Fun fact: the average visitor to your website visitor will only read about 25% of your full article.

But that doesn’t mean that your articles aren’t valuable.

You just have to meet readers where they are, and you can do that by creating easily scannable content.

Knowing most readers skim your posts, you have to make sure that your most important, actionable points are getting across to readers.

How do you do it?

Keep reading to learn 5 strategies for creating scannable content that’s reader-friendly.

Why Your Content Needs To Be Scannable

Across industries the average time a user spends on a single web page is 52 seconds.

That’s not a lot of time to get your point across…and get them to convert.

Why do users spend so little time on webpages?

Well, it actually takes 10% longer for people to read on a screen than on paper.

Our brains process information differently on screen than on paper. Plus, you have to include time spent scrolling.

What does that mean for you?

It means you need to highlight the most important information on your page so readers can find it quickly.

Make it easy for people to organize information and prioritize what they want to know.

How do you do this?

With scannable content.

5 Strategies For Creating Scannable B2B Content

1. Break Up Your Post With Images, Screenshots, and Videos

These are the two biggest conversion killers when it comes to web content:

• Pages that are hard to navigate
• Blocks of text

Both of these are a big yikes that will make users click out of your site without scanning your content for a full second.

It’s easy to tell when content was truly written from the user by how it looks on the page.

There’s a big difference between this

And this

Images are important for a few reasons. Not only do they break up your text, but they:

• Help readers understand your article better
• Allow readers to visualize important information
• Add personality to your text
• Add brand-recognition opportunities to your content
• Increase dwell time

Richer content that’s not a wall of text also increases dwell time (time spent on page) which tells search engines your content is helpful.

Positive user signals have a big effect on search engine rankings, so you need to create as many opportunities for users to engage with your page as possible.

[image of text with videos, images, ctas with estimated time spent on page]

If you want to create shareable, engaging content, including images early and often is a must.

2. Use Clear Headings and Subheadings

Headings and subheadings tell your readers what your page is about.

They can be used to make it easy to find the information readers need while still getting your main points across.

You should use headings and subheadings to communicate the most important information you want website visitors to take away from your page.

[image of website with subheadings]

Clear subheadings will tell the reader what each section is about and if it’s worth their time.

As they say in copywriting, clear is better than clever. Avoid writing subheadings that make users have to guess what each section is about when you’re writing.

3. Use White Space

White space is essential in designing web content.

It’s important because it structures and organizes content for the reader.

White space also helps improve readability of content. Separating keeps readers from getting overwhelmed with information.

You can add white space to your text effectively by:

• Including bullet points and lists
• Adding bigger margins to your blog posts
• Using the “spacer” block in WordPress between sections

Let’s look at how white space affects a page.

Here’s a page with very little white space:

[image]

Here’s how it would look with more white space:

[image]

3. Use Short Paragraphs

There’s a reason Brian Dean and Neil Patel use super short paragraphs.

Short paragraphs make content more aesthetically pleasing and easier to read.

Tiny paragraphs also help your brain organize information by moving you from one point to the next.

You can process information without the overwhelm of looking at a huge block of text on a screen.

To do this effectively, stick to one idea per paragraph.

One-sentence paragraphs are ideal, and I would recommend not writing paragraphs with over 3 sentences for the web.

4. Include Bullet Points and Lists

There are lots of reasons bullet points are great for web content.

Here are a few:

• They draw attention to important information
• They make content easy to read
• They provide easy-to-follow structure
• They help your reader understand information quickly
• They help organize content

Bullet points help users understand information on autopilot because they’re so easy to read.

They automatically signal your brain the information is important.

Breaking up your text also helps your brain remember more information by differentiating it from other text.

Here’s a great example of bullet points being used effectively:

Readers will appreciate being told what’s important by making it different from other text on the page.

5. Keep Sentences Short

Writing clear sentences is one of the best ways to improve your web writing.

If people are already scanning your content, you need sentences to be as short as possible.

A good rule of thumb is to keep your sentences under 16 words long.

We’re not out here trying to be the next Nathaniel Hawthorne (king of run-on sentences).

We’re trying to get people to read as much of your content as possible.

Short and sweet sentences are easier to digest.

Keeping your writing less dense will keep readers on the page longer.

Final Thoughts

Using these techniques can be hard at first, but your writing will improve over time.

Keeping articles easy to read will help you

• Retain readers
• Get more time spent on page
• Build trust with your audience
• Help readers process information

Writing scannable content will get readers to spend longer on your site and help prevent information overwhelm.

Happy readers will then become website visitors that convert & loyal audience members.

The ideal blog post length is between 1,500 to 2,500 words. This is a great metric to hit if you want to cover a topic in depth and provide valuable information to readers and website visitors.

But is this true across all industries and content types?

As a B2B SaaS brand, you know that this industry requires certain types of blog posts to truly connect with customers and convince them to buy your SaaS tool.

Keep reading to find out the best length for different content types for your SaaS blog.

How Long Should Your Blog Post Be for B2B SaaS?

Why Blog Post Length Matters

Blog post length matters because you need to be sure you’re satisfying user search intent with each post.

When deciding the length of your blog post, you must consider the needs of your audience when they enter a particular search query into Google. 

Are they looking for a long list of product comparisons for a bottom of funnel-style blog post? Or do they need a quick answer to a how-to question about your software?

Blog post length depends on the information your audience is looking for and the other results for the query in Google. Both of these pieces of information should inform how long your blog post needs to be so you can fully and accurately answer your users’ questions. 

How to Determine User Search Intent

If you’re stuck on what users are looking for when they type a search phrase, here are some ways you can determine what type of article you can write:

Go Directly to Google

The first thing you should do before determining the ideal length of your blog post is type the question you’re answering in your post into Google.

Use the search results to find out what users are looking for. 

Are the results lists? How-to articles? Case studies or use studies?

Use a SERP Scraping Tool Like Thruuu

Tools that scrape the SERP can give you valuable information about the type of post you need to write, including word count.

You can get tools like this that gather data about search results like word count, number of H2s, number of images, and more with a purchase of a traditional SEO tool like Surfer SEO or for way cheaper with something like Thruuu.

I personally love Thruuu because they easily organize all the information you need to know about the type of post you need to write AND help you create a content brief.

Using Thruuu can help you determine the length of the blog post you should target and how in-depth users expect you to go with your topic.

Analyze User Intent With Semrush

One of my favorite things about Semrush is its ability to analyze user intent.

They have a color-coded system that shows you if the user wants an article that’s informational, transactional, commercial, or navigational.

Knowing this information is critical when deciding how long your blog post should be.

You’ll be able to use this feature to decide what type of content you need, which should inform your content’s length.

The Best Blog Post Length For Different Types of B2B SaaS Content

B2B SaaS brands require specific types of content to connect with users, convert website visitors to customers, and upsell higher pricing tiers to current subscribers.

But how long should each content type be?

Here are some common content types for B2B SaaS blogs and how long they should be:

Announcement Posts

Why do you need announcement posts on your SaaS blog?

People need to know about updates, whether you’re fixing bugs in your tool, adding new features, or raising your pricing (good luck to you on that one).

Users want to know that their concerns are being addressed, so you can help them out with short announcement posts. 

The ideal length for an announcement post is between 400-600 words.

Need some more ideas for what to write about in your announcement posts?

Here are some ideas to get you started:

• Bug fixes
• Software updates
• New support features (like a new Facebook group, etc.)
• Looking for guest posters for your blog
• Changing prices
• Adding new features 

How-To Posts

How-to posts and guides are great for showing users how to use your SaaS to solve common problems in your industry.

Guides can serve as evergreen content that boosts search engine authority and builds trust of your brand.

A good how-to post or guide should be between 1,500-2,500 words. 

The Trello blog has some great examples of how-to articles where they show how to boost your productivity using their tool.

Demo Articles 

Demo articles are articles that explain how your tool works. This type of article is best for nurturing warm leads by showing them how the features of your SaaS can help them.

These articles can be shorter at 500-1,000 words because they should incorporate multimedia elements to be effective.

Embedding video instructions and showing how users can use your SaaS for specific problems can really improve your demo articles while also boosting your time-on-page and reducing bounce rates, which is great for SEO.

Demo articles are helpful for users who are closer to the bottom of the funnel and almost ready to buy. A well-constructed demo article that clearly demonstrates your tool’s value is critical at this stage of the buyer journey.

Informational Articles

You should also include articles on your blog that target customers at the beginning of the buyer journey.

Informational articles can target long-tail keywords relevant to your industry and tool that introduce readers to the benefits of your SaaS. 

You can use informational articles to boost your search engine authority and use them as linkable assets that link to other content types that target users at other points in the buyer journey. 

To craft a helpful informational article, you should aim for a word count of 1,000 to 1,500 words.

For examples of this type of article, definitely check out MailChimp’s blog, which features some killer articles for business owners.

Case Studies

If you’re a B2B SaaS company, you already know how crucial case studies are to scaling your business.

With a case study, you can show how a particular customer used your SaaS to scale their own business and demonstrate the type of results your tool can bring to customers.

Case studies are one of the most trusted content types for B2B businesses because of their reliance on real customers’ experiences. 

When you’re writing a case study, you want to make sure to clearly show how your product helped a client. 

To do this, you should aim for a word count of between 500-1,000 words. Some case studies may need to be longer, but remember that the goal is establishing trust with your audience and you want to put as much care into crafting your case study as possible.

Final Thoughts: Why Content Length for B2B SaaS Blogs Matters

To connect with customers and position your SaaS as the perfect solution, you need to create in-depth, helpful content.

If you want to cover your topic effectively, meeting a word count goal of between 1,500-2,500 words is ideal.

When you’re planning your blog post, you’ll need to keep your content strategy and business goals in mind.

Understanding your audience’s needs and user intent is also key when drafting your posts. 

Answering your audience’s questions and providing truly helpful content is the best way to build trust and authority with your brand and get more sales.

When your audience sees how your SaaS can help them in the real world, they’ll be much more likely to get a paid subscription and even purchase higher subscription tiers in the future.

Make sure to focus on helping the user when determining the length of your B2B SaaS blog post, and SEO wins will follow.

If you’ve done an SEO audit recently, you might’ve been told your website has lots of pages with thin content.

But what the heck is thin content, and why do you need to fix it?

In this blog post, I’ll help you learn to identify thin content and how to fix it quickly.

What is Thin Content?

Let’s start with the basics: what is thin content?

If you read the whole intro, you’ll already know that thin content is content that has little to no value to the reader.

If you didn’t read the intro, this will be new information to you, and thanks for continuing to read the post!

If you’ve done an SEO audit on your site on your own before, you might’ve used a tool like Screaming Frog that can identify thin content automatically. Screaming Frog’s definition of thin content is content that only has 300 words or less.

But thin content isn’t just about word count.

Here are some other examples of thin content that can damage your SEO:

1. Content That Lacks Depth

This might seem like a pretty general description, but it’s really important to understand what Google considers content without depth.

Content lacking depth is content that doesn’t cover a topic fully.

When a user searches for a particular keyword, they want to learn about every aspect of the keyword in the content they click.

For example, if this article was simply titled “What is Thin Content” and only gave a brief definition of what thin content is, it’s probably not that helpful because you can look at the featured snippet without having to click the article to see a basic answer.

To make content helpful to a user, you need to understand what problem they’re trying to solve by searching their question.

If you’re searching “what is thin content,” you probably think you have some on your site and are stressed about how it’ll affect your SEO.

Therefore, you need to know what to do about it. So, an article just describing thin content isn’t enough.

How to Fix Content Lacking Depth

There are lots of reasons your site might have thin content, including:

• Using AI-generated articles
• Giving writers incomplete briefs
• A content strategy relying on high output–while having limited resources to carry it out

How do you fix these problems?

First, stay away from AI-generated content.

The reason why AI-generated content often ends up being thin content is because AI writing tools can only create content from information that already exists.

AI also can’t add personal experience or expertise to a topic because it’s a robot and hasn’t experienced…well, anything.

When you give briefs to writers, you also have to get specific about what the purpose of the article is. Briefs with just an outline and keywords may not be enough for writers to understand why your user is searching a particular query.

Make sure your briefs are detailed and give a whole picture of your customer and the content’s place in your strategy.

Thin content can also result from an unrealistic content strategy and lack of internal resources. Lots of companies think that they need a high output strategy to get SEO results, but that’s simply not true.

What you need is consistent, high-quality content, so you need to make sure you have enough good writers on your team to give that to you.

2. Duplicate Content

Duplicate content is exactly what it sounds like: any pages or posts that have the exact same content.

Why does this matter?

Well, for starters, any duplicate content pages you have will rank way lower in Google search results. Google states that they try hard to rank content with distinct information, so if you have a bunch of pages with the same content, it can hurt your SEO.

Duplicate content is a problem because to Google, it looks like you’re trying to manipulate search engine results by posting the same content across a site or multiple sites.

How to Find Duplicate Content

To find duplicate content, I use Siteliner, which shows you exactly which text shows up multiple times on your pages.

Siteliner can get a little annoying because it doesn’t separate out your header and footer text, so it can look like you have more duplicate content initially than you actually do.

You can see an example of that above, where siteliner identifies my site’s form text as duplicate content.

Usually, if the duplicate content percentage is less than about 12%, it’s probably because Siteliner is including your menus, headers, and footers.

How to Fix Duplicate Content

The best way to fix duplicate content is to make all the content on your pages original. This will have to strongest results for SEO.

However, you can also fix it with a little technical SEO. Some options include:

• Implementing 301 redirects
• Blocking duplicate pages from being crawled in your robots.txt file
• Learn how your CMS displays content (some content management systems show the same content in multiple formats depending on your settings)

If you have a large amount of duplicate content, using one of these strategies may be helpful while you rewrite your content so it’s unique.

3. Poorly Written Content With Lots of Errors

You may not want to hear this, but poorly written content with lots of errors is definitely hurting your site.

If people can’t understand your content due to major grammatical mistakes and your content is littered with typos, they’re probably going to leave your site to find one that provides better content.

And honestly, poorly written and edited content is just a bad experience for the user.

People want to consume content from brands they trust, and it’s hard for most people to trust a brand when it seems like they can’t be bothered to edit and proofread their content.

How to Find Poorly Written Content

Depending on how much content is on your site, there are several ways to check for poorly written content.

For sites with a low page count, try these methods:

1. Run your pages through Hemingway. Edit accordingly.
2. Copy and paste pages into Grammarly. Use it to proofread.

If your site has more pages, you can actually use Screaming Frog to crawl the site for spelling and grammar errors.

Make sure you set your crawl settings to search for these errors because it doesn’t do so automatically.

4. How to Fix Poorly Written Content

If you’re writing your content yourself, have someone else proofread and edit. It can be hard to see where our own writing falls short.

If you’re hiring content writers, make sure to hire writers who are native speakers or bilingual in the language you’re writing in.

It’s a common practice in marketing to outsource to certain countries because it’s cheaper, but it’s really obvious when someone is only a conversational or basic speaker your chosen language. It’ll be obvious to your audience, too.

In the long run, investing a little more money into writers who are native speakers or bilingual in your site’s language will help your site succeed.

Also, hire editors. Not every content writer or copywriter has editing skills. Regardless, it’s helpful to have a second set of eyes look at your content to improve its quality.

4. Content Scraped or Copied From Other Sites

Unfortunately, it’s really common for people to copy headings and entire article outlines and just rewrite them to try to get rankings for SEO.

Doing this might give you short-term gains, but it’s likely the owners of the original content will notice and simply make their content better to regain their original ranking.

It’s fine to be inspired by your competitors and research what strategies work, but using the exact same headings as them is still copying.

Scraped content is content that bots gather from other sites. This is straight-up stealing.

People don’t like stealing in real life, and they don’t like it on the internet either. Don’t. Do. It.

How to Find Content Scraped or Copied From Other Sites

Use plagiarism tools to check whether your content has been copied or scraped.

How to Fix Scraped or Copied Content

Make your content original. Every time.

Want to Kill Thin Content On Your Website?

If you’ve discovered thin content on your site and are feeling overwhelmed, it’s probably time to hire outside help.

If you’re a SaaS brand who wants to kill all the thin content on your site, I can help you develop new content that’s Google-friendly and helpful to your users.

Want to get started? Send me an email at hello@melisaacs.com with the subject line “thin content,” and I’ll get back to you ASAP.