Readability archives

Recent Readability articles


How to write clear and SEO-friendly paragraphs

5 January 2023 Marieke van de Rakt

Crafting clear and correct paragraphs isn’t just about aesthetics. You shouldn’t put whitespace in your content just to make it look nicer. Paragraphs are actually a vital ingredient for readability, for both your readers and Google. So in order to create great content, you’ll need to give your paragraphs some extra SEO love! In this …

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How to write clear and SEO-friendly paragraphs


5 tips for writing readable blog posts

16 September 2022 Marieke van de Rakt

Reading from a screen can be difficult, so if you want people to read your whole blog post, it must be easy to read. This will get you more returning visitors and a higher conversion rate. Luckily, improving the readability of your content is something you can do relatively easily, to give your site a …

Read: "5 tips for writing readable blog posts"
5 tips for writing readable blog posts

Make satisfying content by managing users’ expectations

8 September 2022 Camille Cunningham

We’ve all been lured into clicking on unsatisfying search results before. At first glance, it looks promising. But if you can’t see what you’re looking for when you get there, you’ll probably just leave again. *Boing* — there goes the bounce rate! The fact is, just making content and getting it into the search results …

Read: "Make satisfying content by managing users’ expectations"
Make satisfying content by managing users’ expectations

Yoast SEO Premium 19.0: new emoji picker tool, word complexity feedback in more languages and Schema improvements

26 July 2022 | 4 Comments Willemien Hallebeek

We’re always working to improve and refine the Yoast SEO user experience with every release. In this release, we’ve rolled out improvements to our Schema structured data implementation and fixed a couple of bugs. Aside from that, we’ve decided to include some exciting additions to our plugins, starting with a new emoji picker tool and …

Read: "Yoast SEO Premium 19.0: new emoji picker tool, word complexity feedback in more languages and Schema improvements"
Yoast SEO Premium 19.0: new emoji picker tool, word complexity feedback in more languages and Schema improvements

The word complexity assessment in Yoast SEO Premium

12 July 2022 Edwin Toonen

The word complexity assessment in Yoast SEO Premium and Yoast SEO for Shopify checks whether a text has too many complex words. But what is a complex word in the first place? How many complex words are too many in a text? What is the scientific reasoning behind this assessment? You’ll find all the answers …

Read: "The word complexity assessment in Yoast SEO Premium"
The word complexity assessment in Yoast SEO Premium

Why you should use synonyms and related keywords

6 July 2022 | 2 Comments Marieke van de Rakt

Using the right keywords is essential in SEO. Because using the words your audience searches with will help your posts and pages rank. That’s why we always tell you to put some effort into finding the perfect keywords to optimize your articles for. So, after finding the perfect keyword, why shouldn’t you use it over …

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Why you should use synonyms and related keywords

Does readability rank? On ease of reading and SEO

21 September 2021 | 4 Comments Marieke van de Rakt

Is it worth your while making your text easy to read? Will it lead to higher rankings and more traffic? In simpler terms: Does readability rank? At Yoast, we’re convinced that writing in plain and understandable language can and will get you more visitors. We’ve even developed a tool to help people write readable text. …

Read: "Does readability rank? On ease of reading and SEO"
Does readability rank? On ease of reading and SEO

The readability checks in Yoast SEO: a closer look with our linguists

14 May 2021 | 6 Comments Willemien Hallebeek

This month we are commemorating 5 years since the Yoast SEO readability check was first released! Since then, we’ve continued making improvements. We sat down with our Linguistics team lead, Manuel Augustin, and researcher-developer, Hanna Worku, to get a deeper view of how the readability check works and how they adapt the tool to add …

Read: "The readability checks in Yoast SEO: a closer look with our linguists"
The readability checks in Yoast SEO: a closer look with our linguists