Article writers using content marketing often overlook content
readability when composing their articles. Writing articles online for
money must not only consider motivating readers to buy a product. To
make money writing online, authors must also provide readable quality
content.
With the advent of Google's stated goal to improve a user's search
experience, many websites and articles lost their coveted positions in
Search Engine Ranking Positions (SERPs). It is now, more than ever, that
quality website content writing is king. Writing online for money as a
means of 'gaming' the search engines through keyword stuffing, article
blasts to thousands of article directories, and weak, poorly structured
website content writing are gone.
Readability
Readability measures the grade level needed to understand any document.
There are several schemes that are used to determine readability. The
Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level is one of better known and most used
measurements. Your content writing can be much improved if you
incorporate this measure into your article writing.
Although it has come under criticism for its simplicity, Flesch-Kincaid
Grade Level scale is still widely used and can give you an idea of your
article's readability.
You can determine your article's readability with the Flesch-Kincaid
Grade Level scale which assigns a grade level to the written material.
MS Word provides a readability statistics feature found under the spell
check tab that determines your article's grade level reading score.
There are free utilities on the web that allow you to copy and paste
your document and the utility will return the grade level score. There
are others. Online-Utitility.org is one. You can find them with a 'free
readability tools' search on the internet.
You can also use the Google 'more search tools' feature found at the
bottom of the left navigation bar when doing a Google search and
choosing 'reading level'. The organic results will show 'basic',
'intermediate', or 'advanced' reading levels for each of the page
results.
Although, the results may not be 100% accurate, they do give you an idea
of the grade level that your article or page is written at. It may seem
that I am putting much emphasis on readability and quality content. It
is important to note when writing for the web that the content be easily
understandable by your targeted reader. You make make money writing
articles online by targeting your reader.
Ideal Reading Level
If you dumb down your website content writing, the reader may feel
insulted and dismiss your words. If your words are too pedantic, readers
may accuse you of flaunting your knowledge. You may have quality
content, but not readable by your targeted audience.
What is the ideal reading grade level? The answer eludes me. Many claim
that the national average reading level is eighth grade and that article
writers should write at that level or lower when writing for the web. I
have yet to find any evidence to substantiate that claim or that you
will make money writing to that grade level.
Studies have been conducted by various governmental agencies under the
U.S. Department of Education and by independent private agencies on
various aspects of literacy throughout the United States, but I have yet
to find any authoritative data that specifically identifies the
national reading average to be at the eighth grade level.
Adult Literacy in America
The study most often cited as the source of the eighth grade reading
level claim is a 1993 study, Adult Literacy in America: A First Look at
the Results of the National Adult Literacy Survey, by Irwin S. Kirsch,
sponsored by the National Center for Education Statistics. You can
review the results yourself at the National Center for Education
Statistics.
However, the study does not specifically state that the national reading
level average is at the eighth grade level. In fact, the study's
committee "� agreed that expressing the literacy proficiencies of adults
in school-based terms or grade-level scores is inappropriate."
The study did survey levels of literacy skills ranging from Level 1 to
Level 5, with Level 5 being the most difficult or the highest skill
level. The survey did show that about half the population performed at
levels 3-5 and half performed within the lower levels 1 and 2.
SERPs and Readability
Nevertheless, if we accept the various reading level scales like,
Flesch-Kincaid, article writers can improve their content marketing to
more closely match the acceptance of targeted readers. In addition,
Google and other search engines may or may not look favorably on the
webpage or article and rank it higher than one that Google deems to be
written at an inappropriate level as evidenced by the Official Google
Blog
For instance, an article written at the twelfth grade level about
building a tool shed may not be looked upon as worthy of Google's
definition of maximizing the user search experience. An article on the
same subject written at the sixth or seventh grade level might well fair
much better in the SERPs.
On the other hand, writing an article on the Literacy Statistics of
Migrant Workers at the fourth or fifth grade level would not fare well
with academic readers and probably not with the search engines.
The point is that article writers should consider readability when
writing articles. The effort does not need to be an all consuming
effort. Readability can easily be checked with one of the tools I
mentioned earlier.
Be aware of the end user. The more you comply with Google's goal of
"providing the best user experience possible," the more favorably the
search engine will rank your writing for money efforts.
www.articlecity.com / writingfortheweb.info
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