Can you read really long sentences? Can you digest a sentence containing 50 words? We have seen in a previous article that higher complexity leads to lower number of visitors.
What happens when you use long sentences in a webpage? What is the optimum number of words a sentence must contain to ensure maximum user retention and interaction? Let us start with an example.
Sample A
Here is a really long sentence,
"The amount of visitors on a webpage is actually dependent on a number of factors which include the web owner's search engine optimization practices, his writing quality and his repo with the swarming visitors at his personal blog"
Let us analyze Sample A.
Sample A is a single sentence containing 38 words. A normal sentence that can be easily understood by a reader can range from 10-20 words. Usually a sentence with a large number of words and phrases taxes and stretches a reader's brain.
More often than not, a sentence with large number of words is avoided by readers. Also such sentences are absolutely abhorred by readers looking for a light reading.
The sample was excruciatingly long and might have prevented many of my readers to go and read sample B which further increased this page's bounce rates ##;
Sample B
Here is the short version of the above text,
"Number of visitors is proportional to SEO, content and visitor interactions"
Let us analyze Sample B.
Sample B contains 11 words which is easily digestible. The reader can easily deduce that page views depend on the 3 factors only. People looking for a light reading will not be disappointed by the text and might even look forward to reading more.
The Experiment,
Moving back to the experiment, 28 articles, published on codemakit.com in 2014 were tested using a readability scanner. This article would talk about the role, the number of sentences play in gathering page views.
We would check if increasing the number of sentences or number of words would lead to higher or lower page views.
Relation Between number of sentences or words and page views
The number of sentences and page views can be compared using the graph above. As is evident, sans a few irregularities, the numbers of sentences do correlate with the number of page views. TO delve into it further, it is required to understand the problem, quantitatively,
Total number of articles compared = 28
Number of articles were number of sentences were proportional to page views = 15
Percentage of instances where number of sentences were proportional to page views = 15/28 = 53%
Number of articles were number of words were proportional to page views = 13
Percentage of instances where number of words were directly proportional to page views = 13/28 = 39%
So, percentage of instances where number of words were inversely proportional to page views = 13/28 = 61%
Thus it can be clearly deduced from both sentences that the number of sentences/ words has nothing to do with respect to pages views and that a really long sentence is equally probable to receive thundering applause as a really short one.
So lowering the number of sentences / Words at your blog can be disastrous as Google's panda updates view them seriously and often impose large penalties on WebPages publishing pages after pages with a really small amount of content.
But simply considering the number of sentences as the defining parameter in a text can be disastrous.
Consider the case of a webpage which contains sentences of the length of Sample A. Evaluating such long sentences would ensure huge number of words but would undermine the fact that the number of sentences have reduced drastically. Hence we need another type of parameter that assesses both the number of words and the number of sentences.
Relation between average number of words per sentence and page views
Hence comparing the average number of words per sentence page views was required. Average number of words per sentence is actually equal to the ratio of number of words and number of sentences. It tells about the number of words per unit sentence.
Number of articles were number of sentences were proportional to page views = 15
Percentage of instances where number of sentences were proportional to page views = 11/28 = 61%
Thus the average number of words per unit sentence can be effectively said to be directly proportional to the page views. However, this must be seen in moderation and cannot be taken as a rule of thumb.
Conclusion,
Page Views are directly proportional to the number of words.
Page views are also directly proportional to the number of words per unit sentences.
Related Reading
Learn how to calculate the readability of your blog or website pages, you could also mechanically grade your essays too!
Codemakit performed a really nice experiment on the readability of the text by Nobel Prize Winners,
Did you know that there is a relationship between Page Views and the Ease of Reading.
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