What if I told you there’s a tool that can help take your writing from unreadable to
clear and concise?
What if I said that tool was also free?
Our Readability Test Tool aims to help you understand how easy or difficult it is to
read your content so you can write in a way that works for your audience.
If people have trouble reading your content, they won’t truly understand your message
and will miss out on the valuable insights you’ve crafted for them.
Using the tool is pretty simple.
You’ll start by telling it what content you want to analyze.
You can choose to submit a URL to your page, copy and paste your text directly into the
tool, or embed a snippet of code on one of your pages.
If you use the tool by adding a link or copying and pasting, click the “Calculate Readability”
button to get your analysis.
The results include a mix of different readability indicators as well as some general statistics
about the text.
Without some background, the scores you get might seem useless, so I’m going to talk
about what your results mean for your website.
Let’s start with Flesch Kincaid.
So this category is broken down into two separate metrics: Reading Ease and Grade Level.
Flesch Kincaid Reading Ease is a score from 0-100 that tells you how hard it is to understand
your text.
A higher score means your content is easy to understand.
Your business should generally aim for a score between 60 and 80, with 65 being a great target.
A score in that range should be understood by 12-15 year olds.
Flesch Kincaid Grade Level explains what American grade level you’d have to be in to understand
your content.
The higher your Reading Ease score is, the lower your Grade Level score should be.
Next on the list are the Gunning Fog Score, SMOG Index, Coleman Liau Index and the Automated
Readability Index.
All of these indicators focus on how much formal schooling you need to understand a
text.
A good benchmark to shoot for is a seventh to ninth grade reading level since that’s
about where the average American’s reading level sits.
Each of these metrics uses a series of mathematical equations to arrive at a number.
Our tool does all of that math in the background so you don’t have to worry about it.
To make things even easier, we also have indicator bars that change color to give you a visual
representation of your score.
Let’s put this information into action.
I’m going to plug three websites into the Readability Test Tool, one that’s aimed
at younger web users, one for the general public, and one that’s maybe a bit more
scholarly.
First, I grabbed the URL to an article about brown bears from National Geographic Kids.
Since this is aimed at kids, the writing is simple with a middle school grade level.
It’s meant for kids who are around 11 or 12 years old.
Looking at all of the scores, you see a lot of green.
This content is highly readable because kids won’t understand the information if it’s
presented in a complex way.
Second, I’m having the tool look at an article about music from The New York Times.
I’d classify the Times as targeting the general public.
The New York Times is generally read by a lot of people with varying reading levels.
Looking at the total score, it falls within that safe spot of a middle school to early
high school reading level.
The color indicators are a mix of green and yellow, so the text isn’t too easy or too
hard.
Again, it’s in the middle, where it should be.
Third, I’m going to analyze Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 18.”
I wouldn’t consider Shakespeare an easy read.
After copying and pasting the text into the tool, I see that the text has a high average
grade level.
Notice that the indicator bars use a lot of orange, yellow, and red.
Very different from the other two websites.
So I guess the next question for your content would be, “What do you do with this information
when you have it?”
Before you make any changes to your content, take some time to understand who you’re
trying to reach.
If you create content for the general public, meaning people who are not experts in your
industry, you probably want to stick with a seventh to ninth grade reading level so
a larger number of people can understand your message.
On the other hand, if you’re trying to reach experts or people with a bit more knowledge
about the topics you cover, you might be able to aim for a higher reading level with more
complex language.
When you use the Readability Test Tool with your audience in mind, you can be a better
judge of whether or not your writing works for the people who actually read your content.
If you’re aiming for the average American and the results show that your content needs
to be simplified, take action by shortening your sentences, replacing complex words with
simpler ones, and removing confusing, industry-specific jargon.
You probably don’t need to take action if your content works for your audience, although
you might want to run your pages through our SEO Checker to make sure they’re optimized
for search engines.
Happy writing!