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5 tips for writing readable blog posts

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Reading from a screen can be difficult, so if you want people to read your
whole blog post, it must be easy to read. This will get you more returning
visitors and a higher conversion rate. Luckily, improving the readability of
your content is something you can do relatively easily, to give your site a
quick boost during these difficult times. This post gives you five top tips for
writing readable articles. To make improving readability even easier, Yoast
SEO offers a readability check! It’s available in multiple languages and we add
new languages regularly, check out which features are available in your
language.

Focus on your audience

Remember the most important advice I can give you: Make sure your text
is pitched at the right level for your audience. If you write about LEGO and your
content is aimed at kids, then it should be really easy to read. But, if your audience
is scientists with a Ph.D., your text can be much more challenging and still be
appropriate. The five tips below should, therefore, be seen as guidelines. For some
audiences,Products
your text could beLearnmadeSEOeven simpler,Blog
while for other Login
audiences the
rules will be a little too strict. If you’d like to dive a little deeper into the art of
copywritingHelp
for both people and SEO, consider taking our SEO copywriting course,
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part of our Yoast Academy training subscription.

Tip 1: Write clear paragraphs

Make sure you write clear paragraphs. For a blog post, we advise you to always
start a paragraph with the most important sentence, then explain or elaborate on
that sentence. This helps a reader to grasp the concept of your article, just by
reading the first sentence of each paragraph.
A long body of text isn’t the most attractive to read, especially on a mobile screen.
Just think about all the time when you’re discouraged from reading a post on your
phone because you see wall after wall of text. Make sure your paragraphs aren’t
too long (7 or 8 sentences are long enough). If you find that your paragraph is a bit
long, try to break it up into shorter ones. But do make sure you retain the flow of
information between paragraphs.

Tip 2: Write short sentences

Try to write short sentences. Shorter sentences are easier to read and understand
than longer ones. Also, you’re likely to make fewer grammatical errors as your
sentences are nice and short. We consider sentences containing more than 20
words to be long. If you’re writing in English, make sure you only have a few
sentences of 20 words or more in a blog post, but each language has its own
limits. Also, make sure paragraphs don’t have more than one long sentence each.
To shorten a sentence, try to think of a more simple sentence structure that
doesn’t change the message you’re trying to deliver. For instance, I could start this
paragraph with “In order to write shorter sentences”. As you can see, it has the
same message/meaning but also makes the sentence longer. Besides that, coming
up with an alternative sentence structure may allow you to break a long sentence
into two shorter ones. Additionally, you can consider omitting words that can be
cut without losing meaning, or using a shorter synonym of the word.

Tip 3: Limit difficult words

Limit the use of words that are difficult to read. Remember that reading from a
Products
screen is harder for everyone.Learn
WordsSEO
with four orBlog Loginconsidered
more syllables are
difficult to read, so avoid them where possible.
Help Community
Of course, sometimes your blog post is about something that’s hard to explain or
requires a more advanced vocabulary. For example, I wrote a post about
illustrations. The word ‘illustrations’ has four syllables and can be seen as a
difficult word, but I still had to use it (and quite often too). In cases like this, make
sure your sentences and paragraphs aren’t too long, and your readers will still be
fine!
On a side note, unless you’re focusing on a niche market, difficult words usually
make less useful focus keywords for a page. In the example above, ‘images’ or
‘visuals’ might have been a better choice. Remember the most important thing is
that your focus keyword fits the subject of the post. Proper keyword research will
give you better alternatives for difficult keywords.

Tip 4: Use transition words

You can make your writing much more readable by using proper transition words
(or signal words – the same thing). Transition words are words like ‘most
important’, ‘because’, ‘therefore’, or ‘besides that’. These words give direction to
your readers because they give a signal that something is coming up. If you’re
summarizing, you’ll use ‘first’, ‘second’, ‘third’, etc. If you want to compare, you’ll
write ‘same’, ‘less’, ‘rather’, ‘while’ or ‘either’. If you want to conclude, you’ll use
‘hence’, ‘consequently’ or ‘therefore’.
Using transition words is a bit like putting cement between your sentences. The
relationship between two sentences becomes apparent through the use of
transition words. Readers will understand your content much better if you use
these kinds of words properly.

Tip 5: Use variation!

For a piece to be attractive to a reader, it should be varied – you should try to avoid
repetition and shake things up a little! Alternate longer paragraphs and sentences
with shorter ones and try using synonyms if you tend to use a particular word too
often. Some people use the words ‘and’ or ‘too’ a lot. Mixing these with words like
‘also’ or ‘moreover’ could make your writing more attractive – and much more
Products
readable too. Learn SEO Blog Login

Use Yoast
Help SEO
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To help you write readable copy we offer a readability check in Yoast SEO. It
checks the length of your sentences and paragraphs, and whether you use
transition words or subheadings. What’s more, it assesses your use of passive
voice and helps you identify complex words in your text so you can make
adjustments accordingly. Next to that, you can also find the Flesch Reading Ease
score in the Insight tab in Yoast SEO. It’s a formula that indicates how easy to
understand your text is. Check out the readability score of this text:

The readability score of this post

Bonus: break up your post using

images
In many situations, it’s a good idea to break up your posts using images. They help
us somewhat reduce fatigue from reading paragraphs after paragraphs. This is
especially applicable for long-form content, like an ultimate guide on a particular
subject. Adding to that, many people are visual learners, so they prefer seeing
different things like colors and shapes rather than just text. So having images may
help them toProducts
re-engage with Learn SEO
your content. Blog Login
However, don’t
Helpadd images for the sake of adding images. Try to include images
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that fit with the subject of your post or use those that fit with what you’re talking
about in the previous paragraphs. You can even use images/illustrations to add
value to your text, like in the case of infographics.
It’s best if you can use authentic images that you or your colleagues create, but
this is not always the case. If you must use stock images, then don’t use too
generic ones that feel like they have little to no connection to your content.

Conclusion
If you want your readers to get to the end of your blog post, make sure that your
text is easy to read. Don’t make your text more difficult than you have to. Avoid
long sentences and write clear paragraphs. Tools like Grammarly and
Hemingway can help you to write more readable text. And, if you use our Yoast
SEO plugin you get a readability check on your content as well, so you’ll be able to
check whether your writing is SEO-friendly and readable at the same time!
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Marieke van de Rakt

Marieke was Head of Strategy and former CEO at Yoast. During her
time at our company she wrote a lot. Topics that she loves writing
about include SEO copywriting, site structure and readability.

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