In today’s article, we will cover “Sentence Length Yoast Readability” factors to improve the quality of our content. Readability is a bigger picture made up of many small fragments. You have read about many of these already, you will read about others later. You know that paragraph size, segregation and grouping are important. Another thing that is important is what someone writes inside the paragraphs.
The thing written inside the paragraphs is your content. It is your message to the users, vital information you are sharing.
Why Sentence Length Yoast Matters?
The content you write gets analyzed based on its readability. This readability is directly affected by the length of your sentences. The longer they are, the harder it is to fully understand them. And consecutive long sentences are just too hard to understand.
We make content for these people, and if they have a hard time reading it, the content is a failure. this is the main reason Sentence Length Yoast matters a lot. With search engines becoming more and more human, this low quality of content will lead to a de-ranking of the website.
In a study conducted by the American Press, they understood that the maximum understandability of a story was when each sentence comprising only 8 words. The increase of words was proportionate with a humongous decrease in understandability.
So, with short paragraphs, it is important to write short sentences.
Perfect Size of Sentence?
While the survey showed 8 words to be a perfect size, complex information needs a little more breathing room. You can go a little higher and still get reasonably high understandability.
We say the perfect size to be less than 20-25 words. This factor will change with time. I base it on human habits and common practice. But you need to follow this limit to make your content more accessible for the masses.
How to shorten your sentences?
Shortening sentences are just trying to convey the same message in fewer words. While you might be uncomfortable at first, it’ll be easier with time. There are some simple methods of doing it:
Use active voices: Most sentences have a subject and an object. Usually, the person doing something is the subject and the one this something is done to is the object. When you keep the subject first, the supporting words automatically become less in numbers. It becomes easier to convey simple messages spans of words.
For example, it is easier to say, “I bought a book” as opposed to saying, “A book was bought by me. It clarifies the message and doesn’t include any gibberish.
The focus here, however, is to focus on that part of the sentence that holds primacy. If what was being done, or the object seems to be the more important focus of the topic, that part will automatically need to be highlighted.
For example, the sentence: “the tender was approved by the committee” is better than “the committee approved the tender” as the intention is to tell that the tender was approved.
What remains true, is that sentences can be written in many ways. You need to use the version that sends your message in the best possible manner in the least amount of words.
Break up sentences: Usually larger sentences convey multiple messages. I can easily break them down until one sentence represents one idea. It is easier to grasp these single messages.
The no. of words per sentence is usually kept at 15. This can be changed as per needs, like when quoting sentences or when explaining differences. But keeping sentences short and crisp means that people will end up keeping more of your ideas. The longer your content is, the lesser they’ll remember as they’ll tire out early on.
Google crawlers also have a hard time with difficult vocabulary. You don’t want to make your website a chore for them, they will rank your website. And we want a higher rank.
So, the closer your sentences get to the number 15, the higher rank you’ll achieve. Just remember, grammar is your key to success with SEO.
Concluding Sentence Length Yoast:
The length of sentences matters a lot while getting your website rank. Keeping it in check will land you at the higher parts of the search results. Multiple studies have found out that the effort people put into reading will keep on decreasing. So the scoring factors of search engines will change too. Keeping up with the times is the only thing you can do.
Must Read: 3 Magic Steps to improve readability