Why Nobody Reads Your Content and What to do About it

Darren Rowse July 21, 2022 Writing Content

The post Why Nobody Reads Your Content and What to do About it appeared first on ProBlogger.

Photo by Brands&People on Unsplash

Question: How do people read online?

Answer: They don’t read, they scan.

In research on how people read websites it’s been found that 79{6f482cd57796f86e9ad1be82bcf1dcf19049bb2b279893497447a8f8ed9023fd} of users first scanned any new page they came across and only 16{6f482cd57796f86e9ad1be82bcf1dcf19049bb2b279893497447a8f8ed9023fd} read word-by-word. Knowing this, how should bloggers who want to reach an audience and communicate effectively write?

Why do people scan?

Chances are that not everyone who comes across your blog will already be a devoted reader. These new visitors want to find out quickly whether reading what you’ve written is a worthwhile investment of their time.

Studies have also shown that reading from a screen is more tiring and therefore about 25{6f482cd57796f86e9ad1be82bcf1dcf19049bb2b279893497447a8f8ed9023fd} slower than reading from paper – hence scanning becomes a technique that most employ.

People read online by scanning the page for individual words or phrases, headings and other visual cues.

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…

8. Make your key point up front

If you have a key point make sure you say it up front. One trap many of us fall into is to bury our main points deep within content where it’s unlikely to be noticed.

(In fact I just moved this point up from number 8 on the list)

If not in the title and opening line, get your message across in the first few sentences. You can expand upon it later.

1. Lists

Anecdotal evidence here at ProBlogger suggests:

My posts with bullet point lists in them get linked to A LOT more
Than similar length posts written in more of an essay style
This post has a list built into it – you’re reading number 1 of 10 points

2. 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.

3. 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.

4. 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.