Want to improve the readability of your site? The easiest way to do this is by adding a readability score analysis in WordPress. It allows you to analyze your posts and pages for readability using industry standard tools. In this article, we will show you how to add and improve readability score in WordPress posts.
Adding Readability Score Analysis for WordPress Posts
There are plenty of WordPress plugins that you can use to add readability score in WordPress posts.
If you are already using Yoast SEO plugin, then you are in luck. Yoast SEO comes with a built-in content analysis tool. This tool checks your content’s readability and make suggestions.
As you’re working on your new post, scroll down to the Yoast SEO metabox, and you will find the content analysis below the focus keyword.
Some of you may not be using Yoast SEO, or may want to see multiple readability scores. Here is how you can add separate readability analysis section for your posts.
First thing you need to do is install and activate the FD Word Statistics plugin. The plugin works out of the box, and there are no settings for you to configure.
Simply create a new post or edit an existing one. You will find a writing analysis metabox below the post editor.
This writing analysis metabox will show the readability score of your content using Fog, Kincaid, and Flesch readability tests.
The FD Word Stats plugin shows readability scores for single posts. See our guide on how to get word count stats in WordPress with Word Stats. It will help you get even more readability scores and statistics for your content.
Understand Readability Analysis Scores
Readability tests typically consider the number of sentences per paragraph, number of words used in a paragraph, and total syllables.
The Fog and Kincaid reading scores show the years of education required to read the passage as their score. This means that the higher the score, the more difficult your content is to read.
Flesch reading analysis scores based on ease of read between 0-100 where 0 is the most difficult to read.
Tips on Improving Your Site’s Readability
The readability analysis tools are a great way to improve your content. However, there is a lot more you can do to further improve your site’s readability.
First thing you need to understand is that users don’t always read the entire article. They scan the information to find the interesting bits.
Keeping your sentences short, and using fewer sentences per paragraph makes your content easy to scan. See how to add single/double line spacing in WordPress.
You should consider replacing difficult words with more commonly used and easy to understand words. Difficult vocabulary makes it harder to scan your pages.
Typography plays a very important role in improving the readability. If your text is too small and difficult to read, then this will obviously affect user experience on your site. Even if your content is well written, it will be hard to read.
If you are using Google Fonts on your website, then stick with one or two fonts throughout your page.
Make sure there is plenty of white space on your pages. If your content blocks are too close to each other, then try adding padding between them. You can do that by using CSS in your theme’s stylesheet. If you don’t know CSS, then you can use the CSS Hero plugin.
We hope this article helped you add and improve readability score for your WordPress posts. You may also want to check out these 14 tips for mastering visual editor in WordPress.
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I am just starting up, I have to admint that wpbeginner have been like home for me in the last few weeks. Laerning and putting what I’ve learned in practice. Please help in any way possible that I may be doing wrong or where i need to improve .
I wrote an article in Indonesian
It is my understanding that the articles I write, it is easy to understand,
Yoast SEO plugin yet, in terms of readability, they give a red score, especially about the Flesch Reading Ease
Do readability function for all languages?
thank you
Hi Vitus,
Unfortunately, readability feature does not work well for many languages. You can ignore the Flesch reading scores.
My Yoast SEO provides content analysis on my pages but not on my posts. The post only has a spot to write in your focus keywords – nothing under content analysis.. am I doing something wrong????
Did you provide a focus keyword? Content Analysis needs a focus keyword before it can analyze your content.
Yes, SEO by Yoast comes with this feature but i really don’t know that this thing is already available in yoast. Currently i am working on and trying to giving my best to take it next level. Thanks for this guide !!!
Though I can see the advantages of these readability tools, but on the other hand, I think it is a quite a dangerous way to write content. If all writers/bloggers are going to level down the standards of content and start using only easy understandable texts, then it will result in more and more people that can only understand simple written texts.
I want to ask: all of these tests work only for english? or are them enough trustworthy for other languages like spanish, french, german, etc?
The formulas for readability tests were designed with English language in mind. Some components like shorter sentences, words per sentence, sentences per paragraph, etc. can work for other languages that use Latin script.