There are countless websites today that offer advice on the many ways to improve SEO, increase social media marketing efforts, increase website traffic, achieve a good page rank, and gain customers as a result. While all of this information is extremely valuable, sometimes the most basic of ideas can be the most effective.

Of all helpful marketing tips, the most important ones explain that website owners should stop before they spend any critical time and money on marketing campaigns and SEO efforts to consider whether their website content is truly readable. Problems with readability, as seemingly insignificant as this may seem, can sabotage most other marketing efforts.

Know Your Target Audiences

Target audience has a lot more to do with readability than many may think. The reason for this is simple: different audiences comprised of different age groups and people with different needs and expectations all see content differently. Because of this, web designers and marketers alike must always first look at the target audience and use this as a basis for presenting good, readable content.

Create Readable Content

The meaning of readable content varies based on the needs and expectations of a target audience and a website’s message, especially when used to determine how content must be delivered. Readability is more than just how text looks on a page. It is how that text is read and understood and the effect it has reader behavior.

Readable content is the language and terms expected by target audiences that can be easily interpreted and understood. Readable content is created using clean, clear writing, definitive headlines; shorter, concise sentences; and noticeable paragraph breaks where ideas change. It uses signal words to indicate importance and varied text to keep from being repetitive, while clearly explaining ideas and points. Furthermore, readable content contains fewer long and difficult words that slow a reader down. Content has text that flows smoothly, with sentences that read like naturally spoken words.

Design Readable Websites

Beyond the content itself, the way in which it is visually presented can either help or hinder readability. For the best media marketing effort, text content should be presented in a type size and style appropriate for the target audience. There should also be enough white space on the page to keep text distinct, preventing text overflow caused by words that are too close together.

Because content is more easily read in smaller chunks, rather than long paragraphs, paragraph length should be considered, with content divided into smaller segments and individual ideas. Text broken up and categorized using subheads, bullets, and other methods of helping the reader scan through it more easily is urged. Used in moderation, descriptive and pertinent images disbursed throughout the content can also improve content readability.

The main goal of a website is to be seen and its provided content read. When website content cannot be easily read, whether due to its contextual nature or font issues, social media marketing and other marketing efforts will suffer. This happens not necessarily because of the marketing method used, but because getting readers to a website that is difficult to read is basically not getting them to that site at all. Therefore, the best marketing help suggestion is to always begin with clean, clear, and readable website content!