While we are all at different reading levels, the fact remains that the majority of American’s can barely read.

This very statement should influence the way that content strategists, copywriters, information architects write and organize content—but time and time again this is proven not to be the case.

There are many reasons why the Flesch Reading Ease Score is so important when writing and evaluating copy. I thought it would be fun to take a minute and go through these reasons together.

• Search engine optimization. Did you know that the search engines use this criteria when evaluating and placing your webpage in their search results? We know this because companies like Google have patented pieces of their algorithm and made it clear to us that readability is an important factor in search engine placement. Search engine companies, like Google, evaluate this criteria for a reason. Studies have shown that copy, written on a higher ease score, performs better from both usability and market conversion perspectives.
• Increased sales. Another reason for improving the ease score is because studies have shown that effective marketing is congruent with effective communication. The World Wide Web is built on the notion that individuals navigate by reading—which suggests that effective copy can lead to improved conversions.
• New friends. Another positive side effect to improving your ease score includes opening up your content to a new audience. A lot of people ignore this perspective but but the time it takes to comprehend advanced copy is just too long for most users.

You’re probably asking yourself how to calculate your Flesch Reading Ease Score?

It’s a relatively simple algorithm, but I don’t want you to get too hung up on the specifics. There are only three scores you need to worry about—well technically only two scores you should worry about. First, let me teach you how to calculate your reading ease score and then you can decide for yourself.

Here is the formula, but do check out many of the well-known software titles out there—like Microsoft Word—that can give you this score automatically.

Score = 206.835 – 1.015 * (total words/total sentences) – 84.6 * (total syllables/total words).

As you can see the number of words and syllables in your website copy have a significant impact in your score. One effective way to improve your score is to avoid words with multiple syllables. Words ending in ES/ED/EY can often be avoided pretty easily.

I realize this may seem very convoluted, but once you know your score, it’s very easy to know if you’re going in the right direction. Website copy that scores between 90 and 100 is easily understandable by an average 11-year-old—that, my friend is a sweet spot. Anything between 60 and 70 is easily understood by a 13 to 15-year-old. Anything below 60 is crossing the line.

If you’ve never heard of it before, perhaps this may spark your interest: The Department of Defense requires all documents and forms read at a score of 45 or higher. Other publications such as Reader’s Digest, have a readability index of 65 or more. Time Magazine has a readability index of about 52 and Harvard Law Review which has a readability score of about 30. One thing that is about all three of these publications is that they have a readability index of above 30–which is what you would expect from a high school student or younger.

I highly suggest you write copy that is easily understandable by a child–that’s a readability score of between 65 and 100. That way your copy is easily understandable by ages 11 and up.

Here are a few helpful hints that you can use while evaluating your content. Simply, find out your score, and the table below will tell you how easy your content is to read.

• 90-100 : Very Easy
• 80-89 : Easy
• 70-79 : Fairly Easy
• 60-69 : Standard
• 50-59 : Fairly Difficult
• 30-49 : Difficult
• 0-29 : Very Confusing

1. The Content/Article Writer – This is the juicy stuff. Good article writers come few and far between, but our industry is overpopulated with content providers who fill websites with useless information. We have a core need for writers who can produce quality content. I feel the article writing business should come with no-strings-attached.  Too often, marketers and business gurus want something in return for providing such content, but I don’t believe this is the place for it. In a world where web surfers will leave your website in a blink of an eye, it’s important to continue to provide exactly what the users are looking for. With the help of an SEO, I find it is useful when this content is written by your subject matter experts.
2. The Call-to-Action: Copywriter – This person writes strategically to get a user to do something. This may include obtaining an e-mail address, making a sale, or any other call-to-action. This is especially important in regards to search engine marketing because when you pay for traffic, you want to be sure you get the lowest bounce-rate for the keywords you bid on. Getting a user to complete an action is the best way to quantitatively measure the effectiveness of an advertising campaign. It’s also a way to attribute a dollar amount to each of our users.
3. The SEO - Search Engine Optimization increases a website’s search engine ranking placement, also known as a SERP, in an effort to optimize the flow of traffic for certain keywords that users are searching for. This can include generic keywords (like Web Design, Information Architecture, User Experience Design) that are combined with a relevant location (like Washington, DC), or long-tail keywords (like “Top 5 User Experience Design Issues”). The point is to strategically expose web content to as many relevant users available. An SEO is usually involved with other writers to make changes to improve website quality.
4. The Multimedia/Social Media Consultant - This is a fairly new form of content provider who specializes in the development of other important mediums of content, such as video, podcasts, e-mail, etc. They’re often involved in social media, like YouTube, Viddler, Vimeo, and other video sharing sites to provide information to users. Be sure not to push this person aside, video marketing and other social media platforms are some of the most effective forms of internet marketing. You should consider including this into your strategy.
5. The Editor – This person makes everyone look good. They edit for consistency, grammar, spelling, and ensure a professional product.

As information architects, we bring all of this together to improve the products we develop. We specialize in organizing, generating the correct metadata and taxonomy, and ensuring consistency. Although writing content isn’t necessarily in our job description, I think it’s necessary to step up to the plate and fill these roles when needed.

Having content that is publishable is the most important job of a copywriter. A copywriter, which in many cases is unfortunately also the web designer, is responsible for creating a written version of an organization’s mission, history, services, contact information, and whatever else will assist in marketing the website. It is imperative that the website is well written and full of information for these reasons:

1. A well written website will respond better to the user reading it. A website isn’t just a nice design, it should be filled with valuable information for the reader, or otherwise the reader will simply leave and go to another website.
2. A well written website will respond better to search engines which, in turn, will result in an increased number of visitors to your website.
3. Individuals only buy products that they can trust, and that trust is established within the first five seconds someone comes to your website.

Just as you came to my website and purchased my product, in trust that I would deliver the best possible website design course for you, those who visit your website will also receive an immediate impression of everything about your company—based on how it’s written, how it looks, and how it feels. These are essential tools you need to absorb to become the best web designer you can possibly be. I have built my success over the years by only delivering quality products to my customers, just as I’ve done to you in this book—which is why my product has sold so well. I would like you to incorporate these core values in the copywriting of your website, because you will receive many rewards in the end by delivering your customer the best quality product you can possibly provide to them.

Besides copywriting, a “Copyright” of your content is also a very important. You’ve seen it before, but what do you know about this “Copyright © 2007 Amazing Design Secrets All Rights Reserved” phrase? It means so many things and it’s very important that you understand this. What you publish on your website is binding and you can avoid many legal problems by only using content that is either yours or yours only, or content that is licensed for you to use. This includes any text, data, tables, pictures, etc. I cannot tell you how many times I’ve seen web designers loose everything because they stole a picture from something they found in Google Images, or companies who went bankrupt in litigation and they were forced to pay so many royalties to other companies they stole data from. Do yourself a favor and have a firm contract with the company you are building this website for and release any liabilities you can that can get you into trouble. You may even want to consult an attorney for advise on the content that you are delivering to your customers and potential leads. A good legal review will always serve you better in the long run.

Design Secret

Ivan Hoffman – I would like to recommend to you a website that I’ve been using for years to learn and stay current on copyright laws, trademarks, web design laws, internet law, and intellectual property law. His name is Ivan Hoffman and he’s been the pioneer on copyright infringement since the inception of the internet. His website is: www.ivanhoffman.com and I definitely recommend that you read his articles before you begin a professional web design and development project. His insight and experience will help you choose the right solutions for your clients and prevent many legal troubles in the future. Remember that the ideas you come up with are yours and it is your responsibility to protect what you own, even if you’re building it for someone else for profit.

I’m sure that you’ve joined this course to learn web design concepts, but I’m here to tell you that the best web design in the world has very little to do with having a successful money making website-and if your website isn’t making money for you, what’s the point of having one?

You need to write as much content as possible for your website if you want to get high enough traffic to you convert leads. Recently I had a discussion with a colleague of mine, who wanted to make money from Google AdSense, but was averaging around $8 per year in advertising revenue. He had an absolutely amazing web site that in my opinion had the potential for many great things, but he was unable convert any leads because he wasn’t able to secure enough hits to make that possible. For the next few months, he wrote one article per day and added it his website and it made a huge impact in his amount of traffic. Along with several of the other tools I provided him, he’s able to meet his goals.

I’d like to encourage you to make a promise to yourself to stick into this for the long haul. I know a lot of people who are able to instantly make profits off of their websites immediately after they launch it (sometimes just an hour after they go live). I’m not promising these results because they are rare-and it sometimes takes Google several months to recognize that you’re relevant enough to secure the amount of traffic you’re looking for.

No matter how you intend to bring traffic to your website-whether it’s through your personal blog or a catalogue of articles-make sure that your content is of the highest quality, well written, and full of keywords people are searching for. If you choose the right niche, you can brings thousands of people to your website through one article alone!

In my course, I teach you how to do this in detail and balance an SEO campaign with other forms of advertising-while teaching you to design high quality websites for your business. Just remember, stick to your plan!

Of course, there is much more involved than simply getting back-links to your website to ensure that you get high amounts of relevant traffic. If it were that easy, everyone would do it.The Internet would be filled with traded links and spiderwebs of useless information and nobody would every find what they’re looking for. You have to provide high quality information to get yourself noticed these days. So what most Internet Marketers do is write a high quality article and distribute to hundreds of article websites across the globe. At the very bottom of the article features an “About the Author” section with a short biography of the writer and a back-link to his or her website.

“Bingo!”, says Jeff, the uneducated Internet Marketer. “Now I have hundreds of back-links, I’m gonna get a ton of traffic now!”

And for a few weeks, the excitement was justified–until the worst thing you could imagine happened. When Jeff realized that his traffic was cut by 90%, he decided to do a Google search to see how many back-links existed. He went from hundreds of back-links to about 12 in only 3 weeks.

“What happened?”, Jeff screamed!

What do you think happened? Jeff got hit with Google’s new duplicate content algorithm! Nowadays, it is extremely difficult to beat Google because they are constantly updating their algorithm to beat the cheaters–and it’s not technically cheating!–or is it? Google rewards people for originality. They don’t want their searchers to type in a phrase and get 600 pages of the same exact article in their search results, so they omit the unnecessary ones and bring out other results so that the searcher doesn’t waste their time.

The new rule of thumb for 2008 is BE ORIGINAL in all of the content you write for your website, be thorough, and be of high quality!

So that said, I’d like to recommend a free service for you that is pioneering the way of taking your articles and generating hundreds of original articles using an amazing AJAX thesaurus and giving maximum back-link exposure. This service is absolutely amazing! I just started using it last week and it has really helped me already. Its simple, you just paste your article in, follow the instructions, and in no time at all you have hundreds of variations of your article. The best part is that once you’ve finished, you have the option to submit every single variation of your article at random to hundreds of article directories. I’ve been so impressed, I had to share it with you!

The name of this service is JetSpinner. Here is the link: http://www.jetsubmitter.com/

You probably see this everywhere, there are websites devoted to turning people from amateur guitarists into rock stars, the overweight into sports stars, and unemployed into small business owners. This is the information age and the possibilities are endless! WE ALL have a skill that someone wants, why not write teach it to someone else? If you are interested in writing an e-book or if you’ve already written one, I’d love to hear about it and I encourage you to write it out and see what happens!Here are some simple steps to getting an e-book together:

1. Come up with an idea
2. Write what you know
3. Make your product a quality product
4. Give your customer exactly what they want
5. Build a well designed website to endorse your product
6. Sell for fair prices
7. Offer a return policy if the customer isn’t satisfied