Tips to Improve Readability of Your Content

improve content readability

One common (yet often overlooked) mistake that I see businesses making in their content is writing at a level above where their target audience is at.

They *think* they are thoroughly covering a topic, but they are using terms and concepts that are unfamiliar to their audience.

The result is that readers can’t relate to the content, don’t understand the information you are sharing, and don’t see your brand as approachable.

Your content should speak THEIR language, not yours.

What I am referring to here is Readability.

And having Readable content often involves “dumbing down” your content just a touch so that your content is at your reader’s level.

One way to measure where your audience is at is to conduct market research and analyze what types of words and phrases THEY are using in referring to your topic/industry.

Are they using terms like “SERPs” and “conversion optimization”, or are they saying “first page of Google” and “get more sales through my website”.

Don’t assume that they understand the industry terms that you use every day.

At the same time, don’t dumb it down so much that you come across as patronizing.

It’ll be a major improvement to simply swap out some of those industry terms with terms that your audience is using.

Another great way to assess Readability is to use the Hemingway App.

It will tell you the Grade of your content, identify complicated sentences, find sentence fragments, and much more.

What I like to do is write with the reader in mind but then run the content through the app to take it down just a notch.

If I typically write at a 10th grade level, I try to get it down to an 8th grade level.

This will vary based on how savvy your audience is, but typically, you can assume that you have more industry knowledge than your audience does.

I’m a proponent of making things too simple vs too complicated. You can always use those more advanced terms once you get them on the phone