There are many factors for appearing on the top of search engine pages. Some of these factors are HTML code quality, social media sharing, and website traffic. When these factors are not seriously taken into account, it may lack the complexity of your content, and it is important to increase the search rankings. It is readability, and it is measured by a score called readability score.
Consider this example, when reading a blog, if the readability of the blog content is high, people will be able to understand your sentences easily without any difficulty but if it is low, people may not understand what you’re trying to say.
What do you mean by readability score?
A readability score is a number, which tells how easy it is for someone to read a particular piece of text. It is based on the average length of sentences and words used in your file or document.
The formula is known as the Flesch reading-ease test for this purpose.
Algorithm of Flesch-Kincaid readability score:
What is a good Flesch reading score
If the Flesch-Kincaid score ranges from 0-100. The higher the number, the better the score.
A score above 60 is considered a good score.
A blog’s popularity is grown with the help of better readability. Readability is the facet of your writing.
They spend a huge amount of time understanding your vocabulary and sentence structure. It is better to avoid too many complex words and sentences, as it demands much more concentration from your reader.
High readability = high rankings
Here is a list of some factors which determine readability:
- Length of sentence
- Use of headers
- Paragraph length
- Vocabulary level
- How common each word is present
- Active vs passive voice
- Punctuation marks
These scientific methods can be explained in a few simple words, if your article can be read and understood easily by the readers, it has a good readability score. But, in some cases, it is hard to find if your audience can perceive your written text in the same way you do.
Tips to improve blog readability:
Use short sentences: People find it easier to read it when using short and simple sentences rather than using complicated ones.
Readers who read the article are seeking information and not learning any lessons. Don’t show off by using complex and difficult to read words or sentences.
Write conversationally: When you start to write articles or blog posts, imagine that you are having a real-time conversation with someone.
This helps you to use short and easy sentences in the blog post you write.
Use proper formatting: Don’t worry about white space, make sure that your post is well-formatted, and separate your sentences into paragraphs.
Use adequate headers and sub headers to align your content. Use text decorations to give more importance to different keywords.
Use transition words: Transition words such as “therefore” “consequently” “as a result” “for instance” “similarly” etc.
The purpose of using transition words is that they help you in making your sentence flow better.
Use images: Images help break the rule of only text, when you use images in blogs, people show more eagerness in reading the blog post.
The ratio of image to text is 1 image for every 100 words. Blogs using this kind of ratio have the highest number of shares.
Some readability tools:
Grammarly:
Grammarly offers you a variety of suggestions to help you write concisely and find the exact word you need in any situation. It’s a free tool that you can start using right now. Grammarly has its improved version of
Grammarly Spotlight which comes with additional features like.
- How to Select Your English Dialect
- Learning From Your Mistakes
- Splitting Paragraphs for Easier Reading
- AI to Enhance Your Writing
Readable.io
Readable.io is a premium service, starting at $5 for basic services. It provides an easy way of scanning through the URL of the blog post.
You can simply paste the URL, and they will send a report of what works fine and what does not. They provide email scanning and downloadable reports.
WebFX
WebFX provides a quick and easy way to check the readability of your work. Test your content by just pasting the URL.
Hemingway
Hemingway is a free online editor tool that helps you to edit blogs online. It shows how easy an article is to read and also shows the reading grade of the particular article.
This app is used to highlight lengthy, complex sentences and common errors, if you get to see a yellow sentence, try to shorten or split it.
Make your content readable. How does readability score affect SEO?
There are several reasons why you should make your content readable. The algorithm of a search engine is based on human behavior on a page.
By improving your content readability, you improve behavior on-page, for instance, page on time, exit rate, bounce rate, social signals will all improve and that also tells search engines that people like your content.
An article with a good readability score, makes readers spend some amount of time on the page and read the whole text without any problem.
People who are in search of stuff online, want it the fastest and simplest way possible. And hence we must provide them as simply as possible.
It’s quite difficult when you think about how to improve the readability score of your content, and many questions come into your mind such as
Should I start a new article? Should I change the content completely?
Don’t worry. Adjust your existing content with some amazing content and get good readability scores. Content readability is one of the important indirect ranking factors.
SEO ranking factors:
Some common things that search engines mostly rank your blog posts are Page title, URL, keyword decorations, meta tags, image alt tags, and grammar of your article. Apart from these, there are many others.
Content comes in one of the indirect rankings.
Content readability of any article represents how easily your readers can understand your written content for blogs and articles. It not only improves your reader’s reading experience but also proves to be beneficial to your overall SEO as well.
The important thing that you should always keep in mind is when writing any of your content is that you are making it primarily for your visitors
The two most important questions to be asked to yourself before writing content.
- How readability of my content affects its ranking?
- Does the search engine have a tool for checking readability?
We are sure that this blog finds you help with all your relevant questions being answered. If you are looking for SEO services, we at AINRATech is one of the best digital marketing companies in Hyderabad.
If you are struggling with your website performance or maintenance or you need any digital marketing service, we are here for you and looking forward to hearing from you at any time.
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