10 Tips to Make Your Blog More Reader-Friendly Featured.jpg

How to Make Your Blog More Reader-Friendly

Organic visibility is critical for successful small business websites. And, one of the best things you can do to make your website more visible in the organic search results is to start creating more content on your site.

Content creation is far from the only aspect of search engine optimization (SEO), but it’s an essential piece of the puzzle. One of the best ways to create more content on your website is to start blogging. Here are a few things you can do to make your blog more enjoyable to read.

10 Tips to Make Your Blog More Reader-Friendly

#1. Know who you’re writing for.

While content creation through blogging is an important thing you can do to help your website rank better in the organic search results, that shouldn’t be the main reason you’re blogging. You should be blogging for your readers, and in order to do that, you need to know who they are.

Before you can educate, inform, or entertain your readers with your content, you have to know what they want to learn, what they need to know, what pulls at their heartstring, and what makes them laugh.

#2. Write for a wider audience.

As a general rule, you want to keep the writing in your content at an eighth-grade level. This is not to say that you should write for eighth-graders. It means that you should be writing at a level that a wider audience can read and understand.

While you should never talk down to your readers, it’s important to try not to use any tech speak or jargon in your content that the average consumer wouldn’t understand.

#3. Keep your sentences short and simple.

The more simple and straight to the point you can make your content, the better your readers will be able to understand it and the better they’ll connect with it. This starts by making sure each sentence is short and sweet.

When you go back through to edit your content, think about how you can make each sentence simpler. Any sentences that can be broken down into multiple sentences should be. Every time you use a period, you give your readers a quick break before they move on to the next sentence. That makes your content more readable and easy to process.

#4. Use headlines.

Google likes long, informative articles, but nothing can turn a reader off on a blog more than a wall of text. This can actually make your content seem longer and more difficult to get through. And, chances are high that your readers will abandon your content without really reading it.

One of the best ways to break up your content and make it easier to read is to add a unique headline to each section of your content. That way, if your readers don’t feel like fully reading it, they can still read the headlines and understand the point of it.

#5. Keep your paragraphs short.

When writing your blog, it’s important to understand that the majority of your readers will be using a mobile device. So, what looks like perfectly reasonable paragraphs on your desktop computer can end up looking like that dreaded wall of text on a mobile device.

You don’t necessarily need to add a space after every sentence. Your paragraphs should be short, but they should resolve themselves naturally. Typically, you should aim for two to three sentences in each paragraph.

#6. Choose a larger font.

Again, remember that your readers will, by and large, be viewing your content on their smartphone or tablet. And, while it’s easy to read a 12, or even 10, font size on a desktop computer, it becomes a lot harder to make it out when you’re reading it on a smaller screen.

Your mobile readers will have a much easier time reading your content if you choose a larger font size. Try to keep blogs at a 16-point font or higher. And, choose a style that’s clearly legible.

#7. Draw from your expertise.

As a business owner, you’re not exactly a novice. You have a lot of knowledge in your field, and that knowledge has a lot of value for your readers. Use it when writing your blogs!

While you can, and should, thoroughly research whatever topic you’re writing about, you’ll have a much easier time creating content if you draw from what you know. Sometimes, the best place to start is by thinking about the common questions your customers have or the common problems they face.

#8. Choose high-quality images.

The images you choose to use in your blogs are, arguably, just as important as the content itself. When you choose professional, high-quality images that catch your visitors’ attention, it keeps your readers interested and makes them want to keep reading.

In addition to making sure that you choose the right images, you should make sure that your images are properly resized, compressed, and optimized. This way, they’ll help you rank in the organic search results and large, clunky images won’t slow down your website.

#9. Optimize your blog for search engines.

Part of the reason why you’re writing blogs in the first place is to help your website rank in the SERP (search engine results pages). But, often, content creation alone isn’t enough. You also need search engine optimization (SEO).

Make sure that you create unique, keyword-rich title tags and meta descriptions for your blogs. You should also include the keywords you’re targeting in the tags.

#10. Include keywords (but don’t force them).

Last, but certainly not least, make sure that you include the main keyword you’re targeting in your content at least once, but only if you can do so naturally. If you force keywords into your content, it’s going to make your content look spammy and hurt your reader-friendliness.

Although blogging is a critical part of organic visibility, it’s not the end all be all in SEO. The truth is that SEO starts with your website. If your website isn’t SEO-friendly, it’s time to build one that is.

With the Websites 360® website builder, it’s easy to build a beautiful website that’s designed to rank. Get started today.