5 Benefits of Readability Tools

Readability tools are apps or websites that evaluate the difficulty of your writing and help you make it easier to read and understand. 

Although jargon and complex sentences may be common in technical industries, ensuring content is readable is often key to connecting with many audiences. However, that’s not the only reason to use readability tools.

Read on to learn more about why readability is important, and the benefits of using readability tools to enhance your writing.

Key Takeaways (TL;DR)

• Readability is important because it helps avoid misunderstandings, improves SEO, and results in better engagement with your content.
• The key benefits of readability tools include saving time in editing, improving the quality of your writing, potentially boosting SEO and online presence, increasing reader engagement, and its cost-effectiveness and scalability.
• Originality.ai offers a free readability checker to help optimize your content.

Why Is Readability Important?

It may add to your content creation time, but when you consider the benefits of improving readability, it’s worth it. Writing for readability is important for several reasons, including:

• Avoid misunderstandings: Contrary to popular belief, using complex words doesn’t necessarily make writing appear more intelligent.
  • Research conducted by Princeton University shows that unnecessary complexity negatively impacts reader impressions.
• Improve SEO: Readability may not be a direct ranking factor, but it can still affect your search engine optimization (SEO) efforts. Google suggests that ensuring your text is “easy to read and well organized” can influence your search rankings.
• Better engagement: More often than not, people aren’t going to buy, sign up for, or even share something they don’t understand. Using plain language helps ensure that people of all reading levels can confidently engage with your content.

Fortunately, readability tools can make creating more readable content a breeze.

5 Key Benefits of Readability Tools

Readability tools, also known as readability checkers, are essential in many marketers’ and writers’ editorial toolkits for creating more enjoyable, easier-to-understand content. 

Here are some of the reasons you should consider one:

1. Save time in editing

One of the biggest benefits of using a readability checker is that it saves time during editing. It automates the readability assessment process so you can avoid calculating the various readability formulas and scores manually. 

 If you’re unfamiliar with these formulas, check out the links below for more information:

• Flesch Kincaid Grade Level
• Flesch Kincaid Reading Ease
• FORCAST Readability Formula
• Gunning Fog Index
• SMOG Index

Considering the complexity of calculating some readability formulas, using a tool can save considerable time and effort.

2. Improve writing clarity and quality

Another key benefit of using readability tools is that they can help you improve the clarity and quality of your text. After all, is something really high-quality content writing if no one can understand what it's trying to say?

While some words may not seem complicated to you that doesn’t mean your audience feels the same way. Readability tools can be helpful here because they provide a look at how readers may receive your content. 

These tools can pinpoint words and sentences that may be too complex for your audience, enabling you to replace them with easier-to-understand options.

3. Enhance SEO and online presence

One of the indirect ways that using readability tools can influence SEO is by improving on-page time and reducing bounce rates. 

Research by Backlinko shows that the time spent on a website is associated with higher rankings, and people are more likely to stick around and read through a webpage they understand than one they don’t.

As a bonus, readability tools can help you optimize for featured snippets. 

Featured snippets appear at the top of search engine results pages (SERPs), giving your site more visibility and the potential for a better click-through rate. 

According to Semrush, these snippets are typically about 40 to 50 words long. Readability tools can help you make writing more concise to fit into that range. 

4. Increase reader engagement

Readability tools can also help you increase reader engagement. 

A study published in the Journal of Consumer Psychology found that easy-to-read posts receive more social media engagement. 

Additionally, a 2020 publication from the Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy noted that half of Americans 16 to 74 have low literacy levels.

So, ensuring your content is as readable as possible can be key to connecting with your audience and receiving more likes, shares, and comments.

However, it’s worth noting that the readability score you should aim for can depend on your audience. For example, if your audience tends to have a post-graduate level of education, aiming for a reading grade level of 12 or above may be more appropriate than an elementary school level.

5. A cost-effective and scalable solution for improving readability

Finally, readability tools offer a cost-effective and scalable solution to reap all the benefits of creating more readable content. 

Scanning a few short posts weekly for clarity and conciseness may not take up too much of your time, but this can grow exponentially if your word or client count grows. Automating readability assessments is a cost-effective way to save time when you’re scaling content.

Originality.ai offers a best-in-class readability checker that provides information about the readability of your text, including:

• Text issues, like average words per sentence, words with more than 12 letters, and the average syllables per word.
• Letter, sentence, and word count, and other text stats.
• Text scores across multiple readability formulas.
• Keyword density of your top 10 single and double keywords.

Start Using Readability Tools to Create More Effective Content Today

It’s essential to optimize content to resonate with your audience and rank well on search engines. Improving the readability of your content with a readability checker can help you save time, increase clarity, and boost reader engagement. 

Learn more about readability and readability tools:

• 5 Yoast SEO Readability Tool Alternatives
• 6 Benefits of Improving Readability in E-commerce Content
• 8 Essentials to Know About Content Readability in Web Publishing