Every online content creator should ask themselves: “Is my content easily read and understood by my intended audience?”
Why is that question important? Because you’re not writing for search engines; you’re writing for people. Google and other search engines cater to users, not content creators. Nevertheless, we all want our websites and businesses to perform well on search engines, and writing easily-read content is the first step.
But that begs the question: How? Well, there are several answers to that question. So, let’s talk about your options a little bit.
Option 1 – Read Your Content Out Loud
Always read your content out loud to yourself. This is an option, but it is the first step toward creating written content. But why is it important?
Reading your content aloud to yourself helps prevent your brain from correcting errors, tense, and style. We could go on about this for a while, but Forbes pretty much summed it up with this:
“Reading aloud helps us process our content like humans, not just writers. It’s also the best way to ensure your website copy is written in your company’s voice.” – Kate Kiefer Lee, To Write Like A Human, Read Your Work Out Loud, Forbes.
Option 2 – Have Others Read It, Too
Again, this option is like step 2 of writing a good copy. We’d say that every option listed in this post is 100% necessary.
After you’ve read your piece aloud and finished correcting any errors you find, ask others to read it. The more people who read your stuff, the better. But why?
As with reading aloud to yourself, having others read your content helps make sure you sound human. It also helps ensure your copy uses your company’s style, voice, and overall language. Having others read your document also helps find any grammatical and spelling errors you might have missed.
Option 3 – Use Online Tools and Software to Check Readability
The easiest option is to use online tools and software to check for readability. There are several different options for readability-checking software out there. Some of the better ones are:
- WebFX Readability Test Tool
- Readable.com
- Microsoft Outlook and Word
- UsingEnglish.com
- Hemingway Editor – This one is a little bit different than the others. Rather than focusing on a specific reading scale, this tool helps authors with overall readability. It includes adverbs, passive voice, phrasing, and sentence length.
- Grammarly – Again, this one is slightly different from the others. Grammarly focuses on helping writers with grammar, spelling, clarity, and sentence structure.
Option 4 – Hire Goldstein Brossard
If you still have issues with ensuring that human beings easily read your content, you can hire a company to handle it for you. Enter us here at Goldstein Brossard. Our expert SEO copywriters and authors can turn any piece you’ve written into easily read and understood web copy. We can even author web content for you! So contact us for help with content readability today!
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