Thank to Gilbert Peralta of WPChemist.com for dropping by to give us WordPress Wednesday once again.
The problem with long blog articles or even online news articles is how boring and hard they can be on the eyes and attention span. Personally I get exhausted just looking at a blog entry, when all I see are 5 paragraphs of plain text. Images, large blockquotes, indents, links, highlights, bolds, videos or almost anything else can really help guide the reader and keep their interest sharp.
Many studies have shown that readers have a tendency to “gloss” or “skim” over articles. You can use WordPress’ built in visual editor to easily make the important parts or highlights stand out. That will help those readers who are skimming find the parts you want them to see before they navigate away from the page. The best part is you can easily make those alterations without knowing code. The visual editor in WordPress has dozen of buttons that does all the work for you.
help your reader out by breaking up the page with easy visual editor buttons in WordPress
The basic idea when designing the blog article is to visually break up the article; which gives the readers eyes things to focus on so they don’t get bored and click to the next website. As I mentioned before a good blog will have images, large blockquotes, indents, links, highlights, bolds, videos or anything else that can help guide the reader.
Please see the screen shot below which will show you where all of these buttons are using the same number label.
1. The Kitchen Sink: The kitchen sink is a button in the WordPress visual editor that opens up all the options in the visual editor for you to use. It’s important to click the button to ensure all of your editing options are available.
2. Images: adding a small thumbnail, like in this blog helps invite the reader to the blog, but also the right image can set the tone or summarize the article before the reader reads anything! WordPress has built in “featured image” link that makes placing an image on your blog only a few clicks away!
3. Large block quotes: Large block quotes are common in newspaper and magazine articles. It’s a good idea to choose something from your blog you want to stand out. A straight forward sentence or powerful statement makes for a good block quote. Simply highlight your and click the blockquote button.
4. Indents: indentation simply provides a grammatical correct way to display your blog, but is also visually appealing when compared to a block of several paragraphs with no indentation. Refrain from using tab; instead use the indent button provided in the visual editor.
5. Links: outgoing links do several things. It makes your blog look and feel alive, gives credit to websites you care about, appeals to search engines, but they can also keep visitors on your website when you link to other articles on your site. Creating a link in WordPress requires no code, but only to know where the link button is.
6. Highlights: increasing the size of your text is important to the reader but also to search engines. Highlighting and increasing text size on certain sentences tells the skimming reader where to skim to. It also sends hints to search engines what is most important about your blog article. Use the “Paragraph” button in WP visual editor.
7. Bold: bolding is similar to highlighting, but should be used to place emphasis on single words; as you don’t want an article in different font size too much. Again it helps keep your reader from losing attention and helps skimmers find important parts of your article before they leave.
8. Video: I shouldn’t have to explain why you should add video periodically to your blogs. Video is fun, grabs your users attention, but it keeps users on your site a lot longer and helps them remember you better. Plus a visitor is more likely to watch a 3 minute video then they are to read every word on a 10 paragraph blog post. Adding video from youtube.com or your computer is easy when using WordPress visual editor.
CLICK ON THE SCREEN SHOT BELOW TO VIEW BUTTON LOCATIONS
There is a lot more to the visual editor in WordPress to help you jazz up your blog posts. Play with the other buttons and see what happens. It’s the best way to learn.
Have any questions?
Still need help?
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