Visiting a website with slow loading times is frustrating. Sure, a page with flashy graphics, slick animations, and artsy design features might look nice, but if it’s functionally limited then what’s the point?
One of the hallmarks of a great web developer is the ability to hit that sweet spot between attractive layout design and adequate load speed optimization. After all, it’s a crucial component if you’re to keep potential customers on your webpage.
That said, being a web developer requires skills that most of us don’t possess, so it’s understandable for a website owner to struggle. If you’re happy with how your website looks, it may well be falling short of performance expectations — and that’s troubling given that nearly half of us won’t wait longer than 3 seconds for a shopping site to load up.
That’s just one of the big reasons why it’s vital for your site to load quickly. Below, we’ll delve more deeply into why having a speedy site can’t be anything less than a priority. Here we go.
First Impressions Are Crucial
As noted, our attention spans are minuscule when it comes to how long we’re willing to wait for a page to load. This fact becomes even more pertinent when you consider that your business has only 7 seconds to make a positive first impression. What are you going to do with that time? What does your website look like within the first few seconds?
When you’re setting up your first website, it’s tempting to load it up with high-res images and stack the UI with special effects and animations. After all, you want it to look slick and professional — but those additions come at a cost, holding back the performance and potentially turning your site into a sluggish mess. The foundation needs to be usability achieved through a combination of fast load speed and functional UI design.
Regardless of your site’s primary purpose (be it to sell, inform, or entertain), your audience will lose interest fast if your load times don’t match their expectations. And when that interest fades, it won’t come back. It’ll be replaced by interest in rival sites that meet or exceed those expectations. Can you really afford to let that happen?
You must focus on making good first impressions, then — and to do this, you need to think about all platforms through which your visitors may view your site. Being mobile-responsive hasn’t been optional for a long time. Use Google’s free mobile-friendly test to ensure you’re catering to mobile visitors, and generally make an effort to provide strong functionality regardless of how people choose to interact with your site.
If you can do this, your hard-earned traffic won’t go to waste. Leads will be impressed by your website and act upon that by sticking around and becoming positively inclined towards your brand. Start as you mean to go on.
Speed Affects Your Search Rankings
Whether you’re an SEO whizz-kid or you’re less familiar with how search engines dictate rankings (you can learn more here, so take a look), upping your page speed is a simple and effective way to get your website seen more frequently. Improving performance will help your page appear higher up in Google’s results pages (other search engines are available, though perhaps not consequential).
Why? For starters, Google actively penalizes any sites with slow load times because they provide a terrible page experience for users. Visitors simply don’t want to wait around, so you can expect your page to appear further down the results page if your website is a little sluggish. And if someone does stick around, they’ll be less likely to convert (more on this soon).
How can you fix this, then? One of the best ways to give your site a quick boost is to take a look at your hosting provider. If it’s been a while since you set up your page, it may be worth investing in an upgrade.
Many hosts have blisteringly fast response times, but we’d recommend choosing a host based on their individual features, as many providers specialize in different areas, making them more suited to different niches. For instance, if you’re running on WordPress, Cloudways can pair a free migration with a baked-in Cloudflare integration to deliver strong and secure performance throughout the world.
If you’re not looking for the fastest WordPress hosting, or even the most secure, you can find something less complicated. It’s important to do the research to find something that suits your exact needs. PC Magazine has a good roundup of 2022 options that can give you an idea of the pros and cons of each provider, helping you make the right choice for your eCommerce site. However, it’s important to do your research! Use a comparison site to weigh-up the pros and cons of each provider to ensure you make the right choice.
Faster Load Speed Means Higher Conversion Rates
Run an eCommerce store? Ensuring your website loads quickly should be one of your highest priorities. A study from Google found that a speed increase of just 0.1 seconds can boost the number of shoppers adding items to their baskets by more than 9%. Staggeringly, a 100-millisecond delay can result in a 7% decrease in conversions. Take a look at these conversion rates based on load times sourced from recent research:
Page Load Time (in seconds)
Conversion Rate
2.4
1.9%
3.3
1.5%
4.2
1%
5.7+
0.6%
Of course, this is less of an issue if you’re not trying to sell anything. Given the stats though, we reckon that’s unlikely — online retail sales are set to grow 50% in the next 4 years, with the current market value of the industry recorded at $4.9 trillion. And if you’re not planning to ever sell any products through your site, you’ll still want to monetize it in some way to take advantage of the traffic. Doing otherwise is leaving money on the table.
In addition to following the aforementioned steps, you should keep an eye on your image sizes. Using image compression plugins (or sites such as TinyPNG or Squoosh) can help you avoid using more space than you need to, cutting back your required server resources and giving your website visitors better experiences.
If you’re using WordPress, a free plugin like W3 Total Cache can also help you to cache your web pages. This is one of the best ways to speed up your website, as caching stores copies of all the bulky files on your site. This reduces the load on the host’s servers when a user loads your page, ensuring that load times are minimal. [Editor’s note: another one we like is WP Rocket.]
Website load speed matters — hopefully we’ve been able to convince you of that! Find that balance between great design and optimized content, and we’re sure you’ll have no trouble keeping the attention of any visitors that come your way.
About the Author
Rodney Laws is an ecommerce expert with over a decade of experience in building online businesses. Check out his reviews on EcommercePlatforms.io and you’ll find practical tips that you can use to build the best online store for your business. Connect with him on Twitter @EcomPlatformsio.
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Past the basics, digital marketing is far from easy. Different channels, practices, and campaign types require their own skillsets and tools to tackle. What’s worse, some tools often come with hefty price tags that strain smaller budgets – sometimes needlessly so. We can’t address the former much, apart from offering our advice and services. But the latter we can help with by exploring the best digital marketing tools for small businesses.
What marketing tools do small businesses need?
First, let’s briefly establish what types of tools most small businesses will likely need. Then we’ll suggest an outstanding performer for each one and note alternatives you can consider.
#1 Website analytics tools
Analytics is an invaluable resource for any business, regardless of size.
Before all else, any and all marketing activities need website data to inform their course. How much traffic are you getting, and from where? What’s your bounce rate? How do visitors behave?
Knowing exactly how your website performs is crucial, as that’s where you ultimately want to bring and convert your audiences.
#2 A CRM
Similarly, a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solution can offer immense help as you’re getting started. This software type records all customer interactions with your business, as the name suggests, collecting customer data and actionable information. You can benefit from this type of software quite substantially – from keeping customer information up to date to using it for email personalization.
#3 Local SEO tools
Next, most small businesses tend to target and rely on local audiences, so they need local SEO. We’ve written about this subject before, if you’d like to know, or brush up on, why local SEO is important.
Of course, much like its general SEO sibling, it also needs all the help from your tools it can get.
#4 SEO tools
SEO is a series of practices that greatly enhances online visibility.
On the subject of SEO, you can not neglect its broader variants either. SEO will offer organic traffic, enhance online visibility, and facilitate long-term growth by improving your search engine rankings.
You can practice basic SEO manually, but Backlinko finds that Google uses over 200 ranking factors. Attempting to cater to them all without specialized tools will often not go well, so digital marketing tools for small businesses can never exclude SEO.
#5 Keyword research tools
Still on SEO, as it holds that much value, keyword research tools are essential as they spearhead it. Targeting the right keywords will get your blog found and serve your content to eager audiences.
Should you want to engage in paid marketing, keyword research will also reveal overlaps with SEO and help the two synergize – letting you prioritize which keywords to bid on and which to chase organically.
#6 Email marketing tools
But beyond SEO, you will most likely also want to engage in email marketing. Not everyone will reach the “astounding 4,200% ROI” that HubSpot finds, but it’s still highly cost-effective.
However, email marketing also requires personalization, outreach timing, and more, making email marketing tools an excellent investment.
#7 Social media tools
Social media activities also come with similar requirements. You can’t safely ignore social media either, as they present an excellent opportunity to reach vast, engaged audiences.
Finally, even the smallest businesses need to ensure proper communications among staff. You cannot guarantee smooth operations if everyone isn’t on the same page at all times.
8 Best Digital Marketing Tools for Small Businesses
Having covered marketing tool types, now we can move on to specific suggestions. In order, you may consider the following.
#1 Google Analytics
Staring with analytics, one cannot recommend Google Analytics enough. This handy tool offers a wealth of actionable insights, including:
Traffic volume and traffic sources (direct, referral, organic search, etc.)
Keywords used to find you
Visitor behavior; dwelling time, pages visited, etc
The cost of its 360 plan is very steep, unfortunately, starting from $12,500 per month and $150,000 per year. However, you will most likely not need it as the free plan already offers a wealth of helpful analytics features.
Finally, it synergizes perfectly with Google Search Console (formerly Google Webmaster Tools) to truly let your website shine. Thankfully, Google Search Console is also a free service.
On to CRM solutions, HubSpot’s CRM may have caught your eye online before. This excellent solution offers such vital features as:
Customer database
Reporting dashboard
Pipeline management
Email tracking
Live chat
Most surprisingly, but thankfully for small businesses, it’s completely free. It also synergizes very well with HubSpot’s other marketing services, or “hubs,” should you need them. Price points are a bit complex if you do, however, so Tech.co’s HubSpot pricing guide should help.
For alternatives, if you can budget for them, you may also look into:
[Editor’s note: My personal favorite and the one I use is Pipeline CRM.]
#3 Google Business Profile
Next, digital marketing tools for small businesses need to address local SEO specifically. For this purpose, there’s nowhere better to begin than Google Business Profile (GBP).
Formerly Google My Business (GMB), this free listing service is the spearhead of all local SEO campaigns. It grants your business access to Google’s app ecosystem, most notably Google Maps, and it boosts your local search ranking. If you’d like to know precisely how to make the best of it, you may consult our article on local SEO.
Unlike the other tools on this list, GBP has no replacement. You may augment it, however, using:
On the subject of SEO, keywords are a fundamental part of it. Thus, to fully cover your bases, you may consider KWFinder, one of the best keyword research tools around.
KWFinder offers such features as:
Keyword analysis; SEO difficulty and search volume
Related and hidden keyword suggestions
Localize keyword results for local SEO
KWFinder comes with a free 10-day trial, after which you may opt for the affordable $29.90/month plan. If it doesn’t serve your needs or you want to explore your options, you may also consider:
[Editor’s note: my preference is Moz Pro (paid, starts at $99/month)]
#5 Ahrefs
But keywords are only a part of SEO, not its sum. Digital marketing tools for small businesses should thus always include broader SEO tools, which Ahrefs stands out among.
This comprehensive tool’s features include:
Website auditing tools
Competitor analysis tools
Rank tracking
A content explorer
A built-in keyword research tool
It does start at $99/month, but it compensates for it through its breadth of features and ease of use. Still, you may also want to explore its paid competitors, like:
Next, SEO aside, you will most likely need email marketing regardless of business size. You can’t ignore its excellent ROI or ability to bring you customers.
For this purpose, MailChimp remains by large the industry leader. Its pricing plans do come with list limitations, but you can consider upgrading as your lists grow. The free plan comes with a limit of 2,000 subscribers and 10,000 monthly emails but also has excellent features, like:
Email automation
A built-in marketing CRM
A creative assistant, alongside form and landing page tools
Chances are you may soon find this restricting, however. If so, the Essentials plan at $11/month offers some excellent value, adding:
A vast email template library
A/B testing tools
Delivery by time zone
Chat and email support
A new limit of 50,000 contacts and 500,000 emails per month
While relatively restrictive, MailChimp is still among the best digital marketing tools for small businesses. If you’re unhappy with it, you may look into alternatives like:
Moving on to social media, social media marketing does offer small businesses an excellent, albeit demanding, engagement channel. You may consider the world-famous Hootsuite to make your job much more manageable.
Hootsuite’s reputation is well-deserved, as they’re industry experts – producing insightful annual digital reports alongside We Are Social. Their social media marketing platform seeks to cater to these insights, offering:
A central social media management platform
Scheduling tools
Advanced reporting tools
Unfortunately, more specialized features are reserved for higher pricing plans, and the basic Professional plan starts at $49.00/month. If it doesn’t suffice for you, and you can’t budget for its Team plan ($129.00/month), you may consider alternatives like:
SocialPilot (basic Professional plan starts at $25.50/month)
[Editor’s note: you may also look into Buffer, which helps schedule social media posts on multiple platforms. It’s free for up to three platforms, and charges if you need more. This is the one I’ve chosen to use.]
#8 Slack
Finally, when all is said and done, even the smallest teams need efficient communication. For this vital purpose, you may consider Slack – one of the best digital marketing tools for small businesses out there.
Even in its free version, Slack comes with a wealth of valuable features like:
The synchronous communication platform that reduces email time waste
Only searching for the 10,000 most recent messages
Only allowing 1:1 calls
Limiting active integrations to 10 at a time
The Pro plan removes these restrictions for just $6.67/month, leaving you with an excellent communication tool. Still, if its interface doesn’t suit you, you may also consider:
RocketChat (free for up to 1.000 users, $3 per user per month for more and advanced features)
In closing
To conclude, digital marketing does require technology’s help to meet its increasing demands. Thankfully, the market continues to provide affordable digital marketing tools for small businesses to let them elevate their efforts. While brief, this list hopefully helped you get started.
About the author
Andrew Miller is a freelance digital marketer and copywriter with over a decade of experience in both fields. An avid SEO practitioner and a CRM enthusiast, he often authors content specifically for SMBs and local businesses.
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While organic rankings achieved ethically often tend to be stable for months and years without further attention, they aren’t permanent.
As your business changes, you’ll update your website and may inadvertently de-optimize parts of it. As competitors conduct SEO programs and more effectively compete for rankings, your visibility may drop.
The danger is real
Don’t let this happen to your own search rankings.
A former client of ours had achieved and maintained enviable search rankings when we last checked his rankings. But that had been five years before. At the time, he was so busy from the SEO we did that he was reluctant to do continue active SEO lest he be unable to keep up with the business.
Five years later (in 2009) he was blaming his slow business on the recession going on at the time. But a quick check showed that as a result of changes to his web site that partially de-optimized it, his search rankings had slid dramatically over those 5 years.
It was much harder to get his rankings back at that time than it would have been if we’d attacked the problem in a more timely manner. If we’d only been able to keep an eye on them periodically, he would have maintained his level of business.
That’s why our SEO Monitoring program checks your rankings in a detailed report every month. If you don’t want a formal monitoring program like our search ranking reporting, you need to at least check your important rankings manually. And you need t do that on a regular basis so you’ll know when you start to lose visibility so you can take corrective measures promptly.
[Updated from the original post in December, 2009]
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Jill Whalen is an internationally recognized SEO consultant and host of the High Rankings® Advisor search engine marketing newsletter. Since Jill has retired and that newsletter is no longer available online, I’m preserving the following excerpt which explores how to tell if your potential SEO consultant is on the up & up or not.
Caveat: this was originally published in 2006 and a lot has changed since then. I’ll annotate that below.
10 Signs That Your SEO Is a Quack
There are so many SEO/SEM firms cropping up that talk a good game but don’t deliver results. [This is sadly still true today] This is in part because there’s so much information that is freely available about search engine optimization. On the surface, SEO sounds easy — and it really is — once you’ve had a number of sites to experiment with. What’s even easier than SEO, however, is discussing SEO as if you know what you’re actually doing (when you don’t)!
Here are 10 signs to watch out for that may very well indicate that your potential SEO is a quack. Please note that one of these individually may not be bad, but if you notice more than 2 or 3 of these when speaking with any SEO company, you may just want to head for the hills!
1. Your SEO company talks about meta tags and Google PageRank (PR) as if they are the magic bullet to high rankings.
For the most part, there’s no reason to even bring up the keyword Meta tag nor toolbar PR in a discussion about what needs to be done to get better search engine exposure for your site. Both of them are issues that quack SEO companies will talk about because they actually believe they are the key to SEO success. They are not. I’ve discussed in previous articles the Meta keyword tag’s lack of importance, so I won’t go into that again here. In regards to PageRank, increasing the little green bar graph’s number should never be the ultimate goal of a professional SEO campaign.
A good campaign will automatically increase your real and true PageRank (as measured by Google) without your specifically setting out to increasing it on your own. Since PR doesn’t bring you traffic and sales (nor rankings), increasing it should not ever be the main goal of your campaign. This fact is of course lost on SEO quacks.
[Google’s PageRank hasn’t been publicly revealed for many years now, nor has the Google Toolbar. But other organizations have measures of authority that can be helpful in competitor comparisons. Regardless of that, the ultimate goal of an SEO campaign should be either direct revenue or having visitors take other actions that are the purpose of your website.]
2. Your SEO company’s site (or those of their clients) has the same title tags on every page. Sounds crazy I know, but I’ve seen this more than once!
I once got a client who had previously used a very major SEO company that most people have heard of. They had been with this firm for a whole year, and yet the title tags on every page of their site were all the same (the name of the company). Since title tags are probably the most important (and easiest) thing to change on a site, any SEO company that can’t do this one basic thing for their own site or their clients’ is most definitely a quack!
3. Your SEO company talks only about optimizing for the “long tail.”
Now, don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with long-tail keyword phrases, as they can bring a lot of traffic when all is said and done. But you don’t need an SEO company if those are the only phrases you’re interested in — you can do it yourself just by writing articles. Your SEO company should not be afraid to optimize for the actual keyword phrases that most people would use at the engines to find your site. Yeah, it’s gonna take time and money to go after the most competitive keyphrases, but there’s usually a happy medium. Most sites have plenty of phrases that are somewhere between long tail and highly competitive. Those are the ones you definitely want to target.
4. Your SEO company tells you it’s ALL about links (or ALL about content).
SEO isn’t ALL about anything. It’s about lots of things all added together to make the perfect combination for your site. A linking campaign alone will never be as effective if you neglect your on-page content, and vice versa. Be sure that your SEO company looks at your site from all angles and makes sure all your bases are covered. Otherwise, they’re probably a quack!
5. Your SEO company tells you that you need a linking campaign even though you already have tons of links and are a well-established popular site in your niche
Not every site needs every SEO service out there. Just because your SEO company likes to sell link-building doesn’t mean you actually need it for your site. Why should you pay for something you don’t need? The same thing goes for sites that already have great, well-written, optimized content. If you’ve got that, perhaps you just need a linking campaign to help boost your traffic and sales. Don’t allow an SEO quack to fix what isn’t actually broken.
6. Your SEO company is almost surely 99% quackish if they tell you that they can rank your brand-new site in Google for keywords that will bring you traffic within a few months.
In fact, if they claim they can do it in less than 9 months, they’re either inexperienced or lying. Google has an aging delay that is most certainly related to the age of the site, as well as a certain trust factor. It is only the very rare and wonderful site that can get around this delay. But if your site is like most, you’re going to have to look to the long term for your Google results, regardless of what the quacks might try to convince you of.
[Google’s aging delay has been severely reduced since 2006 as Google’s ability to understand a website has improved. There are many variables, but for existing websites I’ve found we can often see an improvement in visibility within three or four months — depending an several factors.]
7. Your SEO company never mentions that they may very well need to redo your site architecture so that your important pages are prominently featured within your site navigation.
In this case it’s very possible you’re dealing with an inexperienced, quack SEO. This is usually something that is not a quick fix, so most quacks are reluctant to discuss it with you (if they even know it’s important). But if your site architecture is not search-engine-ready, everything else you do will have much less impact.
8. Your SEO company can’t provide you with any quality references.
This one pretty much goes without saying, but do be sure to get references, and do be sure to actually call them. Yeah, a reference may very well turn out to be their cousin, but you should be able to get some feel for the company you’re choosing if you can at least talk to some references.
9. Your SEO company tells you that you have to have a DMOZ listing or your site will never be able to get high rankings.
Sure, a DMOZ listing is great, but it’s a link just like any other. Submit and forget about it. If you don’t get in, it’s no big deal — there are plenty of other links you can get instead.
[Sadly, DMOZ. also know as The Open Directory, no longer exists.]
10. Your SEO company’s site mentions that they’ll get you high rankings in AltaVista, Fast, Inktomi, Lycos, Excite, HotBot and the like.
If it does, you are 100% positively dealing with a quack! ‘Nuff said!
[Well, this one’s really showing its age. But the point Jill wanted to make is that it’s quackery to ignore Google and focus only on less relevant search engines where rankings may be more easily obtained but where usage is too low to drive significant traffic to your site.]
Hungry for more?
I compiled a list of 10 questions to ask an SEO consultant you’re thinking of hiring. Where the items above are focused on weeding out the quacks, these 10 questions will help you select the best match among the good ones. I’m actually rather pleased how well they’ve held up over the years since it was written. 10 Questions To Ask Before Hiring an SEO Consultant
You’re probably not a professional writer, so you may be excused for not realizing if your website copy isn’t “readable”. After all, it’s in plain English, right? But readability is more than that.AJ Kohn points out the importance of readability on your website:
Readability is about making your content accessible and comfortable. Never make it a chore. If you make your content difficult to read the value of that content goes down. Lack of readability frustrates comprehension and reduces sharing. This, in turn, limits the social echo of your content and lowers the chances of it obtaining organic links.
Here’s your clue: Heed the warning sign of a high bounce rate.
If poor readability is driving away visitors on your website, the clue will be a high bounce rate — the percentage of visitors who leave immediately after arriving on a page without looking at anything else on your site.
If you have a bounce problem, you may have a readability problem.
When readability is compromised, you’re also losing valuable visitors who are all potential customers.
Readability is certainly related to the words you use and your sentence structure; that may determine the reading level or grade of your content. But it’s much more than just that. There are things other than your words that can make your content easy to read or difficult to follow.
Here are some important readability factors to consider
People Don’t Read, They Scan
It’s important to structure your writing to make it easy for people to scan down the page and quickly find the information they need to read carefully. They usually start with developing an understanding of the page layout and navigation and perhaps looking at images.
Noted usability expert Jacob Nielsen conducted a study that found that users “read at most 28% of the words during an average visit; 20% is more likely.”
Use Font Size Smartly
Headings and subheadings need to be clear. You need a hierarchy of font sizes, and possibly even colors and boldness, to help the reader immediately grasp the structure of your content. I start with a body font size of 16 points in my own blog, and headings & subheadings are clearly larger. Also, think of your headings as representing the structure of your content, much like an outline.
Use Subheadings
Subheadings don’t just visibly demonstrate the structure of your content. They also improve your readability by making your content less dense and, as a result, less intimidating.
Use a Legible Font
Getting fancy with your fonts can easily become counterproductive.
Avoid infatuation with artistic fonts. Make sure your body text and headings are all legible. Some fonts become difficult to read in bold, and research has shown that some fonts that are easy to read on paper are not as easy to read on a computer screen.
My preference is for serif fonts for printing and sans serif fonts for web content. Simple is better; I recommend fonts like Arial, Humanist, and Century Gothic. I typically use the same font family for headings. But since headings are larger you may be able to take more leeway there. Here are some font suggestions to consider.
Pay Attention to Line Height
If the lines of text on your screen are too close together, that reduces your readability. A good rule of thumb is to use a line height of about 1.5, but that can vary depending on your choice of font. The goal is to avoid your text looking cramped or looking too spread out.
Watch Your Color Contrast
An actual example of poor readability because of insufficient color contrast.
Be cognizant of your text color in comparison to the background color. Inadequate contrast can have a dramatic impact on readability and eye fatigue.
I like black text on a white background, and absolutely hate the popular fashion of using gray text instead of black. Colored backgrounds are fine, but pay attention to the color of the text to make sure it’s easily readable.
Use Highlights
Don’t be afraid to italicize or bold important words or phrases – or even whole sentences – so that your most important content stands out. If you’re particularly brave, you might decide to use color or highlighting so the importance stuff jumps off the page.
Shorten Your Paragraphs
Nothing is worse than a paragraph that rambles on and on and on. You may be familiar with the expression TL;DR. That stands for Too Long; Didn’t Read. That almost always means the content is too dense and paragraphs are too long. Three or four sentences is about as long as you might want your paragraphs to be.
And don’t be afraid of one-sentence paragraphs either.
Just like a long paragraph, a long sentence compromises readability. If the user has to parse the sentence grammatically to understand it, it’s too long. The Yoast SEO plug-in for WordPress discourages too many sentences that are more than about 20 words. I agree. A couple of long sentences spread across the entire page or blog post are okay, but too many of them can drive people away.
Use Pronouns With Care
Be careful with pronouns in your content.
In a conversation, it’s easy to know what pronouns are referring to. If I talk about that here, the “that” obviously relates to using pronouns. That’s the antecedent. But if the antecedent is in a previous paragraph, and the person scanning through your content alights on the current paragraph, they’ve missed the antecedent. It’s not obvious what the word “that” is referring to.
Repeating nouns instead of referring to them with pronouns may have an added benefit in that nouns are more valuable to the search engines understanding your content than pronouns are. Just try to avoid being “over-redundant”with those nouns.
Preserve Some White Space
Your content – and your readers – need a little space to breathe. Inadequate white space on the page is one of those things that triggers the TL:DR response. Headings and subheadings, bullet lists, and images all help to increase white space on your page.
Avoid Distractions
In general, you want your visitor to read and absorb your content. You may want them to take action, like download something or buy something, or contact you. Don’t break the flow of your user’s concentration on your content. Distractions are a conversion-killer.
Sliders with rotating images, colorful banner ads, and pop-ups that obliterate some of your content are almost always counterproductive. Be particularly careful about pop-ups. Google refers to those as “intrusive interstitials” and they can damage your page experience. That’s important because page experience is a new and increasingly important part of Google’s ranking algorithm.
Images Can Help Readability
Images can may your content less intimidating and more approachable.
Always use at least one image on every page. I like to insert images with text wrapping around them. They serve many purposes — they can:
Effectively illustrate a point you’re making.
Draw the eye to a particular spot on your page.
Make your page more memorable.
Add a little white space around the image, and white space makes content less intimidating.
Make a long paragraph appear less dense.
Add color to a mostly black-and-white page.
Make your page more approachable which translates into better readability.
Maintain Paragraph Transitions
You don’t want staccato content. Your material needs to flow, to maintain the focus of your reader and ensure comprehension. So try to ensure a natural for progression from paragraph to paragraph by using transition words like ‘and”, “so”, “because”, and even “thus” or “therefore”.
When you maintain that flow, you retain the reader’s attention.
Pay Attention to Your Reading Level
There are a few ways to judge the reading difficulty of your content:
How many sentences in the paragraph?
What’s the average number of words in a sentence?
How many syllables in a word (on average)?
There are a number of tests to determine your reading level. Perhaps the most widely known is the Flesch-Kincaid readability test. That test calculates a reading grade level, calibrated for US readers. The Yoast SEO plug-in for WordPress evaluates reading level using the Flesch reading ease score.
You can get a reading level score online at a few places:
Keep your keyword phrases in mind, but whatever you do, avoid keyword stuffing in a misguided attempt to get better rankings in Google. Not only is it a readability nightmare, it’s also a red flag to Google that can hurt your visibility rather than help it.
Results
The goal of improving your readability is not just to get your point across. You also want to encourage the reader to do something.
Perhaps you want your reader to subscribe to your newsletter. Maybe you want them to call your office to ask questions or request a consultation. Or perhaps you want them to buy a product.
The goal of your carefully constructed readable content is to entice the reader to move down the sales funnel and take the action you want.
Make sure you include appropriate and compelling calls to action on your page for your reader to take the action you want them to.
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