There is a particular species of SEO misery that I have encountered more times than I care to admit.
You write an article. You edit the hell out of it. You make the sentences clear. You organize the headings. You remove the jargon. You read the whole thing aloud and decide, with some satisfaction, that it does not sound like it was written by a committee.
Then your SEO tool gives you a readability score of 47.
Forty-seven.
Apparently, your perfectly intelligible article has failed some invisible literary entrance exam.
So you start chopping sentences in half. You replace perfectly good words with simpler ones. You turn paragraphs into little bite-sized nuggets. You fiddle with the copy until the magical green circle appears.
Congratulations. The software is happy.
But is your reader?
This is where readability gets misunderstood.
Readability matters. But a readability score is not the same thing as good writing, and it is not a magic SEO ranking signal.
Google's current guidance encourages content that is well written, easy to follow, well organized, useful, and created primarily for people. But Google does not say that you need to hit a particular Flesch score to rank. In fact, there is no universal readability score that makes sense for every audience or every subject.
So let's talk about what readability actually is, how it relates to SEO, and how to make your writing easier to understand without sanding all the personality off it.
Readability is an attempt to measure how easy a piece of writing is to read and understand.
Different readability formulas look at different things, but many consider factors such as sentence length, word length, syllables, and vocabulary complexity.
One of the best-known formulas is the Flesch Reading Ease test. It produces a score that generally ranges from 0 to 100:
- Higher score: generally easier to read
- Lower score: generally more difficult to read
- Somewhere in the middle: probably not worth losing sleep over
The Flesch formula was developed in the 1940s, long before anyone was arguing about whether their blog post was sufficiently optimized for Google. It was designed as a way to estimate the difficulty of written material, not as an SEO tool.
And this distinction matters.
A readability formula can tell you that a sentence is long.
It cannot tell you whether the sentence is good.
It cannot tell you whether the idea is interesting.
It cannot tell you whether the argument makes sense.
And it certainly cannot tell you whether your reader is going to finish the article and think, Well, shit. That was actually useful.
Those things require a human being.
Here's where things get a little more interesting.
Readability is not a direct SEO ranking factor.
Google does not look at your Flesch Reading Ease score and decide, “Ah, 63. Excellent. Put this one above the competitor with a 57.”
SEO does not work that neatly. Google's ranking systems use many signals, and its own guidance emphasizes helpful, reliable, people-first content rather than content created primarily to manipulate rankings.
But that does not mean readability is irrelevant.
Quite the opposite.
If someone lands on your page and immediately encounters a wall of dense paragraphs, unexplained terminology, and sentences long enough to qualify for their own congressional district, they're probably not going to have a particularly pleasant experience.
Good readability helps people:
- Understand your point
- Find the information they're looking for
- Navigate the page
- Stay oriented as they read
- Remember what you've told them
- Take whatever action brought them there in the first place
And those are all worthwhile outcomes whether Google is watching or not.
Google's own SEO guidance specifically recommends writing content that is easy to read and well organized, breaking up long content into paragraphs and sections, and using headings to help readers navigate the page.
That's an important distinction:
Don't make your content readable because Google told you to. Make it readable because you're asking another human being to spend several minutes of their life reading it.
The SEO benefit is secondary.
No—not in the sense that a readability score itself is a Google ranking factor.
This is one of those SEO topics that has generated an astonishing amount of debate for something that can be stated rather simply.
Google's current documentation does not identify Flesch Reading Ease, Flesch-Kincaid, or another readability score as a ranking signal. Instead, Google encourages creators to produce helpful, reliable, people-first content that satisfies the reader's needs.
So if someone tells you:
“You need a readability score of 60 to rank.”
You can safely raise one eyebrow.
There is no magic number.
A score can be useful as a diagnostic tool, but it should not become the objective.
Consider the difference between these two statements:
Goal #1:
“Get this article to a Flesch score of 60.”
Goal #2:
“Make this article as clear and useful as possible for the people I'm trying to reach.”
Goal #2 is the one I'd choose every damn time.
Here's a problem with treating readability formulas as gospel: your audience matters.
Imagine you're writing an article explaining a complex medical condition.
The appropriate vocabulary might include terms that score poorly on a readability formula but are perfectly appropriate for physicians.
Now imagine you're writing a guide for someone encountering that condition for the first time.
Suddenly, those same terms may need explanation.
The subject hasn't changed.
The audience has.
That's why there is no universally “correct” reading level for online content.
Google even notes that users with different levels of knowledge may use different words when searching for the same thing. Someone familiar with a subject may search for a technical term, while someone new to it may use a much simpler phrase. Google's systems can understand these variations without you having to awkwardly cram every possible keyword into your copy.
So don't dumb down your writing.
Make it accessible.
Those are not the same thing.
There is a difference between writing for intelligent people and writing to prove that you're an intelligent person.
You can absolutely use readability tools. I do.
The trick is to treat the score as information—not divine judgment.
Before you decide what score you're aiming for, look at the people you're writing for.
Ask:
Who is going to read this?
Are they beginners?
Experts?
Customers?
Executives?
Developers?
People who found you through a Google search at two in the morning because they are desperately trying to solve a problem?
Your answer matters more than an arbitrary number.
You can also search Google for your target topic and read the pages that already perform well.
Look at how they communicate.
Are the articles short and conversational?
Are they technical?
Do they use industry terminology?
How much explanation do they provide?
What questions do they answer?
Most importantly:
Do they actually help you?
Google's current guidance puts considerable emphasis on creating content that is useful, satisfying, original, and written for people rather than simply produced to attract search traffic.
That's a much better north star than chasing a green circle in an SEO plugin.
Now we get to the useful part.
Improving readability isn't about turning every paragraph into three sentences and replacing every interesting word with something a fifth grader might use.
It's about removing unnecessary friction.
1. Write Shorter Sentences When They Need to Be Shorter
Long sentences aren't inherently bad.
I actually like a long sentence when the thought requires one. Sometimes an idea needs room to unfold, and chopping it into six tiny sentences makes the writing sound like it was assembled by a malfunctioning telegraph machine.
The problem is unnecessarily complicated sentences.
If a sentence contains four ideas, three commas, two parentheses, a semicolon, and a small existential crisis, it may be time to break it up.
Read your copy aloud.
If you run out of breath, that's a clue.
If you have to read the sentence twice to understand what you were trying to say, that's a stronger clue.
2. Use Simple Words When Simple Words Are Better
This does not mean you need to purge your vocabulary.
Please don't.
There is nothing wrong with ambiguous when you mean ambiguous. There is nothing wrong with pernicious when you mean pernicious. And if ubiquitous is the right word, for God's sake, use it.
The goal is not to sound less intelligent.
The goal is to avoid making your reader work harder than necessary.
Sometimes the complicated word is the right word.
Sometimes you're just hiding behind it.
Know the difference.
3. Kill the Jargon
This one deserves its own section because marketing departments have committed some truly impressive crimes against the English language.
You know the phrases:
Leverage synergies.
Drive digital transformation.
Create omnichannel experiences.
Unlock scalable solutions.
Empower stakeholders.
What does any of that actually mean?
If you can't explain an idea without hiding behind corporate jargon, there's a decent chance you haven't explained the idea yet.
Use the language your audience actually uses.
And if your audience genuinely uses technical terminology, use it. Just don't assume everyone knows what it means.
4. Break Up the Page
Online reading is not the same as reading a novel.
People scan.
They look for headings. They skim paragraphs. They jump to lists. They decide very quickly whether a page is worth their attention.
Use headings and subheadings to give the page structure.
Use paragraphs to separate ideas.
Use bullet points when a list genuinely makes the information easier to understand.
And for the love of all things holy, give your text some breathing room.
Google itself recommends breaking up long content into paragraphs and sections and using headings to help users navigate a page.
5. Use Headings Like Signposts
A heading should tell the reader what's coming.
“Why Readability Matters” is useful.
“An Important Consideration” is not.
Your headings also help search engines understand the structure and subject matter of your page. But don't get carried away with the old SEO superstition that every page needs precisely one H1, followed by a mathematically perfect hierarchy of H2s and H3s.
Google's current documentation explicitly says there is no magical ideal number or order of headings from a Search perspective. Use headings to make the page useful and understandable.
That's the whole point.
6. Get to the Damn Point
This may be the most important piece of writing advice I can give you.
Say what you mean.
Don't spend 300 words wandering around an idea because you're afraid to state the conclusion.
Readers are busy.
They came to your page because they want something.
Give it to them.
You can still tell stories. You can still use humor. You can still have a voice. You can still write beautifully.
But don't make someone excavate your main point like they're searching for an ancient civilization.
7. Use Examples
Abstract explanations are useful.
Concrete examples are better.
If you're explaining a marketing concept, show me what it looks like.
If you're explaining a technical process, walk me through it.
If you're arguing that something doesn't work, demonstrate why.
Examples reduce cognitive load because the reader doesn't have to build the entire concept inside their own head.
You're doing some of the work for them.
That's good writing.
8. Edit the Shit Out of It
The first draft is not sacred.
It is barely even trustworthy.
Write the thing.
Then walk away.
Come back later and read it again.
You'll find the unnecessary sentence. Then another. Then the paragraph that sounded brilliant at midnight but now appears to have been written by a Victorian ghost.
Delete it.
Read the article aloud.
Look for repetition.
Look for vague language.
Look for places where you explain something twice.
Look for sentences that technically make sense but feel like hell to read.
And then edit again.
Good writing is often less about adding beautiful sentences than removing the mediocre ones.
There are plenty of tools that can help you evaluate readability. They're useful, provided you remember what they're actually measuring.
Grammarly
Grammarly can help identify issues with grammar, sentence construction, word choice, and readability.
It's particularly useful when you want a second set of eyes on a draft.
Readable
Readable provides several readability measurements, including Flesch Reading Ease and other readability formulas.
I like tools like this because they can help you spot patterns you might otherwise miss.
Semrush SEO Writing Assistant
Semrush SEO Writing Assistant combines readability analysis with other SEO writing recommendations.
It's useful when you're working on content that needs to balance search optimization with actual human readability.
But remember:
The tool is not the writer.
If your software tells you that your article is difficult to read, investigate why.
Don't blindly rewrite every sentence until the number turns green.
Indirectly, potentially. Directly, not in the way many SEO tools imply.
There is no magic readability score that will suddenly propel your article to the first page of Google.
What readability can do is make your content easier for actual human beings to understand, navigate, and use.
And that's important because Google's current guidance is remarkably consistent on this point: create useful, reliable, people-first content. Google specifically recommends content that is easy to read and well organized, while warning against creating content primarily for search engines.
So by all means, check your readability score.
Use it as a diagnostic.
If you've written a 900-word sentence and your score is somewhere below the Earth's mantle, perhaps take another look.
But don't write for the score.
Write for the person.
That's the part SEO has always been tempted to forget.
Google doesn't need another perfectly optimized article that says the same thing as the other 47 articles on page one.
Neither does your reader.
Give them something useful. Give them something clear. Give them something worth remembering.
And, ideally, give them a reason not to immediately fuck off to another tab.
