Readability or legibility of text low bounce rate

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Today I decided to tell you about a very important concept when writing an article as “Readability or legibility of text” for users. And how the readability of the text affects the overall bounce rate of the site. I made the decision to share my experience after the filter for spam, excess advertising, and non-unique content was removed from me by the Yandex search engine. I struggled with this trouble for almost a month, as a result, I managed it myself. I was promised that as soon as I solve this problem. Immediately I will write a number of articles on the actions that I performed.

One of these activities was editing all the articles available on my site. Including changing the structure of texts to improve the “Text readability” parameter. It so happened that in order to continue the logical chain of publications, the section of this entry. It is also necessary to write about the structure of texts. Go!

Readability refers to the ease with which text can be read. To accurately determine the readability of a text, many factors must be considered and calculated. Precise computer algorithms have been developed to analyze several components of a text, including the number of words, sentence length, number of characters per word, etc. Some of the most widely used methods for assessing readability are listed and explained below.

Each scoring method analyzes different factors, which means that the results also vary. When analyzing text readability, a combination of evaluation methods will provide the most consistent and reliable results. I will also describe several methods for analyzing the readability of text and recommend that you pay attention to LSI copywriting and its application in SEO.

The content of the article:

• Why is readability important?
• Rules for compiling the first paragraph and subsequent
• Complex sentences - poor text readability
• Article Usability Improvement
• Text Readability - Impact of Readability on Bounce Rate
• Readability (readability) of the text - methods and evaluation formulas
• Conclusion

Why is readability important?

Readability is important, because it affects how clearly the text can be understood by the reader. By analyzing the readability of a text, we can make it as clear as possible and better fit its audience. This is useful when we create any text and teach native speakers of a certain language.

— Teachers
When teachers can measure readability, they can decide if a particular text is appropriate for a student. This can help them decide if the text is difficult enough. This is a true measurement for teachers of Russian and English, as well as for teachers of other subjects who are native speakers of certain languages.

— Enterprises
With readability in mind, businesses can simplify their documents to make them easier to read. This is especially useful when creating guidance materials such as operating instructions.

— Professionals
Readability greatly affects how well readers interact with online texts such as blog posts, web pages, and other marketing materials. When professionals such as writers, editors, medical professionals, lawyers, and government officials can reliably measure these metrics, they can tailor their writing accordingly and achieve better results in their field.

Rules for compiling the first paragraph and subsequent

Logically, the first heading of the text is h1. It is logical to assume that after it, a new heading should not immediately go. Thus, we begin the article with a paragraph. For correct and easy reading, it should not exceed 150 words. In fact, at the beginning of your article, you should familiarize the reader with the topic presented.

This is followed by a gradual progression to the main body of your article. Accordingly, there is a subheading h2 and a text of no more than 300 words, preferably divided into 2 paragraphs of 150 words each. In this part of the article, you describe to the reader the main problem that you present in the topic of the article. Therefore, after describing the problem, it is necessary to disclose it completely.

In simple words, you need to describe its solution to the reader. Here we need another h2 or h3 subheading. Depending on the importance of the following sections. The number of words after the third heading should also not exceed 300 words. You just need to match the same structure as after the second heading.

The next part of the article is the conclusion or conclusions. Even additional solutions or recommendations are possible. The heading format in this case can be h3 or h4. And do in one paragraph with a volume of up to 150 words. As a result, we get a good logical structure with a competent disclosure of the presented topic.

Complex sentences in the text - poor readability of the text

Such sentences can contain a volume of 15-18 words. After overcoming the threshold of 19-20 words, this sentence will be considered unreadable. The total number of complex sentences should not exceed the value of 25% from the entire text. It should be noted that complex text is necessary for search engines and promotion. But you shouldn't cross the line.
Thus, you can get texts of the following categories:

• Plain text - the occurrence of complex sentences, corresponds to 5-7% of the total volume of the article.
• Text of medium complexity - entry 8-14%.
• Complex text - contains more than 15% of such sentences in the article.

The main thing is to observe the variety of similar articles on the site. This will help you rank better in the SERPs. After all, search engines Google and Yandex are very fond of a variety of informative text. By the way, this will also reflect well on the readers of such a resource.

Article Usability Improvement

Do not neglect the improvements in the articles. The task of the webmaster is to competently and conveniently provide the necessary and necessary information to users. The content of all the material provided on the topic should be organized. It's a good idea to use enum tags if necessary. At the same time, the content of the h and strong tags should not exceed the number of more than 8-9 selections of words or phrases. If this value is greater, there is a possibility of re-optimization of the text.

I also recommend using linking to other articles on the topic you describe. You can place links in separate content at the end of the article itself. This will be very convenient, after reading the article, the user will be able to safely move on to suggestions on this topic. You will get a high-quality readable article as a result.

Text readability - impact on bounce rate

Ask yourself a question. When you read an article and see complex solid text. Which is crammed with search queries. Or, for example, it is not divided into thematic sections. Would you be interested in reading such an article? I think not!
Conclusions about the bounce rate and the time that the user spends on reading one article. I did after editing all the site content. The basis for me was the results of the metrics before applying the Yandex filter to my site.

After that, I got prior content optimization activities, bounce rates of 70-85%. The time spent by the user on the site was 2-3 minutes. At the moment, after completing all the necessary work on the content. Quite good indicators came out in 20-60% bounces and from 6 to 14 minutes the time spent by the user on the site. You can also learn what is text synonymization by applying synonyms in text. This method will greatly improve the quality of the landing page.

Readability (readability) of the text - methods and evaluation formulas

Flesch Reading Ease and Flesch-Kincaid Grade

The Flesch Reading Ease test was developed in the 1940s by Rudolph Flesch, an Associated Press consultant, to improve the readability of newspapers. The innovative new Flash test produced a score that brought the text into line with the appropriate learning level. Thirty years later, Peter Kincaid and a team of Navy researchers improved the Flush formula, making the test easier to use.

Key points:

• The Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level score aligns the text with US grade levels. For example, a score of 8.4 means that the text will be understood by an average 8th grade student.
• Flesch-Kincaid Readability Scores are useful any time you want to quickly measure how easily students understand a piece of text.
• Flush Kincaid is one of the most widely recognized readability formulas, making it an extremely reliable measure of text readability.

Factors:

• Average sentence length
• Average word length

Dale Choll score

The Dale-Choll vocabulary-based assessment method was created by researchers Edgar Dale and Jeanne Choll in a 1948 paper titled "Formula for Predicting Readability". The formula evaluates readability using a list of 3,000 words familiar to most fourth grade students.

Key points:

• The Dale-Choll formula is best for grades four through ten.
• Text readability is calculated based on the number of words in the passage that are not in the list of 3000 familiar words.
• The greater the number of unfamiliar words in the text, the higher the score (scores are equivalent to grade levels). For example, a score of 4, 9, or lower means the passage is understandable to the average 4th grade student.

Factors:

• Percentage of difficult words
• Average sentence length

Lexil Framework

The Lexile Framework was developed in the 1980s by education researchers A. Jackson Stenner, Ph.D., and Malbert Smith, Ph.D. who wanted a better measuring system for reading and writing.

Key points:

• The Lexile Framework is a system for matching readers and text. Vocabulary measures are represented by a number followed by the letter "L" (e.g. "800L") and range from less than 0L for beginner readers and texts to over 1600L for advanced readers and texts.
• Generally, longer sentences and lower frequency words result in higher Lexile scores, while shorter sentences and higher frequency words result in lower Lexile scores.
• The Scholastic Reading Counts program uses the Lexile Reading Framework to match readers to their respective text levels.
• Lexile ranges differ for each level of study. Click here to see Lexile ranges for each variety

Factors:

• Word frequency
• Average sentence length
• Keep

Powers-Sumner-Kurl Readability Formula

The Powers-Sumner-Kurl readability formula was created by researchers R. D. Powers, W. A. Sumner, and B. E. Curl in an attempt to modernize existing readability formulas. It was first published in 1958 in the Journal of Educational Psychology.

Key points:

• The Powers-Sumner-Kurl formula is best suited for texts intended for children aged seven to ten, or second to fourth grade.
• The Powers-Sumner-Kurl formula is not considered useful for children's literature older than 10 years.

Factors:

• Number of words
• Average sentence length
• Number of syllables

Conclusion

You see that there is nothing difficult in the process of creating a good readable text. It is better to write competent content at a stage when there is very little of it. This will significantly reduce the time for subsequent correction of the problems that have arisen. At the same time, the guests of your site will only be happy, and you will receive respect and subscribers. I wish you prosperity.

Reading this article:

• Rewriting or rewriting text - definitions and usage errors
• LSI copywriting - we bring the article to the TOP

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