SEO Content Readability: 10 Mistakes Your Plugin Won’t Detect

Any Writer’s, blogger’s, basically any content creator’s biggest dream is always that their creation reaches the maximum number of audience. When a writer invests hours into thinking and writing a piece of content, they expect that that work will get them the desired attention. The most important thing in this process is traffic. Whenever a website or a web page is created, all it needs to boost and survive is traffic. As a result, people see your page more and more and even share it with other people.

This can be improved by a process known as Search Engine Optimization or SEO. It is a method of improving the quality and traffic to your web page from search engines. The main function of SEO is to target unpaid audience/traffic rather than targeting paid traffic. Unpaid traffic means natural traffic. People who search for images or videos or news flash online come under this crowd.

In a nutshell, SEO examines how search engines work, how algorithms of a computer program work to dictate a search engine, most typed keywords in the search bars, and the best search engine. The main reason to perform SEO is that a website will be ranked much higher in the SERP (search engine result page), and there will be even more traffic due to the high rank. Later, this traffic that comes to visit might be turned into potential customers in the future.

SEO can get you traffic

But keeping that traffic engaged is totally on you. Today we are specifically talking about writers and bloggers. With SEO, it’ll be easy for people to see your page on the net, but there is no guarantee that they’ll like, and more importantly, understand your language every time. To avoid this, there is a tool to help you, called Readability. The meaning is very literal. Readability in SEO is a function that makes it easy and understandable to read for your target audience.

The ideal readability score is 60-70. Readability can increase the traffic majorly. When it is clear for your traffic that what your page has to offer and understand what you are selling, people will come to your page more and more, and your page will be ranked higher.

As easy as it sounds, owning a website is more than just that. It can be costly. Not everyone who can write and share their work can purchase a domain for a website. To that, there is an amazing alternative known as WordPress. It is free to use a content managing system (CMS). It was originally made for blogging, but with time has evolved to include other web content types, such as photo galleries, learning systems, and online stores.

WordPress has also been used as a PDS. Its features include plugins and Themes. You must be wondering what a plugin is. A plugin is software comprising a group of functions that can be included in WordPress websites. They can add new features to WordPress instead of just limited features. There is a saying among those who know how to use WordPress that goes like “there’s a plugin for that,” which means new features can be added to the website by those who know a coding line.

There are hundreds of plugins available in the official WordPress directory. These are free to use. Apart from these free plugins, there are the ones that can be bought and available for free at third-party websites. One such WordPress plugin that allows giving a readability score is known as Yoast SEO. It uses an algorithm that calculates how difficult it is for the audience to read a piece of content.

Once this is done, it then suggests whether you need to reduce the length of paragraphs, use more active voice than passive, or break up large texts with subheadings. This plugin’s bottom line is that Readability is king. These plugins are nothing but software, and like any software, these too have bugs in them. It is known worldwide that coders make software. But even the most skilled coder can mess up their code. It’s just a matter of time.

Though there are plugins like Yoast that tell you your readability score and how easy or difficult it is to read, the software can compare to the needs of a human eye. Software is not human. It’ll only detect errors that are errors for the software. It can be possible that humans need more than just a readability score, like linguistic connection.

There might be slang and words that aren’t included in the plugin dictionary, but it’s easier to understand that way for us. To gain a reasonable readability score, one must keep in mind and avoid the following mistakes:

1. Keep sentences short:

   If you are typing the same thing for a long time, stop. When we need to portray an idea to somebody, we use complex sentences to show our point better. Even the plugin like Yoast will judge the text based on the overall length and sentences used. Try keeping it short.

2. Stop stuffing words:

   It is natural for writers to use as many words as possible to make their content lengthy, which is sometimes bad for them. However, when you stuff unnecessary words in a sentence, the readability software counts them as useless, and hence your overall score decreases.

3. Consecutive sentences:

   According to Yoast, sentences that start with the same words, again and again, might feel repetitive to the reader. Whenever this happens, you will point out the mistake, and hence you’ll have to change it.

4. Paragraph length:

   According to software like Grammarly, if your paragraph contains more than 150 words, it is considered too lengthy. People can find long paragraphs as a blob. Write as many paragraphs as you want; just keep them short.

5. Subheadings:

   When there are bold writings in between long texts, it is engaging and pleasant for the reader. Try adding subheadings and pointers in your text.

6. Flesch reading ease:

   This took measures of how difficult a text is to read. The lower the score, the more difficult it is to read. To avoid this, try to use simpler words instead of very complex words that people won’t understand. But that does not mean you use simplicity in everything. If there is a need for a complex word to make people understand a sentence, go for it.

7. Use links:

   This is a smart way to make your text look lengthy without using extra words that are not needed. Adding links make your text look confident to the readers and even to the software.

8. Re-checking:

   After every text you complete writing, going through it again is mandatory. Grammatical errors have no room in this field. You need to be careful about how you form your sentences.

9. Don’t use clichè titles:

   Titles like “world’s best coffee” might work ten years ago, but not now. People know that it is just a trick to attract the crowd to the page. Instead, use relevant and non-extravagant titles, which fulfill the purpose of your text, i.e., engage with the audiences.

10. Do not copy others:

    Lastly, plagiarism is the most sinful task one can do here. It won’t take a second for any software to catch that you have copied someone else’s work. So avoid plagiarism as much as you can. Until and unless it is about a product, don’t use details that are used somewhere else.

    Below listed are some more tricks that will help your audience as well as search engines to read your content more easily:

    Description use – Using headings and subheadings lets the search engines categorize information and makes it easier for an audience to search for the desired content.

    Using the right font – using small fonts makes it a task for readers to read. So make sure you use the correct size and font style.

    Usee images – Pictures enhance the words. Try to incorporate images with the text.

Conclusion

It is very important to get a review of anything you create before you put it out publicly. It should be appealing and easy for your audience to consume and believe. Make sure your creation moves people and inspires, but at the same time should be 100% original.