As I covered in my previous blog we have been very busy launching our new website. It has been up and running for a couple of months now and it’s working well for us. But what a headache it is satisfying the SEO requirements! To help us, we have a Yoast plug in installed with a traffic light system, not only for keywords which everyone is familiar with, but also readability - who knows about passive voice? Certainly not me before this project!

Talking to colleagues around the office it seems no one over the age of eighteen had the faintest idea what I was talking about, and certainly we were never taught about this. So, I did what we all do and searched on Google.

Numerous sites I visited all shared a similar theory – if you can put “by zombies” at the end of the sentence and it still makes sense, you have a passive sentence. Google does not like a passive voice as they are considered more difficult to read than active sentences (…by zombies) – see what I mean? Writing that sentence, like so many on our website in an active voice is not easy!

Coincidentally a colleague was telling me her 10 year old son needed help with this very topic for his homework - which (as I’m sure most parents will concur) went totally over her head. I mentioned the “by zombies” theory, expecting her to chuckle, but apparently this wasn’t news to her as this is now taught in schools.

So the moral of my story, I need a 10 year old’s help with content on the website. (Now feeling very old!)

Tags: UK200

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