The Readability Rulebook: How to Write More Effective Copy

Your online copy’s readability is crucial. It improves your position in search engines and helps you reach a broader audience. In this article, I will teach you how to write better copy.

Why do you read the RevelX blog?

Hopefully, the information that we present is of use to you. Our ideas may even inspire you.

But would you want to read the same content written poorly? In other words, the same copy using words and sentences that are too complicated and formatted in a few, long-winded paragraphs? The ideas would be the same, but this verbal diarrhea would make you lose all interest.

The readability of online copy is indispensable to convey your message. There are 3 reasons why:

1. Good readability will improve your position in search engines such as Google which will help you reach a larger audience.
2. You want as many people as possible to understand your message.
3. Easy-to-read copy will increase your conversion rate.

You don’t have to be born a creative genius to write decent copy. I can teach you a couple simple tricks to improve the readability of your output. First, I will describe some basic rules:

• Use short and simple sentences.
• Avoid difficult words.
• Divide your text into short paragraphs.
• Use subheadings, bullets, illustrations, and other elements that make your writing easier to comprehend.
• Your reasoning/storyline should be crystal clear. If this doesn’t come naturally to you, the Pyramid Principle can provide some assistance.

Apart from these basic requirements, some great tools can come to the rescue.

One of my favorite little helpers is Yoast (yes, the founder is a Dutchman called “Joost”). This fantastic WordPress plug-in helps everyone optimize their web page. It is not only about Search Engine Optimization (SEO). The plug-in can help you with writing easily understandable texts for a general audience too. Even professional writers benefit from Yoast’s advice.

Then there is the Readability Test Tool. It takes the text on your web page and gives a score for the most used readability indicators, such as Flesch-Kincaid Reading Ease, the Gunning Fog Score, and the Coleman-Liau Index.

Another excellent tool to indicate the reading level of your text is Readable.io. Both programs allow you to fine-tune your copy for different audiences.

The Hemingway App can further optimize your copy. It’s like a spellchecker, but instead of checking for spelling, it checks for style. Hemingway judges the “grade level” of your text and highlights the words and sentences you should change to make the copy more appealing.

Now you know the tricks I use to write my copy. Hopefully, this will not decrease your respect for me but will only reveal that I always use available tools that make my work better.

What are your thoughts on the online copy that you read every day? How does it influence your behavior as a customer? Which tools do you deploy yourself to write better content? Please, share your thoughts in the comment section below this article.