? On ease of reading
Is it worth it for SEO experts to make their texts readable? Would a content that has a high readability score lead to higher rankings and more traffic? In short: does readability rank?
Truth is, when you put out your content in simple and plain English, you would get a boost in your SEO campaigns. In the course of this article, we would be looking at a review of how content readability affects your SEO efforts.
When you write content that is readable, it improves UX
UX her means “user experience and not User interface.” A content that is unintelligible can cause bad user experience which is bad for SEO. Nobody would appreciate your content if it is not comprehensible, yet stuffed with keywords. You article should be solely focused on your audience. The best content that meets the standards of search engines are content write ups that give information about the solution to a problem, or an answer to a question.
First of all, every content creator should focus on creating good content for their website visitors. When you write an article that is hard to understand, you would not help users with their search intent. Truth is you would simply wind up with unsatisfied website visitors. The direct effect of this is something called bounce rate. If users leave a page just after it is done loading that would send a signal to Google bots that users have no interest in the content. This would make Google not to rank the site for particular queries. Readable content makes for content that brings about user retention.
Search engine bots usually mimic humans
In the early days of SEO, it was commonplace to keyword stuff content and rank high. These days, that is not the case. Those times are long gone, as Google prioritizes user experience and not search engine bot experiences. Google Bots might fall in love with your content, but you would never rank with it.
Google built better AI that helps it to recognize better content. For example, in the Google Hummingbird update, they began to recognize synonyms in content. This means that Google of late, is making effort to understand and predict what users want to read.
Readability is used by Search Engines for Voice Search
The number of SEO experts that are turning to voice search continues to grow in number. This is why Google and other popular search engines are now focused on optimizing content for voice search. Google for instance now presents most of its search results in a voice like mannerism. They also have started the practice of ranking content in a voice like manner.
For instance an individual that goes to search engine to search for information related to “Tecno Pop 4” might end up listening to long piece of information. Just imagine listening to a long paragraph that contains meandering sentences and so many difficult words, that is being read out loud. The voice search result would be difficult to grasp. If your content is difficult to read, Google would not use it for voice search results.
The best way to up your game in content voice search optimization is to create content that is readable. Voice search is a big surge in the SEO industry, and has come to stay.
What makes your content Easier to Read?
How do users interact with your web copy? Visitors usually don’t read content, the scan through texts, read subheadings, and the first sentences of paragraphs. They look out for transition words in your content write up. This way, they can easily abstract the main conclusion of the article that they are going through.
Did you know that Google does everything that human’s do while reading text? What this implies for the content creator is that they should structure their content in a way that the every paragraphs of the text becomes increasingly important.
How to Keep Your Content Readable
Now let us delve into how you can create easy to read content. Before you start creating content, you should think about the structure of the article. What are you going to tell your website visitors, and in what order would you do such. You should ensure that your content follows a logical order of topics. You should also be able to determine whether your audience would be able to follow the message in your content.
One pro tip for making your content readable is to make use of short sentences. Try not to make use of complicated sentences. Most of all do not over indulge in the use of passive voice when creating content.
Why following the best practices for making content readable, make your writing to appear appealing to readers. Although, this can be hard at times, be sure to mix in some creativity in your write up. Finally, you should try not to start sentences with the same words in your article.
