October 16, 2019 in Tips by

You may know that good SEO content needs to be long. Longer content provides you with greater chances of ranking higher in search results for certain phrases, which can mean higher conversions. But good SEO content doesn’t just need to be long; it also needs to be scannable.

Why Does Content Need to Be Scannable?

The problem with content is that no one reads it. If you have an article that is 1,500 words long on limos in Asheville, no one will read it. That’s why you must create content that allows people to scan it. Readers need to see what information is contained in the article, at a glance, before they commit to reading the whole thing. Most people will scan the post or article to see if anything in the content is relevant to them. If they find something intriguing, they might scroll down and read the relevant content.

Most people decide whether to read content in just a few seconds. If they can’t see the benefit of reading, they will leave your website without reading, commenting, or sharing, and they may never come back to your site. That’s why scannable content is so important.

How Do You Make Content Scannable?

There are several ways to make your content scannable. You can divide it into subheadlines, use bulleted lists, or insert relevant, unique images.

Pro Tip: If you’ve done a search on Google, then you’ve seen the featured snippet questions people are asking. When you use an h3 tag or an h2 tag that’s a question that you answer underneath that h-tag, you might earn a featured snippet yourself. So, then, when someone searches for one of these questions and you get the featured snippet, you’re getting what they call the position zero. The top of the page results, where your question and answer are in the Google search results.

Yes- Google loves long content when it comes to SEO. Long content, however, shouldn’t be just a bunch of words. Help people get the gist of your content by making it scannable.

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