Whether Blog, website or online shop, good readability not only makes readers happy, the readability of online texts is also interesting for search engines. Google pays more and more attention to quality and evaluates the readability of each page on the Internet, the result has an influence on the search engine ranking. To write readable articles and blog posts, you don't have to be an SEO guru. The WordPress Plug-in Yoast SEO helps to optimize all texts for the search engine. And those who rank better in the search engine are clicked more often.
Yoast SEO: What does readability mean?
Who wants to read bad texts? No one. This applies to assembly instructions, newspaper articles, books and even texts on the Internet. While in printed form it can be quite flowery at times, simplicity prevails on the Internet. Here the rule of thumb applies: texts for the Internet must be as light as possible. Hard to understand is hard to digest. And then the users click away. The better texts are to be understood, the longer users stay on the page. Things like length of stay and number of hits can have an effect on the position in the search results. Yoast SEO measures whether a text is easy to read using several parameters.
How does Yoast SEO check readability?
To find out what makes texts easy to read, the developers of Yoast SEO have enlisted the help of linguists. The linguists identified various criteria that are crucial for the readability of a text. The following criteria were included in the Yoast SEO readability test:
Heel length
Record length
Word length
Transition words
Flesch Score
What is the Flesch score in Yoast SEO?
The Flesch Score is a value that indicates the readability (Flesch Reading Ease). A low value (0-30) indicates a very heavy text, a high value (80-100) a very light text. The very difficult text can usually only be understood by academics, but even an 11-year-old student can easily cope with the very easy text. Basically, texts on the internet should have a Flesch value of 60 to 70, whereby it makes sense to adapt the text level of your own internet texts to the corresponding target group. The following table shows it more precisely:
Flesch-Reading-Score Readability Understandable for
0-30 very difficult Academics
30-40 somewhat difficult Middle School level
40-60 average secondary education, vocational school
60-70 easy 13-15-year-old student
70-80 medium light
80-100 extremely easy 11-year-old student
Yoast SEO: How can the readability be optimized?
Yoast SEO creates a statistic (content analysis), which lists hints for readability. The plug-in uses a simple colour system, red is insufficient, orange/yellow is in need of improvement and green is good.
For example, next to a green dot could be: "The text scores 63.2 in the Flesch Reading Easy test, which is considered OK to read.". Next to a red dot the following note could appear: "43% of the sentences contains more than 20 words, this is above the recommended maximum of 25%. Try shortening the sentences." If the dot is not green, an eye symbol appears next to the clue. A click on the eye indicates which sentences are affected. In the text, the sentences that still need to be revised are automatically marked. In our example, all sentences containing more than 20 words would be highlighted. This makes it clear which parts of the text still need to be edited.
Achieve better readability with Yoast SEO
When it comes to readability, Yoast SEO shows where the problem lies. However, the plug-in does not make any concrete suggestions for changes. In individual cases, it is therefore necessary to experiment a little with proofreading to see which changes lead to a better evaluation. Here are some basic tips to help achieve better readability with Yoast SEO.
Heel length
Ideal are paragraphs with a minimum of 150 and a maximum of 300 words. Shorter paragraphs should be linked together, sometimes it is worth formulating a new transitional sentence for this purpose. No paragraph should have more than 300 words, which makes reading on mobile devices particularly difficult. In addition, meaningful subtitles are useful.
Record length
Yoast SEO grumbles when sentences are longer than 20 words, because long sentences affect the flow of reading. A maximum of 25 percent of the sentences may have more than 20 words, so that the plug-in awards a green dot. Nevertheless, the fewer long sentences in the text, the better.
Word length
The choice of words also plays an important role in terms of readability. Yoast SEO appreciates especially short words with few syllables. So if there is a shorter synonym with the same meaning, this should be used. Abbreviations instead of long words are also valued positively (example: VAT instead of value added tax). In some cases there is neither an abbreviation nor an adequate synonym. Then you have to get creative and paraphrase a long word in several short words (example: "uphill" becomes "ascent on the mountain", "few" becomes "a few"). Then the text will be longer, but also the rating will be better.
Transition words
The term transitional words refers to words that illustrate the mental connection (example: beyond, in addition, after, according to, etc.). They make reading easier and, according to Yoast SEO, should appear in at least 30 percent of sentences.
Tips in quick succession: Get better readability with Yoast SEO
-use short, concise sentences of less than 20 words
-Extreme nested sentences should be avoided
-work with transitional words and phrases
-short Prefer words with a maximum of two syllables (abbreviations, synonyms or by paraphrasing)
-Structure text with intermediate captions and enumerations
-Writing paragraphs of 150 and 300 words
-Readers do not forget
