People don’t read blog posts on a phone the way they’d read a letter. They scroll, stop at whatever looks relevant, read a bit, and scroll again. If your post is one long grey block, there’s nothing to stop at, so they leave.
Good formatting isn’t decoration. It’s what lets a scanning reader find the paragraph they came for. This is how we format posts on client sites, using the standard WordPress block editor.
Start with a before and after
This is an opening we see versions of all the time, from a post about choosing a hot water system:
When it comes to choosing a hot water system for your home there are many different factors that you need to consider and it can be quite confusing with all of the different options available on the market today including electric, gas, heat pump and solar systems, each of which has its own advantages and disadvantages depending on your household size, your budget, and whether you have access to gas at your property, as well as rebates that may be available.
Nothing in it is wrong. It’s just impossible to scan. The same content, formatted:
Four types of hot water system suit most Northern Rivers homes. The right one depends on three things:
- how many people shower in your house
- whether you have mains or bottled gas
- how much you want to spend upfront versus on power bills
If you only read one section, read Heat pumps below. That’s what we install most often.
Same information. Shorter. It tells the reader what’s coming and lets them jump to the part they care about. That’s most of formatting in one example.
Headings do the heavy lifting
Headings are the signposts a scanning reader uses. They also tell Google and screen readers how the post is organised.
In the block editor, add a Heading block and choose the level from the toolbar:
- H1 is the post title. WordPress adds it for you. Don’t add another.
- H2 for each main section.
- H3 for sub-points inside a section.
- Rarely anything below H3 in a blog post.
Don’t skip levels (H2 straight to H4) because you like how the H4 looks. Pick headings for structure and let the site’s design handle the look. The W3C’s guidance on headings explains why this matters for people using screen readers.
Write headings that say something. “Overview” and “Other considerations” tell the reader nothing. “What a heat pump costs to run” tells them whether to stop.
A good test: read only your headings, top to bottom. If they make sense as a summary of the post, you’re done.
Paragraphs: shorter than feels natural
On a desktop, a five-sentence paragraph looks fine. On a phone it’s a wall. Keep paragraphs to one to four sentences, and let a single-sentence paragraph stand on its own when a point deserves the emphasis.
In the block editor, pressing Enter starts a new paragraph block. Shift+Enter gives you a line break inside the same paragraph, which is rarely what you want.
Lists when it’s genuinely a list
Use a List block when the content really is a set of items: steps, options, things to bring, questions to ask. Use a numbered list when the order matters.
Don’t turn reasoning into bullets. “Why we recommend heat pumps” is an argument, and arguments need sentences with “because” and “but” in them. Bulleting it strips out the logic.
Keep list items parallel. If the first item starts with a verb, they all should.
Bold, sparingly
Bold a few key phrases per section so a scanner’s eye catches them. If half a paragraph is bold, nothing is.
Avoid underlining (it looks like a link) and avoid italics for whole sentences (harder to read on screens). Skip ALL CAPS.
Images that earn their place
An image should show something the words can’t: the actual product, a before-and-after, a diagram, a real job. A stock photo of a smiling family next to a hot water post adds weight to the page and nothing to the reader.
When you add an Image block:
- Resize the file before uploading. A photo straight off your phone is far bigger than any blog post needs.
- Write alt text that describes what’s in the picture.
- Add a caption when the image needs explaining (“Rheem heat pump installed in a Lennox Head garage”).
Our guide to images in WordPress covers sizes, formats and alt text properly.
Links: say where they go
Link text should describe the destination. “Read our guide to heat pump rebates” is good. “Read more”, “here” and “this article” tell the reader nothing and look the same to Google.
Link to your own service pages and other posts where it helps the reader. One or two internal links in a post is plenty. Select the words, press Ctrl+K (Cmd+K on a Mac), and start typing the page name to search your own site.
Block editor tips that save time
- Type
/on a new line to insert any block without hunting through menus:/heading,/list,/image. - List View (the icon of stacked lines in the top toolbar) shows the post’s structure and lets you drag blocks around.
- Copy and paste from Word or Google Docs with care. Headings usually come across, but stray fonts and spacing can come too. If a section looks odd, select it and clear the formatting, or paste as plain text (Ctrl+Shift+V) and add headings in WordPress.
- Reusable patterns. If every post ends with the same call to action, save it as a pattern so it’s consistent and you only update it in one place.
- Preview on your phone before publishing. Use the Preview button, then open the preview link on your phone. That’s where most of your readers will be.
Before you hit publish
Run through this quickly:
- Do the first two or three sentences tell the reader what the post will help them with?
- Do the headings, read alone, make sense?
- Is any paragraph longer than four sentences?
- Is every image doing a job, with alt text?
- Does every link say where it goes?
- Is there a clear next step at the end, like a link to the relevant service or a way to get in touch?
- Is the title and description set in your SEO plugin? Our Yoast SEO setup guide covers that.
Formatting a post well usually takes ten minutes more than not bothering. It’s the cheapest improvement you’ll make to your blog.
When we build a site, we set up the blog templates so headings, spacing and images look right without fiddling, and show you how to use them at handover. You can see what’s included on our web design page, or if your current blog is hard to edit because the site isn’t really yours, read about owning your website outright.