How to Organize Blog Posts So They’re Easy to Read
Have you ever read through a blog post and found it difficult to read? Maybe it was because the paragraphs were too long, there were no subheadings to break up the content or no images to support what you were reading. Whatever the case, hard-to-read blog posts are not enjoyable, causing people to leave the page.
Fortunately, this same thing does not have to happen to your readers. It’s possible to create engaging content that generates results! Below are some formatting tips that will make your blogs easier to find, read and share with others!
Create an Engaging Headline
Your headline tells readers what they can expect from your blog post. Your post’s headline should grab your readers’ attention while expressing the topics you are going to cover. Include your top keyword in the title, but be careful not to stuff too many keywords in there. The headline should sound natural.
Use Subheaders
Headers help humans and search engines understand your blog post. On platforms like WordPress, you’ll find that there are options to format your text with H1, H2 and H3. H1 is the biggest size header reserved for the headline. H2 and H3 organize your text into different sections. Be sure to use them!
Follow the Best Practices
There are certain guidelines that you’ll want to follow to make your content easier to read. You don’t always have to follow these principles, but they should be used as a framework for high quality content. Here are some examples:
- Keep sentences to 25 words or less
- Limit paragraphs to three sentences or less
- Link internally and externally
- Pick a niche and stick with it
- Write accurate meta descriptions
Keep Your Introduction Short
Your introduction should be no longer than three paragraphs. Some blog posts start out with long stories, and while it’s fine to share a personal experience, keep it short. Readers are typically coming to a blog post to answer a question, and when an introduction goes on too long, they might move onto another post.
Add a Clickable Table of Contents
If you’re writing a long-form article (1,000+ words), include a clickable table of contents at the top. This way, readers can immediately jump to where they need to go without having to scroll through the entire post. Plus, this technique helps search engines provide links to specific sections of content in the search results.
Incorporate Bullets, Lists and Numbers
Another way to make your content easier to read and understand is by incorporating bullets, lists and numbers. This breaks up long sequences of information and helps readers recap the most important parts of the article.
Include High Quality Visuals
Each blog post should have at least one visual element, such as an image or table. Make sure that your visuals support your content and add value. Plus, visuals break up text and make it easier to process large amounts of information. You can take your own photographs, hire a professional photographer or use stock images.
No matter how well written your blog posts are, people won’t want to read them if they’re not formatted correctly. Follow these tips to make sure that your blog content is easy for both humans and the search engines to read, understand and enjoy!