How to make your blog articles more ‘scannable’

Upon encountering blog articles, very few visitors actually read and digest the entire content word by word. Instead, they tend to scan for relevant headings, bullet points, pictures and highlighted sections in order to find the information they need quickly. You may have found this yourself when reading other people’s content.

This is why you need to make your articles more readable, user-friendly and ultimately, ‘scannable’. To start with, keep your heading concise and on-topic and use your first sentence or two to sum up what your article is about. Throughout the rest of your article, make effective use of the following:

• Headings and sub-headings – Not every part of your article will be relevant to every visitor, so you can effectively point your reader in the right direction using headings and break the rest of the information up by using punchy sub-headings.
• Bullet points – Lists of items break up larger chunks of text, making it much easier to read. Bullet points work particularly well for lists of the features, advantages or disadvantages of a particular subject.
• Emphasised words or phrases – As long as you do not overuse bold, italic or underlined text, it can be a great way to make important words or phrases jump out at the reader.

These are only a few of the ways you can catch the attention of your readers. You can also use pictures, videos and other creative ideas to make your articles more engaging and easy to read.

Christine Felton
Content Writer