Readability of a WordPress post is one of the most important characteristics if an article. This parameter defines the extent of the appeal of your work in your audience. There are several parameters that determine the readability score of your article. We will discuss than one by one, but there is one extremely important parameter. Your command on language. Before even considering blogging you should examine your lingual skills. Ultimately, your connection with your audience will determine how much you will retain over a long period of time.
Readability of a WordPress Post: Parameters for readability.
When you will write any article then Google apparently ranks your work according to the following parameters.
- Reading ease.
- Passive voice.
- Consecutive sentences.
- Subheading distribution.
- Paragraph length.
- Transition words.
- Sentence length.
Let us examine all these parameters one by one in detail.
Readability of a WordPress post: Reading ease.
Reading ease is determined by several parameters. It refers to the appearance of your text. Do you know Google analyzes reading habits of readers? Yes, everything you are searching, clicking and typing in the search engine is going through an algorithm. This algorithm then analyzes the time spent by a user on an article. Then corresponding to reading habits of ‘n’ number of users it ranks articles. What do you think about reading habit of an end-user? Well, if you are given an option of reading two texts on the same topic then what will you choose? Surely, it will be the one which is easier to understand. Isn’t it!
So, you must write keeping in mind that the reader only knows the basic language. The language may be English, Hindi, Urdu or any other regional language. But the text must be in very simple and easy to read and grasp words. One thing that you can do is to make short sentences. This will certainly eliminate the underlying complexity of the text. For example here in the previous sentence, we may replace complexity with difficulty.
Passive voice use is not good.
Understanding of passive and active voice may be good for a human to human conversation. But, here in the digital world active voice is ranked above passive voice conversation. One thing you should take notice that conversation is of prime focus here. We will discuss this point later in the text. For now, let us concentrate on the usage of active voice.
Addressing in the active voice means that you will address your reader in the first person and will avoid using past tense in your text. Understanding active and passive voice is a topic of English grammar and we will certainly take it up when we will introduce English language classes, for instance. But here let us understand one thing in a very simplified and clear manner. Try to avoid using past tense and addressing your reader in the third person.
Consecutive sentences.
Consecutive sentences here means sentences starting from the same word. Let’s take ‘I’ for an example. So, if you are writing about yourself then there is always a huge possibility that you will use ‘I’, repeatedly. Lets us assume that you are giving your introduction.
At first, comes the sentence,” I am a resident of x state”. The second sentence maybe,” I live at Y street’. Now, every sentence here is starting with the letter ‘I’. Also notice that both sentences are one after another. Now let us modify this. For example, you may write this as,” I am a resident of X state and I live at Y street”, or ” I am a resident of X state. My house is on Y street”. Notice in both of the above cases we are focusing on eliminating two sentences starting with the same word.
Now, if Google has to index two articles on the same topic then it will give a higher rank to text with no consecutive sentences. And, to monetize your blog better you will need it to rank as high as possible. As simple as that.
The topic of this series: Writing a Blog Post.
Subheading distribution.
As per general observation, Google places a certain restriction on the size and portion of a post. Again no one knows Google algorithms so, these are just predictions that bloggers observe worldwide and adjust their writing accordingly. Remember that if you want to monetize your blog or even if you are working form someone, to rank as high as possible is the ultimate goal. Because this is where the money flows in. The lower you rank, lesser will be your income from blogging. Alright, firstly every paragraph should be less than 150 words. We don’t exactly know why google prefers texts but I guess that 150-word text is easily accommodated on a regular mobile screen.
Secondly, there should be a bifurcation in the text after every 300 words using a subheading. This is because no one likes to read the complete text. Most of us read between the lines and so are our readers. Now, later in this series, we will tell you about creating subheadings with keywords and optimum keyword density. But, for now, just remember no subsection of text should go without a subheading after 300 words. This also indicates recommended paragraph length you should be using in your posts.
Sentence length.
As I said earlier that everything depends upon Google algorithms to rank a post. And google algorithm, for instance, is dependent upon what readers prefer to spend their time on. Moreover, these are based on the general observation of several SEO experts all over the world. Additionally, if you observe in general we all like to read or listen to something that is simple to understand. Long texts and long dialogues are difficult to grasp and understand, let alone be one’s reaction on them.
So, according to observation a sentence with more than 20 words will get a lower rank in comparison of a sentence less than 20 words. Of course, these two sentences are to convey the same message or sense.
Transition words.
Transition words are quite a tricky thing. These are something that is in regular talking practices of the writer. Otherwise, it will certainly take time to incorporate them into your language. From the word itself, the sense is clear. When we are in a conversation then we jump from one conclusion to another. To impart sense to our talk we use different transition words. These words are connecting words or phrases that make our jumping from one point to another as smooth as possible.
Now, in the above text you may have observed that there are some words like otherwise, additionally, in addition to, in spite of, obviously, of course, so, accordingly, moreover and several other words and phrases. These are known as transition words. Most importantly these are used in conversation. This means that the reader’s interest is generated at a higher level in a conversation than in the case of just a simple text. So, if you are writing a blog post and monetization is your priority then you need to become a wizard of language. Not a Shashi Tharoor kind of wizard but a word wizard that can bind its readers more than the competition.
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Readability of a WordPress post: Conclusion.
We hope to help you in writing an effective blog post that engages more and more audience. Moreover, income from google depends upon the quality of your text. Of course, with the use of money, advertising is an option. But the question arises, for how long? Ultimately your knowledge, authority and command over your topic is going to decide whether readers are going to like you or not. So, be creative in your approach and remember that there is no substitute for hard work. Even if you have knowledge but you are not willing to learn and change then nothing is going to work. Good luck with your endeavour into blogging or content writing.
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