Writing and formatting tips that can help you to read the long posts

Google likes posts with more than 1500 words & more!! Readers also love sharing posts of such length… We should strive to reach the desired number.

Are you wondering how many words readers actually read from your post?

On an average, users have time to read about 28% words during a visit and it is 20% more likely. The users read maximum 28% of words during their visit. If you apply the same thing to your 1500 words, users read about 420 words.

You may be spending lots of time writing long content but the thing is that the readers ignore it most of the time. You can use findings of the web readability studies and web writing and styling practice of SEO Company Melbourne boosts your post readership.

Here are the most efficient writing and formatting tactics that can give you a good start:

Take an inverted pyramid approach for writing each paragraph, sentence, and post

If you have ever read the newspaper story, you will notice that it covers most important things at the beginning of the piece. You can find the answer to all questions like who, what, when, why, etc. in that piece of writing.

The first two sentences summarize the story in brief. As you move through the story, you will find secondary details like quotes, stats, and other supporting details. The approach of SEO Company is the most important information before filling up the secondary details is known as front loading. Inverted pyramid approach involves writing content.

Tom Tungucz, a venture capitalist, moved from Google to Redpoint as he felt that his messages are not that convincing as one can find it at Google. He later changed his style of communication to solve such problems. He switched to inverted pyramid style for communicating. If changing communication style can improve your message, you may end up having more readers to read.

An inverted pyramid approach can boost your content readership as online audience respond positively to this style of writing.

1. 1. How to improve readability of your post by applying principles of frontloading:
      • Post level: Work on post introduction and treat your story as the lead. Make it entertaining by adding copywriting hook. Keep things clear and tell key message of the content.
      • Paragraph level: Just as opening line of your post, opening sentence of your paragraph should summarize your paragraph. Make your point clear right from the beginning.
      • Sentence level: Ditch passive voice and start writing in active voice. Start placing the most relevant information at the beginning of your sentence. Write shorter sentence for best results.
   2. Write in sections: The first three parts of the post help you to feel the sense of consistency. It creates a particular pattern, and it is easy to read. Simple section structure involves problem, solution and tip and helps readers to go with the flow. You may repeat same structure throughout the post for creating a desired pattern. If all your sentence and paragraph follow an individual style, your post may lack rhythm.

You may improve this by using images, quotes and other elements. Melbourne, SEO Company suggests having varying length of sentences. In writing, rhythm is defined more by punctuation and pattern of words in a sentence. Long sentences seem smoother while short sentences make it snappier. Varying length of the sentence and punctuations can make your prose more engaging.

• Focus more on first three paragraphs: Readers pay more attention to the first three paragraphs of page. To use the pattern of reading, outline your post in a good meaty section before others. The structure of your post should be in points. When your points look similar, readers tend to think back. If your post starts with the generic post, add some images to it.
• Use many subheads: You must know 80/ 20 headline rule. About 80% readers just read headline. Extend this principle to subheads, think of each subhead and complete your post. Write engaging subheads and draw readers into independent sections of post. Good subheads invoke curiosity just as anchor points of your post. The better you write the subheads, the more readerships you may enjoy.
• Keep skimmers and scanners in mind: Most readers do not read full post and it is not always skim. The web users keep switching between the readings and scanning mode. Read some time and scan at other times. When they come across a particular section, switch back from scanning and reading mode. It is important to think about structure of post as skimmers and scanners use subheads as anchor points. It will help you to get the attention of skimmers and help you to get more people to switch to read mode from the skimming style.
• Add block quotes: Block quotes are best as it acts as evidence in your post and people trust them. By quoting top authorities in your niche, you may create impression of good researched post. This would prompt readers to go through your work. Quotes improve quality of your post if used effectively. It can provide good piece of evidence and lend voice and perspective to your narrative. However, it can also clutter your text and interrupt the flow of argument if used inefficiently.
• Keep the readers hooked with internal cliffhangers: Internal cliffhangers of bucket brigades are great way of grabbing attention of your readers. When readers encounter them, it tends to hang more as it demands more attention. Boost your average session time by breaking up the posts using bucket brigades. For using bucket brigades in your post, you may feel funny and unconventional but it works like magic. Do not overdo the styling elements or you may lose attention of the readers. This way, you may break longest section of post by adding bucket brigade.
• Write in a very conversational style: You should read your style of blogging every time you write ‘you’ and ‘yours’ in the discussion. By using you’ and ‘I’, avoid making your content to look like an essay. Go easy with style and make your post conversational to draw attention of readers and engaging the audience.
• Add interactive elements: Elements like GIF, tweet box, surveys and calculators aren’t main stream as images but you get to see a lot of them. With Copy Hackers, you may open any post with 4- 5 images. If you think that your readers did not like the post, stay away from it. Tweet boxes are a great formatting tool that can make your content look good. It can be shared more as tweet boxes makes sharing easy.
• Make things attractive with images: Images make your post look more appealing with proper format as it distracts all the readers. Stop using stock photos and use mix of chart, graph and screenshots. Whenever you use charts and screenshots, refer it to your post and help readers to focus more on content. Pay attention to information carrying images to show relevance of content. Users ignore decorative images and do not add real content to the page. SEO company Melbourne suggests you to use few and relevant image.
• Write small sentences: Length of sentence is not always a problem and good bloggers write about 15 word sentences only. If on an average, sentence length is 14 words, ensure that readers understand about 90% of what they say. When it is only 8 words, readers will read the full story. Long sentences are not bad but it becomes a problem when you write it and end up confusing the readers. Try to write short sentence to add more clarity to your content and make it look snappy. For removing over lengthy sentences in your post, you may edit it with Hemingway app. The app allows you to rewrite long sentence in the post and boost its readability. When you are ready with your post, go to Hemingway app and paste your content. Look for all sentences that are highlighted in red in the app. All such sentences may be long but should be rewritten to add more clarity to the content.
• Maintain appropriate Space: Whitespace is a tool that gives break to the reader’s eye. The designers use it for drawing the user’s attention to the most essential elements of their design. Just as the designers, whitespace can be used to guide the readers through the post. This makes the content more readable. Proper use of white space should be made between paragraphs and gap in left and right margin increases comprehension by 20%. The readers find it easy to focus and process the spaced content. By spacing, you may get the readers to read your full post. Whitespace is tool that can help you to create mobile friendly content and make reading easy and effortless.

 

For long posts, do not just think about the content. Think about its outline, format and how to write it. Handle outline of your post, hook style and formatting of your readers.

Try all these tips and make your long posts readable. For any kind of help, contact Platinum SEO services for best support.