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.
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 material.
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 material.
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 penalized by Google for keyword stuffing, it also allows you to analyze 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 analyse 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 optimization steps in SEO content writing.
The $99/year Yoast SEO premium package, which includes this capability, is available.