Do You Really Need to Change Passive to Active voice for Articles?
There is still much confusion in the minds of many digital marketers as to whether it is OK to use passive voice in the content. If you are a newbie in writing, you need to understand passive and active voice well. You must also know how to convert your text from passive voice to active voice. You will learn all these things in detail through this article. It will help you to create the content in the right format.
Let us get started.
What is Active voice?
A text is said to be in active voice if the subject that performs the action comes first. Here, the subject will be in focus.
Active Voice Example: The Tiger chases the Deer.
In the above example of a sentence in active voice, Tiger is the main subject that performs the action. It comes in the first part of the sentence, followed by the action (chases) on the target (deer).
What is Passive voice?
A sentence/ text is said to be in passive voice if the action’s target comes first. Here, the focus will be on the action’s target.
Passive Voice Example: The Deer is being chased by the Tiger.
In the above example, in passive voice, the action’s target, which is the Deer, comes first. After that, it is followed by the action and the subject in the sentence.
Do Active & Passive voice Impact SEO?
There is a common saying among content marketers that you must write the content in an active voice and not in a passive voice. What is the reason for this saying? Does passive voice have a negative impact on your SEO?
The actual truth is that passive or active voice is not going to influence the ranking of your content. But when you write in passive voice, it increases the complexity of the sentence.
Readability is one of the factors that contribute to the ranking of the content. The readability score will be better for the text in active voice. It is the reason why content marketers prefer to create content in the active voice. It will help the search engines like Google to understand your content in a better way. Thus, your content will get ranked for the right keywords.
You can see the readability score section if you use SEO tools like Yoast for your website. You need to get the green signal on this part to ensure your content is good for the search engines from the readability part.
When you write any content, your end goal should be to make it readable for all types of people as well as search engines. So, always follow the “Keep it simple” technique.
How many Sentences with Passive voice can you Use in Writing?
According to the best SEO practices, you need to keep the number of sentences in the passive voice in your article to less than 10 percent. It will be really challenging for you to find the sentences in your writing in the passive voice.
You can use any SEO plugin like Yoast to do the job for you. Once you enter the whole text in the WordPress editor, you can go to the readability score section of Yoast. You can see the “Passive voice” section when you open it.
If the percentage is under 10 percent, you can see a green signal next to it. If it is above that value, the color will change to orange and red. You can click on the eye icon next to it to see the sentences written in the passive voice and fix them.
When should you Use Passive voice in your Writing?
As per the readability test, less than 10 percent of the content can be in passive voice. So, the question is, when should you use passive voice in your article?
In certain scenarios, the outcome of the action is more important than who did it. You can see the example below.
In Passive Voice: The bank was damaged by the storm.
In Active Voice: The storm damaged the bank.
Writing in the passive voice makes more sense to the text than in the active voice in certain situations.
In Some scenarios, you don’t want to disclose the subject. So, writing in a passive voice will work better here.
When you write an article, don’t focus too much on checking whether the sentence is passive or active. First, complete writing the whole article. After that, proofread or use tools to find the passive sentences if there are too many.
How to Convert Passive to Active voice?
If there is plenty of text in the passive voice in the article, you need to change it. There are two ways to convert passive to active voice. Both these methods are listed below.
1. Manual Method
The manual method is currently the commonly used method to change passive to active voice.
First, you need to proofread and mark all the sentences that are in passive voice. I will share a tip for quick conversion to active voice. In the passive sentence, you need to find the main subject who is performing the job. Now, make the subject in focus and create your sentence.
I will make it more clear with the help of an example.
A sentence in Passive Voice: Team outing activities have always been enjoyed by our group.
In the above sentence, “our group” is the main subject. The action is “enjoyed.” The target part is “team outing activities.” So, you need to construct the sentence with the subject coming first, followed by the action and the target.
Sentence Converted to Active voice: Our group has always enjoyed team outing activities.
2. Use the Service of an AI Tool
If you find it really difficult to convert passive to active voice, you can leverage the power of online AI tools. There are many online conversion tools out there that are capable of doing this conversion.
WordBot is one such AI-based content generator tool that will help to convert passive to active voice. You just need to enter the sentences in the passive voice to the tool, and the AI tool will automatically convert them into active voices in no time. The 7-day free trial option from WordBot ensures you can try it.
Final Thoughts
Now, you really know whether converting passive to active voice helps improve your writing. If you find it difficult to manually convert sentences in your content from passive to active voice, you can always use an AI-powered converter tool. It will make life easy for you.
