Yoast
Suggestion for readability test
I think it is not really convenient & feasible to apply the very same criteria to both literary / casual and scientific content. The latter typically involves longer words (possibly in other languages, such as Latin etc. and very likely more complex syntax. The only way to make such text pass the Flesh reading ease test (and possibly others of your criteria) is to compensate such inevitable features by using "baby English" otherwise, which leads to rather odd text. I think there should be a selector for scientific vs. literary text, whereby for the former the criteria should be adapted / more suitable for such environments. In particular, the criteria for sentence length and the Flesh test criteria should be relaxed for the selection "scientific". Of course, I could say "OK, this is scientific, so orange bullets are OK" — but that is not satisfactory in the long run.
WP 4.6.1 Yoast 3.5
We could look at a way to adjust the scoring of the flesch reading. Currently you will need to score 60 or more to 'earn' a green bullet. But for more scientific texts a lower score would be ok too. I don't know how exactly we can implement this, but it is something we will consider for a future release.
Hello, I have the Yoast SEO Premium and the Readability not work at all on Spanish website. Even if a try to do the "baby English" or add English content.
This happen to me often
- In The Yoast the content have to be more than 249 words to Ok, but adding more words in the content make the Readability "very difficult to read"
- In the Journalism Rules we need to answer the 5W in the first paragraph which mean in the Readability "Try to shorten the sentences."
- When I do short sentences to put "ok or good" in the Readability, is bad in the SEO.
- Only appears ok when I just put a Link and a one sentence/link and a subheading. (Only for Videos or description news)
Maybe YOAST should be adjust in the middle term of the SEO and Readability, don't add limited sentences or put the same "Analysis" in the two ways because in one is good but the other mean the opposite. Is like you tell me to add a 300 hundred words GOOD for SEO bu is bad to the Readability because is too long.
Thank You!
@lacangrimm Thanks for your reply. If you have an example text we can use to see if we can optimize the analyses that would be great. Regarding your points:
- The Flesch Reading Ease score is the one that will report 'very difficult to read.', this is based on the number of syllables in a word, and the number of words in a sentence. Adding more words shouldn't change this score if the complexity and distribution of those words is comparable to previous sentences. If you have an example where this is being incorrect, please let us know so we can look into that.
- We suggest not using sentences over 20 words too much, since that would be more difficult to read, especially from a screen.
- The SEO analysis and readability analysis are separate analyses. The only thing is if you add more words, the keyword density could go down, and this might affect the SEO score. The idea is to find a good balance between a readable text and a good keyword density. If you have an idea to improve this, please let us know. This way we can see if we can finetune the scores.
- If you only have a short text, the readability score won't run because there are to few words to use for an analysis. If you only have a link to a video, there is of course not much optimizing for readability. Also for the keyword density, we need at least 100 words in the text.
Generally speaking, we try to find a good balance between the 2 analyses, but having a good SEO score doesn't mean the readability has to be bad or vice versa. If you'd like to know more about certain choices we made regarding the readability analysis, this article explains our choices: https://yoast.com/content-analysis-methodological-choices-explained/
Remember My suggestion are based in Spanish language. Which mean:
1- The Sentences are more longer in Spanish than English. One word in English can be 2 or three words more in Spanish. For example: [Spansih] En este negocio hay que estar comprando ropa todo el tiempo porque siempre hay shows y no puedes repetir la ropa porque te quemas. [Englsih] In this business we need to buy clothes all the time because we have a lot of music shows.
- And What about the transition words https://yoast.com/writing-blog-creating-clear-blog-post-structure/#transition-words. I Always have bad because are in Spanish "0% of the sentences contain a transition word or phrase, which is less than the recommended minimum of 30%.
On everything else, When I do the right focus and the 300 words I have a perfect SEO. But the Analysis still bad in thats 3 point. a. Flesch Reading Ease b. sentences contain more than 20 words, c. 0% of the sentences contain a transition word
I think my suggestion here is to add some Spanish language in the SEO. Because with all the analysis doesnt work in Spanish website.
Check the attachment below about what I said of Text amount. The Minimum on SEO is 300 words. But in the Readability the Max is 300 (When i Exceed the icon turn orange or red depends of quantity). So i have to write 300 Exact?
@lacangrimm If you write in Spanish I would suggest running the admin in Spanish. This way we can run the analysis in Spanish that are already available. Currently we have a Spanish check for transition words and consecutive sentence beginnings. Flesch Reading Ease is a pretty complex test that is very language dependent. Running the English test on a Spanish text won't make much sense. We hope to bring the Flesch Reading Ease test to a lot more languages in the future, but currently we only have support for English, German and Dutch.
So switching to Spanish will give you a more accurate score, since it will take the transition words for Spanish into account and will omit the Flesch Reading Ease, because that doesn't work on Spanish for now.
Regarding the number of words. We require at least 300 words for a decent SEO score. For readability we suggest not to put these 300 words in 1 big block of text, but encourage you to make use of subheadings, so this will be easier to read.
Well a Website in "Spanglish", the YOAST Readbility doesn't work.
You need to add that info on the website for those admin who have a different language in the cpanel, but in the website is other. Or add the option of Language inside of the Yoast for the people who use both like me.
Well, this thread was hijacked for something else. Let's try to bring it back on track, shall we?
I want to suggest readability settings, e.g. "target reading ease score", "target sentence length", "ignore list items" (see #5246), "ignore section length" and "ignore consecutive same sentence start". Such settings will allow users to get green scores that suit their needs.
See also suggestions in #5280.
Yoast is not responsible for optimising sites. If people want to write hard articles, that's their choice. Yoast can just provide great tools to assess the writing.
We tell users they should write content for their audiences (see: https://yoast.com/flesch-reading-ease-score/), yet the Flesch Reading Score is not always appropriate for all audiences.
For example, different types of products may need more technical specifications, jargon or information such as machine tools.
In addition, posts may be written with a specific audience in mind like B2B professionals, lawyers, mathematicians, medical workers etc.
It is very likely under these circumstances the Flesch Reading Score outputs red dots. While users can ignore this, it can be distracting for users targeting highly specific audiences using professional language. This is especially true for large sites and makes quickly scanning what pages needed changes difficult.
A user writes in that given this:
-
Add a configuration switch to turn off this feature so it does not distract webpage editors.
-
Have a setting for "Intended Audience" to set an expected Flesch reading ease score, and then traffic light for scores below that level. This way a webpage written for a young child and another for a professional with a degree, are not judged the same.
As Yoast has the ability to assign roles we could create a filter that targets the Flesch Reading score so users can add the filter and with a little custom coding disable the reading score on different roles.
Please inform the customer of conversation # 614576 when this conversation has been closed.
As Yoast has the ability to assign roles we could create a filter that targets the Flesch Reading score so users can add the filter and with a little custom coding disable the reading score on different roles.
I don't see why this needs to require programming. Most Yoast SEO users will not know how to use a filter, and shouldn't have to.
Also, please provide ways to disable more specific features, as per my previous comment.
I would like to support this previous comment.
I would add to that list of examples, "ignore transition words" and "ignore this block".
It would also be helpful to have an easy way to set a target readability level. It can be impossible to bring FK Scores down in some contexts (for example, scientific / academic).
