Do you care when people read what you write? You definitely won’t write on the website if you don’t want to share what you convey to others.
With that in mind, making articles accessible to a wide audience should be a priority. Plenty of writing for people at different reading levels. And finding a balance that is meaningful and suits everyone can be quite difficult.
Readability score is one of the tools you can use to help you find balance in writing. Here I’ll break those thoughts down below and see what a readability score is, and how you can use it, and how to improve it!
What is the Readability Score?
Readability Score is a special tool or tool that has been formulated to calculate how difficult a certain part is to read. The readability score is simply the result of the test.
Readability scores can help your posts reach a wider audience.
Scores are generated between 0-100
If your text score is 90-100, the average 10 year old should be able to easily understand it.
60-70 should be easy enough for younger teens to understand.
0-30 assessment texts are best understood by someone with higher education.
Some WordPress plugins will run one or more of these tests for you. Some will interpret it for you and others will not.
ALSO READ : What are Long Tail Keywords and How to Choose Them
What do the readability analysis tools at Yoast SEO do?
Readability analysis uses an algorithm to determine how readable your posts are. Yoast has carefully compiled the algorithm to be as accurate as possible. And it can display several checks that will give you suggestions as you write your post. In other words, by following these suggestions, you can make text easier to read and understand.
[amp-cta id=’73465′]
Yoast Seo Readabilty Analysis can simplify content automatically and increase readership, and can help more people understand the message of your content. In addition, you also don’t just write your content and for people, Even Google is increasingly able to use your well-written content for rich results like (feature snippets) selected snippets.
However, the suggestions in the readability section are not comprehensive and final suggestions, they do give you important clues about the difficulty of your text. It’s important to write with readability in mind, because we think your content must be easy to read to rank!
The Readability features of Yoast SEO are as follows:
Word Transition: Do you use transition words like ‘most important’, ‘because’, ‘therefore’, or ‘other than that’ to tie your text together? Using these words improves the flow of your article as they can give readers a clue as to what’s to come next.
Initial Sentence: Are there any consecutive sentences starting with the same word? This may feel repetitive to the reader, and it can be distracting. Keep each sentence varied, so that your articles are easy to read and free of obstacles. Unless you want to prove something or use it as a writing style of course.
Ease of reading Flesch: This world-famous test analyzes text and grades it using a scale of 1-100. The lower the value, the more difficult it is to read the text. Text with Flesch’s very high readability score (around 100) is very easy to read. They have short sentences and no words are more than two syllables. Typically, a readability score of 60-70 is believed to be acceptable / normal for website copy.
Paragraph length: Some people tend to use very long paragraphs. Doing so will make your text look scary because it is just one big blob of text. Decide, use shorter paragraphs and don’t forget to think about your core sentence.
Subheading distribution: As with long paragraphs, text without subheadings is difficult to scan, which makes it a bit scary. So, Yoast will check that you use enough subheadings to guide your readers through the text and help them find what they are looking for.
Sentence length: Sentence length is one of the core aspects that can make text difficult to read. If most of your sentences are too long – more than 20 words, people will forget what you meant. Readers often have to jump back a few words to see what you mean. This is very tiring and inefficient. Try checking the number of words in the sentence. Shorten your sentences for easy understanding, not complex literary works.
Passive voice: Using a lot of passive voice in the text makes it seem distant, and your message will be less clear. Your sentences become wordy and difficult because the sentence structure is harder to understand. Whenever you use passive voice, always consider whether there are better and more active alternatives available.
Supported languages
Readability analysis is available in English and several languages, such as German, French, Spanish, Portuguese and Russian.
How to use readability analysis in Yoast SEO
You can find readability analysis in the Yoast sidebar and in the Yoast meta box below the post or page you edited:
It’s easy to use analytics to improve content. Personally, I just started writing articles that I wanted to write.
Even if the readability score is calculated directly, you will not be able to see the score during the writing process. Only after your (draft) article is finished will you check the readability score and see if you need to fix something. If you get an orange or red mark, you can click the eye icon to find out where you need to fix it. Very easy isn’t it!
ALSO READ : 3 How to use WebP Images in WordPress
Everyone has their own writing and editing process, and mine isn’t necessarily the same as yours. For example, you might aim for a level 80 Flesch. If so, you should find out what works gradually. When using the readability tool for a moment, you will notice that you will automatically feel the level you are aiming for. With practice makes perfect!
Should everything turn green?
This is a frequently asked question, not every bullet has to be green. However, what you should aim for is the overall green point which is on the tab labeled “Readability”. Having an orange point for one of the checks, like the one in the image above, is fine. Your article will still be able to be ranked, even if it doesn’t pass all the tests. This is an indication, not a necessity.
Yoast SEO just wants everyone to be able to read and understand the content, but we also know that there are industries where the language is very different from that of the average person. It is okay. Find out what works in your writing case. Need help? Please read our ultimate guide to SEO copywriting:
Keep trying!
Yoast SEO readability and content analysis helps you to write good, SEO resistant articles that are easy for anyone to understand. By doing so, you can ensure that any content you write is ready to start ranking in the search engines while still being fun for readers.
