Good writing means good readability. Content that’s rife with spelling and grammar mistakes may contain good information, but frustration will prevent it from being read. Business coaches and content marketers have long espoused the merits of focusing on your why. I disagree. Instead, when you’re creating small business content, focus on your readers and their why. Why are they reading your blog? Why should they trust your information? Why are you the solution provider they need?
Bloggers, small business owners, and content creators typically focus on SEO-optimization, substance, and trending topics when creating content. While every one of those things is important, readability is just as important. Ideally, small business content should meet the following five rules to be substantive, easily readable, and enjoyable.
- Short sentences that contain twenty words or less are ideal
- Intelligent paragraphs that make sense and provide solid information in small chunks
- Natural SEO that blends into the writing rather than distracting from it
- Everyday words – even industry jargon if it’s relevant – your readers will understand
- Good old-fashioned cliffhangers that tease readers into coming back for your next post
Want to make your content even more readable? Check out these two bonus readability strategies.
- Avoid stop words – especially in meta descriptions and image tags. Stop words are common words like the, it, is, but, and or. Search engines automatically filter these words out. Most stop words are necessary, but an overabundance of them might lower your search engine rankings.
- Break content up with images, numbers, and bullet points. Readers love listicles (articles and content written in full or in part as a list) because they’re easy to read, easy to digest, and easy to reference. Readability increases your reader return rate and boosts SEO rankings.
Use these tips and strategies to engage your readers with small business content that grabs their attention. Readability coupled with SEO techniques piques their interest and keeps them coming back to your website and blog.