So you’ve written the perfect article. Everything’s there – great title, eye-catching photo, and all the information that people want. Except when people read it they don’t really understand most of it. They end up leaving your site with a headache. Perhaps it’s time to use a Readability Score.
What is a Readability Score?
A readability score is a computer-calculated index which can tell you roughly what level of education someone will need to be able to read a piece of text easily. – Readable.io
There are several algorithms for these and they calculate sentence length, syllable count, word length, and others to come up with their measurements.
One of the most common algorithms is the Flesch-Kincaid, which is the one we use also, and it’s two core measures are word length and sentence length.
What is a good Readability score?
Of course, you’ll have to take into account who you’re writing for before we can answer this. Writing for university graduates and kindergarten students would be quite different.
But to put it simply – the shorter and simpler the words score higher, and the shorter and more concise the sentence the better. The better the writing, the better user experience and hopefully it ends up in conversion.
Flesch reading ease – Wikipedia
And according to Readable.io –
For grade levels, the result of most of the scoring algorithms, the score corresponds roughly to the number of years of education a person has had (based on the USA education system).
A grade level of around 10-12 is roughly the reading level on completion of high school. Text to be read by the general public should aim for a grade level of around 8.
How can I use a Readability score?
If you are using WordPress, then Yoast SEO is a great tool to start with. That’s what we use and it’s been a pleasure to use. It’ll score your articles not just by Flesch reading test but also by other measures like the example below:
It’s fairly easy to follow so we suggest you be aware of following the guidelines before writing the article. If you want a more robust option then check out Readable.io.
