Have you ever attempted to read something just to be drained by the whole experience? It is certainly not a good feeling when readers have to put in efforts to comprehend the meaning of the words in the SEO content writing.
This is the underlying principle of readability.
Make sure your content can be comprehended by 13- to 15-year-old students
What is readability in SEO content writing?
Readability denotes how easy (or how difficult) is the content to read. An essential but frequently ignored component of SEO content writing is creating content that needs to be simple to read.
Many content pieces that are difficult to read and grasp, turn readers away.
Here are some things you can use to make your writing easier to read.
People who read content need to be compelled with simple and easy-to-understand words. They should have an enjoyable reading experience rather than a draining experience after reading it. They leave websites that are poorly written or have readability issues.
Why is readability important?
Search engines adore content that is well-written and understandable by a universal audience. Providing high-quality content is important because it’s difficult to rank well without it.
Click-through and bounce rate, dwell time may not be a direct Google ranking criterion. But it does provide a useful indicator for monitoring a webpage’s health. And easy-to-read content will boost the dwell time.
So, as an SEO content writing expert, you must be conscious of and actively work to improve the readability of your content.
What is the meaning of ‘good’ readability?
The typeface, style, and colour schemes of a webpage, as well as other elements, all affect how simple it is to read written content there.
However, in this article, we’re going to focus on increasing the score of SEO content readability using a few online tools.
The number of words per phrase, short paragraphs, and use of simple words affect readability. The length and degree of difficulty of the words employed, and other factors also affect this metric.
Higher syllable words are more difficult to read than their shorter equivalents. The word “went” is seen to be simpler to read than “progressed” or “proceeded,” for instance.
How to check readability in SEO content writing?
The Flesch-Kincaid test is a universal barometer for assessing readability. It shows a score of 0-100.
90-100 is extremely easy to read. A scale lower than 60 denotes that the content is difficult to read.
Many SEO content writers aim to score 60+ to cater to a universal audience.
The test consists of two assessments. One assesses reading comfort and the other assesses grade level. These two factors are the most used method for determining readability in English.
For reading ability, the higher the score, the smoother it is to read. The grade level identifies the amount of education needed to comprehend it. So a 60+ plus can be understood by 13 to 15 year old students.
What tools help you check readability?
You can carry out readability tests using several tools. The massive importance of readability for professional SEO content writers mean that the market has quite a few options available.
Let’s look at a few handy tools that can help you to assess the readability of content.
1-Microsoft Word Editor
There’s a high probability that Flesch-Kincaid scores are somewhat recognisable to you because of Microsoft Word.
The widely used word processing program has reading ease as one of its functions. It is an incredible way to get a decent idea of how your article reads.
Select “Spelling and Grammar” from the Review tab. You can view Document stats after completing the spellcheck.
You can get statistics about reading difficulty and grade level under the Readability section. It also shows passive sentences percentage.
If you use Word, you should take advantage of this function since it is included with the software for free.
Don’t worry if you don’t use Word; you can still check readability statistics with several decent applications. Learn more about what other SEO content writers use by reading on.
2-Readable Readability Tool
The “world’s most effective readability grading tool” is called Readable. It has a lot of capabilities, including functionality made especially for websites.
Instead of assessing the Flesh-Kincaid score, it has its standards that give your writing a grade (from A to E). Additionally, it offers to reach analytics that SEO content writers can use to determine what proportion of your audience is capable of comprehending the content.
The readability of your website’s content is continuously assessed by its website readability tool. These also span the , including headers, footers, and non-content material. The tool assigns scores based on the assessment.
To prevent being penalised by Google for keyword stuffing, it also allows you to analyse keyword density.
Its tools are available to individuals for $4 per month; however, its small company and agency programs cost $24 and $69 per month, respectively.
3-WebFX Readability Test
Use the WebFX Readability Test to see how well your content reads quickly. It gives you a fast overview of your text’s reading level and various scores. You can copy and paste text, type in a page’s URL, or use embed code to test a full page or a specific region.
You receive data on sentences and complicated words. It also identifies words used in each sentence and the typical number of syllables in a word.
There are five readability standards available to you since there are differing views on which is the most accurate.
It computes your Gunning Fog score, SMOG index, Coleman-Liau index, and Automated Readability index in addition to Flesch-Kincaid.
Using the WebFX Readability Test is uncomplicated.
4-Datayze Readability Analyzer
Please copy and paste the written SEO content into the Datayze Readability Analyzer to analyze it for readability.
After submitting your copy, you will receive statistics on overall readability and ratings using different metrics. These include Flesh-Kincaid, SMOG, Gunning Fog, Dale-Chall, and Fry Readability.
Additionally, it provides a spell checker and an extraneous word finder. SEO writers benefit from the passive sentence identification, and paragraph-level analysis. These assist you in understanding how your readability varies throughout a text.
Use of this online resource is free.
5-Hemingway App
Ernest Hemingway was regarded as one of the best American authors. He is renowned for his direct writing style. The Hemingway App pays homage to the legend. It assists content creators in streamlining their SEO writing for improved clarity.
After you enter your text, it assigns it a grade level and identifies opportunities for improvement.
These are examples of adverbs and passive sentences. It also shows words with clearer alternatives, and difficult-to-read sentences. This utility is available online free. It also ships as a $19.99 desktop application.
6-Grammarly Online Writing Assistant
Grammarly is a tool for optimising your SEO content writing. It identifies text problems, including grammar, spelling, tone, and conciseness. It is available as a browser extension, cloud-based service, and app.
It provides suggestions for words and sentences that are difficult to understand using AI. It also does a plagiarism check.
Grammarly offers two membership programs. These offer more comprehensive writing assistance over and above the basic free plan.
7-ProWritingAid Writing Assistant
ProWritingAid Writing Assistant is an AI-powered tool. It helps check for spelling, grammar, and readability checks. It offers capabilities that can help you present information more properly.
It provides 20 writing reports highlighting a lot of issues. These cover cliches and overused words, sentence length, and consistency. It also helps with style recommendations, a contextual thesaurus, and other writing-related issues.
ProWritingAid interfaces with other applications. These include Word, Outlook, Google Docs, and Scrivener. It also includes browser extensions.
Prices start at $20 per month for a monthly subscription and go up to $399 for lifetime access.
8-LanguageTool Writing Assistant
A proofreading program called LanguageTool looks for grammatical and stylistic errors. It is accessible online, as an app, or as a plugin and is available in 22 languages.
The available version verifies spelling, grammar, and style. It draws attention to writing problems in your SEO content writing and identifies places for development. Additionally, it provides an estimate of a piece’s reading duration. Premium versions cost $4.99 a month for individuals or $9.48 per month for teams of up to 20. They offer recommendations for enhancing style and tone and pointing out misspelt names, titles, and numbers.
9-Ginger Writing Assistant
Ginger Writing Assistant uses artificial intelligence. This helps it to find errors in your writing, fix them, and enhance the style. It offers context-based corrections, such as different ways to phrase things. Additionally, it may provide synonyms for whole phrases and individual words.
A yearly package costs $7.49. Monthly costs come to $13.99. For companies with more than 2000 users, Ginger additionally provides customisable plans and discounts for teachers and students.
10-Yoast SEO Readability Analysis
Yoast is a well-liked WordPress SEO plugin that comes with a readability function. It examines your writing’s readability. This way, it identifies problems specifically created for search engine optimisation.
It shows green, yellow, and red scale. Green is good, yellow may need improvement, and red needs work. This way, the tool rates your content’s readability.
It looks for passive voice, transition words and the distribution of subheadings. It also examines the length of paragraphs and phrases, and the use of consecutive sentences. It offers your Flesch reading score after this assessment. This enables you to carry out a range of optimisation steps in SEO content writing.
The $99/year Yoast SEO premium package, which includes this capability, is available.
11-Character Calculator Readability Scores
An online Character Calculator can count characters, words, phrases, and paragraphs. To grade your SEO content writing, it also has a Dale-Chall Readability Calculator.
You can copy and paste text using this method to generate the score. In contrast to Flesch-Kincaid, it is easier to read information with a lower Dale-Chall score.
Character Calculator gives you your score. It also shows the required reading grade level, and a brief explanation of the level of reading difficulty. It is free to use.
12-Copywritely Readability Checker
Copywritely is a piece content management system made for SEOs. In addition to rating how readable your SEO writing content is, it also looks for SEO problems to ensure your copy is optimized for both people and search engines.
The SEO capabilities identify issues with your content that affect your search rankings. It suggests editing, deleting, or rewriting it as necessary.
The readability checker uses the Flesch-Kincaid formula to identify and rectify dense content.
For individuals, Copywritely costs $18 per month, while business organisations pay $67 per month.
13-Semrush Writing Assistant
Semrush’s SEO Writing Assistant analyses the readability and consistency of the text while testing for plagiarism. It helps you optimise your SEO content writing for both human readers and search engines.
It leverages copy-and-paste or import from the web functionality to assess your content and provide recommendations. You can choose your target market by nation, region, and even city. You can also choose whether to target desktop or mobile consumers.
The tool provides visual data on readability, SEO, originality, and tone. You may input keywords for comparison with rival content.
Semrush includes the SEO Writing Assistant. Its pricing options cost between $119.95 and $449.95 each month.
14- Review Tools Content Analysis
Sixty free search engine optimisation tools, including Content Analysis, are available from SEO Review. You can enter both primary and secondary keywords. It also provides ideas for different keywords and SEO improvement.
15-Searchmetrics Content Experience
Searchmetrics Content Experience uses Machine learning to determine which content is most pertinent to your audience.
As you type, it gives you immediate feedback on your content and grades it according to various criteria. These include word count, sentence structure, keyword coverage, and repetition. Searchmetrics provides personalised pricing.
16-Link Assistant SEO Content Editor
With Content Editor, you can report keyword usage. You can also download SEO best practices, and develop page-specific suggestions.
There is a limited-use free version and professional ($299/year) and enterprise ($499/year) editions.
Final thoughts
Good readability aids in:
- drawing traffic to your website,
- improving message clarity, and
- inspiring concrete action by readers.
Maintaining visitor engagement by making your web pages simpler to read and understand, will improve your search engine quality rating. These tools will definitely help polish your work in SEO content writing.
But even the most skilled writers occasionally have trouble creating information that is simple to read.
This is where the SEO content writing company Textuar comes in.
Our team will help improve the readability of your SEO writing. This way you can publish highly engaging content without the reader having to put in any effort. This will boost your SEO. Contact us today
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