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.
