As we all know, the quality of our content is crucial for our website to be successful. The training we have received from Kyle, Carson and the other gurus here underline that fact. But is it readable to the many visitors we hope to attract? If our content has an easy style, one that makes our readers comfortable, then we are more likely to get those readers to return and engage with us through their meaningful comments.

How Is That Possible?

Writing killer content that keeps the reader engaged is not an easy task, especially if we feel our education has limited us, we have a language barrier or we just aren't confident enough to go for it. What can help us make our writing readable?

Recently, I changed my SEO plug-in to SEO by Yoast. It was what my wife’s website designer had recommended and many here at Wealthy Affiliate also spoke highly of it. As I unleashed its power on my website, I noticed a comment on the SEO report for one of my posts. It read, “The copy scores 70 in the The Flesch Reading Ease test, which is considered fairly easy to read.”

I, of course imagined that the higher the score, the better. Let’s aim for 100%, I thought. But before we get too excited about what score to aim for, it is worthwhile learning what this Flesch Reading Ease score is all about.

What Is the Flesch Reading Ease?

Note the following explanation:

“Flesch Reading Ease Formula is considered as one of the oldest and most accurate readability formulas. The Flesch Reading Ease Formula is a simple approach to assess the grade-level of the reader. It’s also one of the few accurate measures around that we can rely on without too much scrutiny. This formula is best used on school text. It has since become a standard readability formula used by many US Government Agencies, including the US Department of Defense. However, primarily, we use the formula to assess the difficulty of a reading passage written in English.” (source: readabilityformulas.com)

Flesch Readability Scale

The scale is as follows:

100: Very easy to read. Average sentence length is 12 words or fewer. No words of more than two syllables.

65: Plain English. Average sentence is 15 to 20 words long. Average word has two syllables.

30: A little hard to read. Sentences will have mostly 25 words. Two syllables usually.

0: Very hard to read. Average sentence is 37 words long. Average word has more than two syllables.

So let’s break it down a little more. The following table is also helpful to assess the ease of readability in a document or post:

90-100 : Very Easy
80-89 : Easy
70-79 : Fairly Easy
60-69 : Standard
50-59 : Fairly Difficult
30-49 : Difficult
0-29 : Very Confusing

How do you go about testing your content? Page 2 will answer that question...