Written on August 19th, 2005 at 01:08 am by Darren Rowse
Writing Blog Content - Make it Scannable
Only 16% of people read web sites word for word. Source
The average person only comprehends 60% of what they read. Source
Knowing this - how should bloggers who want to communicate effectively write?
Is your Blog Scannable ?
Most people read online by scanning the page for individual words or phrases, headings and other visual cues. Studies have shown that reading from a screen is more tiring and therefore about 25% slower than reading from paper - hence scanning becomes a technique that most employ.
Is your Blog Scannable? It’s a pretty simple thing to test. Ask a friend who is not familiar with your site to take a quick look at a few of your recent posts. Give them 15 to 30 seconds on each post, at the end of which you ask them what the post was about. You’ll quickly get a sense of how they’ve interacted with your blog.
Techniques to Make your Blog Scannable
Good bloggers keep this in mind as they write and will employ a variety of techniques to make their posts easier to read. Some of these techniques include:
- Lists - Anecdotal evidence here at enternetusers suggests that its my posts with bullet point lists in them that get linked to ALOT more than similar length posts written in of an essay style.
- Formatting - Use bold, CAPITALS, italics, underlining, teletext and to emphasize points. Don’t go overboard as you run the risk of frustrating your reader. Also consider changing font size, color and style to draw your readers eyes to your main points.
- Headings and Sub Headings - Large, Bold words that act as visual cues of what is happening in the content are effective ways of drawing readers further into articles.
- Pictures - Research shows that readers eyes are drawn down the page by pictures. Place them cleverly by your key points (especially when they closely relate to the content) and you have more of a chance of getting readers to read full articles.
- Borders/Blockquotes - boxes around quotes and key points can similarly get the attention of readers.
- Space - don’t feel you have to fill up every inch of your screen - rather create spaces because they help readers not to feel overwhelmed and again tend to draw readers eyes to what is inside such space.
- Get to the Point - try to be succinct with your points.
- Don’t Bury your Points - one trap many of us fall into is to bury our main points deep within content where it’s unlikely to be noticed. If you have a key point make sure you say it up front. You can expand upon it later but get your message across in the first few sentences if possible.
- Find creative ways to reinforce your main point throughout your post.
- Don’t Introduce too many New Ideas in one post - once again this helps to avoid overwhelming readers with information all at once. If you want to cover many ideas that relate to one another consider a series of posts that link to each other.
If your site and its posts are not easily scannable you run the risk of losing your reader to another blog that is.
31 Responses to “Writing Blog Content - Make it Scannable”
Devin
August 19th, 2005 2:53 am
Great advice Darren.. I’m definitely a “scanner” and I never put myself in the reader’s shoes when writing. As always, thanks. =)
Jennifer Grucza
August 19th, 2005 2:56 am
Also, make good use of paragraphs. Don’t make them too long. I know that I, as a reader, have the tendency to read the first sentence of a paragraph, and if it is not interesting to me, I’ll skip the whole paragraph, assuming it’s all about the same thing.
Peter Stuifzand
August 19th, 2005 3:29 am
It’s probably not a good idea to use underline for getting attention to some point, because this will be easily confused with a clickable link. It’s probably better to use em or strong tags.
I’m not sure where I read this (probably on www.useit.com/alertbox), but I have seen myself click on things, that weren’t links, but *were* underlined.
Kurt
August 19th, 2005 3:29 am
I don’t do as much formatting as I should with lists, bolding, etc. But I do break text up into short paragraphs, which I hope is somewhat of a mitigating factor.
Good advice, though, I’ll continue trying to improve on what I’m doing. We need a blogging best practices compendium… or at least better practices.
Stuart
August 19th, 2005 4:14 am
There is some interesting research on what people see on their computer monitor and how they deal with it here:
http://www.poynterextra.org/eyetrack2004/main.htm
It’s an interesting read whether you’re involved in marketing or just want people to read what you have written.
Even if you’re not into marketing it’s also interesting to compare that research with one of Jason Calacanis’ blogs and note where he puts his ads.
Christian Watson
August 19th, 2005 5:30 am
Great post overall! I do take issue with your recommendations for emphasizing points.
I would recommend that you never use underlining except for identifying links - to do otherwise negatively impacts usability as it has been well documented that people associated underlined words with links.
Nor would I recommend using capitals - HAVING TOO MANY WORDS ALL IN CAPS reduces readability and looks like ’shouting’. I can’t really think or - or have seen - a good example of using caps to emphasize a point.
One other recommendation would be to include a summary of your post at the top so that people can quickly get a grasp on what the post is about.
Perhaps the most easiest way that authors can make their posts more scannable is to break up long paragraphs. Always preview your post before publishing so that you can identify long paragraphs. There is nothing less scannable than lines of dense text. Paragraphs should be one or two sentences at most.
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the english guy
August 19th, 2005 6:08 am
Great advice. Definately agree with your points, especially the formatting. More useful too for search engine purposes, with bold words highlighting your point.
Jennifer Grucza
August 19th, 2005 7:22 am
Well, I don’t know if I’d go quite that far. And ironically, you state this in a paragraph that is four sentences long.
Hidden Nook
August 19th, 2005 7:47 am
Thanks for the tips! Your quickly becoming a favorite read of mine!
Darren Rowse
August 19th, 2005 8:13 am
nice points gang - especially on the short paragraphs. I should have included that as a tip and appreciate you drawing readers attention to it.
Thanks for your kind words Hidden Nook! Leave comments like that often and you’ll quickly become one of my favourite readers!
mac
August 19th, 2005 8:25 am
Nice overview! I teach a few Web journalism courses and I’ll definitely incorporate some of these suggestions into my usability section (better known as my “endless pontificating about usability”). To add to the mix — I’ve found that print journalism and effective blogging share many similarities:
* The inverse pyramid method of writing (stack the good stuff at the top, then trickle down to the less important facts)
* Short paragraphs.
* Check for spelling, grammar, etc. Never put a first draft up. Ever.
mac
August 19th, 2005 8:26 am
LOL — one last one: READ THE POSTS BEFORE POSTING. Mea culpa everyone — I can’t believe I unloaded that “short paragraphs” point.
Alexander Barbara
August 19th, 2005 8:37 am
Thanks for the tips!
http://www.wealthjunkie.com
the english guy
August 19th, 2005 8:52 am
I think I read that Google requires paragraphs to be at least two sentences, otherwise it considers the “page” to be nothing more than generated spam. Can anyone verify this?
eckes
August 19th, 2005 10:33 am
Speking of scanning, since you started to increase you blog frequency I did not really read any of your articles, only scanned them.
You write that it is good to produce a lot new articles as entry points for SEO, but is it also possible to lose some readers if they cannot anymore catch up with the blog (or if they think too many postings happen which dont really bring anything new)?
Darren Rowse
August 19th, 2005 10:53 am
Good point Eckes.
I’m thinking that after the 31 Days project that I’ll return to a more normal posting frequency here - it’s not only too much for readers but me :-)
Christian Watson
August 19th, 2005 3:34 pm
Jennifer - don’t you know “do as I say, not as I do”? ;-)
Seriously though, if you look at a lot of good news stories - say, Reuters or the BBC - their paragraphs are usually one sentence long; two at most. This makes the content way more scannable.
As a rule of thumb, I really would recommend 1-2 sentences or 3-4 lines per paragraph.
Kidino
August 19th, 2005 4:39 pm
I agree with short paragraphs. And I also go with short sentences.
Many times, I see long sentences being used as if it projects a ‘cool’ corporate image. When you get to the end of the sentence, you forget what the sentence was trying to say in the beginning.
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centerpide
September 2nd, 2005 7:04 am
but I dont get it…when you’re succinct, don’t you lose quality..I mean you lose the “richness” of the blog don’t you??
diana christine
September 13th, 2005 3:24 am
I am delighted to discover your site and fascinated to learn blogging has become a healthy source of income for you. While I have been developing my skills as a writer this year, I had no idea one could turn blogging into profit like this. I will explore further.
Best regards,
Diana Christine
www.feminineexpressions.blogspot.com
www.towardconsciousness.blogspot.com
chen tong
September 25th, 2005 3:43 pm
If you have a long article for your blog, do you break it down to several posts like part 1, part 2, part3…etc. or you just put the entire article into one post with good sub-titles?
Darren…and other savvy bloggers around, which method, you think, that majority of readers may find more comfortable?
I have not seen many people break down a long articles into different parts and posts, but I think it makes sense, e.g. one idea a time/ a post. So a reader may not be scared away from the lenght of the article…
Also, personally I don’t like scrolling down. I like one page at one glance. and click for the next topic. But I suspect I am the minority.
Less important, it also increase the times of displaying AdSense since there are now broken into several posts.
However, unlike the one post method, it does not give the reader the convenient of scanning. It is not scannable.
What are your insights on this? Thanks.
Wai Pyo
October 30th, 2005 6:33 am
I absolutely agree with your points and will stick to them when writing for my blog. Thanks!
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Models
February 8th, 2006 9:04 am
What do you mean about making you blogging site scannable… Scannable like a resume is scannable?
Darren Rowse
February 8th, 2006 9:08 am
Scannable like ‘it’s easy to run your eyes over and get the main points’ type scannable.
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