Readability is a term that has been around for centuries. It simply refers to how easy it is to read and understand text, whether that’s from a book, blog post, or anything else written in English (or any other language). Readability also refers to the difficulty of reading and understanding some piece of text. The more difficult it is to read something, the less readable it is. However, because the Internet plays such a large role in how people find and access information today, there are specific standards that must be met when writing web content – especially if you want your website to rank high in search engine results pages (or SERPs). What does this mean for your SEO strategy? You should know how readability affects your SEO ranking so that you can avoid making common syntax mistakes that can hurt your visibility online.

What Is Readability, and How Does It Affect SEO?

Readability may sound like a very specific term, but it’s actually quite broad. It can refer to anything from the length of sentences to the vocabulary used. This can affect your SEO in a few different ways. First and foremost, if your content isn’t very readable, people probably won’t read it in the first place. This means that they won’t come across your website in the first place, which means they won’t click on your website in the first place. As a result, your website won’t end up anywhere near the top of the search engine results pages (SERPs). This is important to remember because search engine optimization (or SEO) is all about getting your website noticed by people who are searching for content related to your industry. If your website isn’t anywhere to be seen, it’s like you don’t even exist.

Why Does Readability Matter for SEO?

While we’ve talked about how readability affects your SEO, we haven’t really talked about how it affects your website’s readers. With a poorly written article, readers might only make it a few sentences in before clicking away to a different website. If your goal is to increase website traffic, you don’t want that to happen. In fact, the Society for New Communications Research found that 84% of people will leave a website if it takes longer than three seconds to load. And that’s not even taking into account the percentage of people who will leave due to poor readability. If your readers are constantly struggling to understand what you’re trying to say, they’re probably not going to stick around to read your whole post. And even if they do, they likely won’t remember what they read anyway.

Keywords: The Key to Improved Readability

Keywords are super important for SEO. However, if you stuff your post with keywords or use them in places that don’t make sense, you’re actually hurting your SEO. But what if you write your post without any consideration for keywords at all? Well, that’s not the best idea either.

Sentence Length: Don’t Be Too Short or Too Long

You probably already know that you shouldn’t write everything in one-sentence paragraphs. However, you might not have realized that you shouldn’t write everything in one-sentence sentences, either. On average, sentences should be around 10 to 20 words long. Anything shorter than that and you risk losing your reader’s attention. Anything longer than that and you risk boring your reader. Longer sentences aren’t necessarily bad, but you should keep them in mind when writing your post. When in doubt, reread your sentence and ask yourself if it makes sense without the use of a thesaurus. If it doesn’t, try to break it down into smaller sentences.

Vocabulary: Use Common Words and Don’t Shy Away From the Big Ones

Let’s be honest: not everyone is a natural writer. You may not feel like you have the ability to write a post that is as eloquent as you’d like it to be. However, there are a few things that you can do to make your post a little more readable. First, make sure that you’re not overusing uncommon words. If you use words like “impermeable” and “galumphing” in your post, not many people are going to understand what you’re trying to say. To make sure that your post is understandable to a wide audience, you can use a tool like the online word count tool from Word Counter Widget to check your vocabulary level. It’ll let you know how “difficult” your post is, and it’ll even give you suggestions for improving the readability of your post.

Summing Up

When it comes to your SEO, readability matters. If your post doesn’t read well, people won’t read it. And if people don’t read your post, they won’t find your website in the first place. And if your post isn’t readable, you’ll hurt your SEO. You’ll lose out on high-quality backlinks, and you won’t be seen by people who are searching for content related to your industry. If you want to improve the readability of your content, you first need to learn how to make your text both readable and understandable. When writing your post, make sure to use short and simple sentences, avoid uncommon words, and break up your text with subheads. And don’t forget to use your thesaurus!

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