Features per language
Most of the content checks in Yoast SEO work for every language. It just doesn’t matter if you’re writing Dutch, English, Romanian or Afrikaans. In virtually all languages we can recognize if your focus keyphrase has been used in the first paragraph, if you’re using enough words, and if you specified a meta description.
However, some checks are language-specific, and some of the checks behave differently for different languages. That’s simply because languages happen to be different. In the table below, you’ll find a list of language-specific features and the languages they’ve been implemented for. Below that, you’ll find more specific information on how the readability analysis differs across languages.
| EN | DE | NL | FR | ES | IT | PT | RU | PL | CAT | SV | HG | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Transition words | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Flesch reading ease | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ |
| Passive voice | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ | ✅ | ❌ |
| Function Words These are used for internal linking, insights and keyphrase-related analyses. | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ | ✅ | ❌ |
| Word Forms See also Yoast SEO 9.0 release post. | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ |
| Sentence beginnings Warns you when consecutive sentences start with the same word or words | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ | ✅ | ❌ |
| Sentence length Indicates that we’ve confirmed or adjusted the limit for the advised maximum number of words per sentence. | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ |
| Internal linking and Prominent words See also Yoast SEO 4.0 release post. | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ | ✅ | ❌ |
Language-specific variations of the readability analysis
What constitutes a good writing style is different in every language. That’s why we fine-tune our readability analyses for each language. For this, we use style guides written for that specific language, or formulas that were specifically developed for that language. Here, you can find out exactly what that leads to. If your language isn’t mentioned, it follows the default analysis.
Sentence length
| Default | Italian | Polish | Russian | |
| Recommended maximum length | 20 words | 25 words | 20 words | 15 words |
| Maximum percentage of sentences over limit (red bullet if over) | 30% | 30% | 20% | 30% |
| Slightly too many sentences over the limit (orange bullet) | 25-30% | 25-30% | 15-20% | 25-30% |
Flesch Reading Ease
| Default | Russian | |
| Very easy | 90 | 80 |
| Easy | 80 | 70 |
| Fairly easy | 70 | 60 |
| Okay | 60 | 50 |
| Fairly difficult | 50 | 40 |
| Difficult | 30 | 20 |
| Very difficult | 0 | 0 |