SEO Content Readability: 5 Mistakes Your Plugin Won’t Detect

To the ears of marketers, the term "readability" invariably conjures up that well-known WordPress plugin: Yoast SEO. If you've never used it, this is a Yoast feature that calculates the "difficulty" of reading a piece of writing using a mysterious algorithm.

It then makes suggestions such as shortening sentences, using a more active voice, and breaking up lengthy passages of text with subheadings. It's even audacious enough to place red or orange bullets next to posts it deems algorithmically unworthy, but let's avoid that discussion.

Transition word problems: First, I’m going to scatter transition words everywhere. After that, I’ll secure a green bullet. In conclusion, I’m going to throw my writing out the window.

Yoast’s bottom line is that readability ranks. But the definition of readability continues to evolve with technology like NLP (Natural Language Processing). It’s taking on a more human form. In this post, I’m going to provide five ways to improve the human readability of your content which, in turn, will improve its algorithmic readability too. They include:

1. Lose the clickbait titles
2. Don’t keyword stuff (even if subtle)
3. Quit the over-paragraphing
4. Nix the bulking out of how-to posts for no reason
5. Resist over-formatting
6. Link with mercy

Why HUMAN readability is important

As mentioned above, readability ranks. They say greater reading ease:

• Improves user experience.
• Increases the chances of your post ranking well for voice search.
• Appeals to search engines that are increasingly attuned to what human beings perceive as worthwhile writing.

Now, I'm sceptical of any algorithmic writing approach. I have little patience with the Yoast plugin's decrees, writing tools such as Grammarly, or anything else that attempts to obstruct my thoughts while I'm writing (sighs in predictive text).

However, Yoast makes an important point here, one that is frequently overlooked in the chaotic box-checking process of SEO writing: your reader is not the search engine, but a human being expecting a sense of linguistic cohesion. And, with Google's advancements in natural language processing, you can (read: should) consider the search engine to be a person as well—at least to some extent.

Concentrating on keyword rankings is an effective strategy for driving traffic to your website—but if you lose sight of the fact that you're writing for humans, not search engines, you're doing it wrong. This is the sort of attitude that leads to articles like this one lamenting the way search results now appear to favour algorithms over users.

I'm being serious. According to the article's exasperated author, Nick Slater, writing with only the search engine's interests in mind results in "a masterpiece by SEO writing standards and an absolute turd by conventional writing standards." As one might expect, this stuff drives people insane.

Writing with only a search engine’s interests in mind results in “…a masterpiece by SEO writing standards and an absolute turd by regular writing standards.”

How to increase the readability of your content for SEO purposes

On that note, for the sake of your readers' sanity, here are a few simple steps you can take to increase your content's human readability.

1. Eliminate clickbait headlines

We're all fairly accustomed to the internet at this point. Perhaps a dramatic blog post title like "[X number] of Content Marketing Mistakes That Will Blow Your Mind" would have been effective in 2010, but now we simply roll our eyes and scroll.

The same is true for any headline that promises to be "ultimate," "revealed," or "revolutionary." If I see a headline that promises to be "ultimate," "revealed," or "revolutionary," I immediately disregard it. (Same goes for titles that promise unfathomable success upon reading that post.)

‘Shake Off the Shackles of Ordinary Headlines TODAY!’

A little bit of showmanship is acceptable.

It's acceptable to retain some showmanship in a title, but keep it grounded. The title of WordStream's own post on the subject, 'What You're Doing Wrong with Your Content Marketing: 5 Common Mistakes,' addresses the reader directly, even assuming that they're making mistakes in the first place. However, it does not patronise the reader with the phrase "5 Content Marketing Mistakes You'll NEVER Believe You're Making". The distinction, I believe, is self-evident.

Ensure that you keep your promise.

My point is that you should avoid setting unrealistic expectations. Consider your headlines carefully—much like the process of titling a book, what you choose has a significant impact on how a text is received. (So much so that publishers have changed the titles of prolific authors such as Toni Morrison for commercial reasons.)

Your instincts are significant.

Others have conducted extensive research into what constitutes a good headline: Danny Goodwin previously shared his findings from 31 days of A/B testing headlines in an insightful post I recommend. Simply remember that, quantifiable metrics and headline analyzers notwithstanding, your instincts (informed by your uniquely human understanding of language) almost always know better.

2. Stop the keyword stuffing (even the subtle kind)

Good ol’ keyword stuffing. When keyword stuffing occurs, you’ll be sure keyword stuffing is taking place, because every other phrase will contain the same words, in classic keyword stuffing fashion.

Google's enigmatic algorithm allegedly knows better than to use keyword density as a proxy for information quality and relevance, but we've all encountered a wall of repeated keywords when searching for something. What if there is valuable information hidden among all the keywords? I require the ability to locate it, and keyword stuffing is a hindrance.

3. Quit over-paragraphing

What is this, a poem?

If not, why the line breaks?

Are you typing this on your phone?

A 5-word sentence is not a paragraph, even on smartphones.

Stop throwing your reader off!

Whether you’re writing a blog post or an email, micro-paragraphs are seriously distracting. As soon as they start saying something, they suddenly get cut off at the windpipe, gaping at you wide-eyed and short-lived. I’m not sure what the thinking behind this tendency is (if it’s “better readability,” then I weep for the human race), but the good news is that it’s an easy thing to fix.

There’s a time and a place

Just aim to be more mindful of when you press ‘enter’—and if, after a second glance, it seems there’s no reason for you to change lines, just don’t do it. Second-guessing yourself is actually a key step towards becoming a better writer, so feel free to have a full-blown existential crisis over every minor decision. Congrats, you’re a writer now!

(In all seriousness, here’s a resource on self-editing if you need one.)

Take a look at this example from a post on online presence. In the red box, every sentence feels like a profound statement. Is this a list? Are they separate ideas? What is the key takeaway from this collection of lines? In the green box, the key takeaway is isolated as its own line with supporting information above it.

Reserve single sentence paragraphs for strong statements.

4. Nix bulking out how-to posts for no reason

People Google all sorts of things, so as an SEO writer, you’ll often have to do some intellectual gymnastics to come up with effective answers to everyone’s queries: You might be working on “how to be happy” one day, and “how to use chopsticks” the next.

You’re not in high school anymore

“How to be happy” might warrant a lengthy, meditative piece of writing, but you could probably knock out “how to use chopsticks” in two or three practical steps. The key thing to remember is that this isn’t your high school coursework, and you don’t need to bulk out your writing until you reach a certain word count.

You could actually come off as condescending

If anything, over-explaining simple tasks comes across as patronizing (not to mention boring), and achieves the opposite of user-friendliness. Keep it simple, and respect your reader’s time, as well as your own.

(In case you were wondering, “how to be happy” currently has a U.S. monthly search volume of 27,000, whereas “how to use chopsticks” gets 31,000 searches, according to Ahrefs. You might think people have their priorities wrong, but you could also argue that noodles, in fact, are a more dependable path to true happiness.)

5. Resist over-formatting

Anxiety about “skimmability” sometimes manifests as excessive formatting. Headers become larger, maybe even presented in a different font, to improve navigation. Great!

• One or two words italicized? Sure.
• Information broken into short bullet points? Fair enough.
• Occasional bolding to call out important information? Sounds good.

But if half the text is bright blue with hyperlinks, if it looks like a pinata of headings and subheadings exploded, or if there are five different fonts competing for your attention on a single page? Not so good.

Winnie isn’t sure what “skimmable” means anymore.

Skimmable content should not be busy content

There’s a reason typography is usually left to the experts (at least in print): because they know how to establish a sense of visual hierarchy, so your attention goes exactly where it should. For those of us sadly not blessed with professional typographic skills, overcompensating with loads of formatting is not the way to go. Make the most of your headers and bullets, but if more of your text is more formatted than not, you need to reevaluate.

Stick to your header tags, people!

6. Link with mercy

One last thing: Yes, internal and external linking are important, but try not to abuse the number of links you include in a piece of writing. Ideally, aim to never exceed two links in a single paragraph—otherwise you risk distracting the reader. If you really do have a lot of important resources to share, consider listing them at the bottom of an article as recommended reading.

Do NOT take a page out of Wikipedia’s book.

Use links strategically

But more than that, be careful with the kind of links you include in a post. You might not be entirely in control of what you have to link to as part of your job, but you are in control of how you employ links within the text.

In this post, for example, all links point to

a) The definition of a term it’s attached to, in case clarification is needed,
b) The source for a specific claim, or
c) There’s a more in-depth guide to a related topic I mention in passing. I didn’t link a random chopsticks post when I mentioned noodles, awkwardly ignoring it and continuing on, allowing the unacknowledged irrelevant link to silently glare at us both.

Relevancy is key

You might be thinking that I’d have no choice but to link to a random chopsticks brand if that was who I worked for—but I wouldn’t then be writing a post about marketing. I’d be writing about chopsticks, and the link would be relevant.

SEO readability is not formulaic anymore

I hope it’s clear by now that readability is far more than a formulaic plugin box to check! As one of the main pillars of good content, it’s about mindset as much as it is about individual writing choices. Some websites might currently be getting away with prioritizing the algorithm’s needs, but as the algorithm itself becomes more sophisticated and (yikes!) human-like in its preferences, writing that factors in human readability will rise to the top. And it’ll do that because people simply won’t hate to read it.

About the author

Kleopatra Olympiou is a writer with Reedsy, a marketplace that connects authors and publishers with the world’s best editors, designers, and marketers.