As a web writer, you must make it past this initial scan or your content—no matter how well-crafted—will never be read. Your research and writing will be for naught. To avoid this tragedy and get the recognition you deserve, you need to make sure your posts are easy on the eyes and easy to scan. Here are five tips to help you make your posts more visually appealing and get them read:

1. Use the right images

Imagine your reader hitting the page. Naturally, their eyes take in the images first, as sight is their primary sense (unless they are blind). These images tell them what to think about the content before they’ve even read it. You need to ask yourself critically, “Are my images sending mixed signals about content?” If you are writing a post with a strong opinion, are you using bland, neutral stock images? If so, you are telling your reader, “This post will also be bland and neutral. Don’t expect to find any fire here.”

This doesn’t mean your images have to be of whatever you are talking about. You can use images that may seem unrelated but that add flavor or irony to your post—again depending on your tone and style. In the example below, I included a quote about shearing sheep in an article about online education. To complement this, I added a photo of a sheep getting sheared. This is an unusual photo to put in a an education article, and it is intended to be so. I wanted the reader to scan and ask themselves, “What the heck does shearing sheep have to do with online education? This looks like fun.”

Notice, I am not advocating using random images that have nothing to do with your post. I am recommending using images that achieve worthwhile juxtaposition with the text.

Bottom line: your readers’ eyeballs will go straight to your images. Make your images are engaging and that they support your post.

2. Use an image just above the fold

Imagine the reader sees an image at the top of a post. How welcoming! But then they see one paragraph after another below it, stretching away into an intimidating tangle of letters, symbols, and numbers. Only the most intrepid readers will continue unless they see another break in the text. Images offer a respite for readers, making them feel strong enough to continue reading.

For this reason, I recommend placing an image—a good one—just above the fold (that make-or-break area of any web page). You can see a sample of this below. Peeking up above the fold is a vibrant image of President Obama’s State of the Union address, urging the reader to keep going.

An image placed just above the fold will entice the reader downward. Then what do you with your next fold? You put another image just above it. And then another and another—ever breaking up the text and enticing them to read more. Before you know it, they’ve read all 800 words of your post and are smiling contentedly.

3. Use your h-tags

H-tags are your friend. They are an easy way to break up your text and tell the reader what your post is about in a half-second. If you break up your post into sub-sections, put every subsection in an h2 or even h1 tag. If you have a numbered list with significant amounts of content following each list item, put each list item in h2 or h1. You can see how this looks in the picture below. Your eyes go to the image, then to the title, and then to the h-tagged phrases. In a split-second, you have gathered significant information about this post. You aren’t forced to sift through text to uncover the meaning of this post.

(For those unfamiliar with html, an h-tag is a piece of code that tells the page to format your text as a headline. H1 is largest; h2 is second largest; and h3 is third largest. You can access html in WordPress by clicking on the HTML tab. You can learn more about using html at w3schools.com, one of my favorite tutorial sites.)

4. Use hr tags

Occasionally, you have logical breaks throughout your post. This happens with lists. In these breaks, you can use hr tags to put a line across the body of your post, breaking your post into neat, digestible chunks. Again, this requires you going into html. Simply, place the hr tag wherever you want the line to appear. The result looks like this:

5. Bold important stuff

This may seem elementary, but you’d be surprised how few bloggers actually use the simple, yet effective tool that is bolding. being careful to avoid bold overkill, you can sprinkle bolding throughout a post to highlight points of especial insight. I usually try to bold phrases or sentences that I feel tie up my point nicely and hopefully in an eloquent way.

As I mentioned, don’t overuse the bold. If everything on the page becomes bolded, it’s like nothing is. Use bolding sparingly and it will lead your readers to stuff you want them to read.

Like any game, there are rules that come with this concept. Here are my top 5 rules for using infographics to get links:

Rule #1: Geeks Rule

Start talking to your average guy on the street about infographics and you will spend another five minutes explaining what they are. Likewise, your average internet user, those who use it just for Facebook, checking email, shopping, getting updates on tabloid gossip, or playing Farmville, have no idea what an infographic is. It is a concept made—and appreciated—by designers and web nerds. Also, those casual internet users don’t give backlinks. Therefore, when you want backlinks, you are in geek territory, especially when it comes to infographics.

If you already consider yourself a geek, this will be a comfortable experience for you.

If you do not consider yourself a geek, consider the following. At almost every school dance I ever went to, the actual dancing was kicked off by not by the cool kids but by some misfit group of band kids who didn’t care what anyone thought. Eventually, the kids in the middle status-wise joined in and had a good time. The cool kids spent the evening on the sidelines telling each other how lame the dance was. That’s how it is with geeks and backlinks.

Just the fact that you have your own site tells me you want to be one of the kids dancing. It tells me you do obsess about a certain subject (home decorating, sports, French literature) in a, dare I say, geeky way.

Bottom line: respect the geeks and acknowledge your own inherent geekiness, and the geeks will love you back.

Rule #2: Catchiness Still Applies

In this regard, think of an infographic like a wonderful blog post, the kind that grabs your attention from the start. It’s got to have a great title and it has to keep you engaged throughout because it still the title that will draw or turn off users. Catchy titles include numbered lists, how to’s, absurdity (Ex: “How many rabid groundhogs would it take to bury the Eiffel Tower?”)… anything that promises to assemble a lot of information in a fresh or useful way.

Rule #3: Make It Sexy

Say the word ‘sexy’ and you get different interpretations (your grandma might consider it a curse word), so let me explain. When I say ‘sexy’, I mean your infographic has to be great eye candy. The layout and theme of the infographic also have to keep the user’s fancy visually. It doesn’t matter how cool your ‘info’ is if the ‘graphic’ part is blah.

Infographics that look like PowerPoint slides = Not Sexy

Ideally, the way you lay out your information invites repeat viewings. This means detail and depth of information is critical. It also means style is important. If you’re going to do a boring infographic, save yourself the time and just do a diagram. In PowerPoint.

Rule #4: Use an Embed Code

Embed codes are often used on widgets but not usually on images. People will just copy and paste if they like your image. So why include an embed code? Two reasons: 1) it lets you get a hard link and 2) it lets you get a relevant link.

For example, a few months ago, I created an infographic about a zombie epidemic for an online education site. Zombie keywords would not have been especially relevant to online education. So in the embed code we put in the keyword ‘online classes’. The infographic caught fire, getting tweeted first by WiredScience and then by Mythbusters. People came to the page, some used the embed code, and we ended up with dozens of relevant backlinks overnight.

Not everyone will use your embed code, but making it available increases your chances of getting relevant backlinks for a not-so-relevant infographic.

Rule #5: Shop It Around

Don’t be afraid to invite people to look at your infographic. Comments, emails, and Twitters are all good forums for this as long as your infographic is useful to the person you are soliciting. Bloggers like you and me are always looking for great material for their site. Why shouldn’t that include your infographic (if you’ve done it right)? Infographics add a nice, visual flare to blogs, which are often heavy on words and light on pretty images. They make any blog look good.

Click here to view the embedded video.