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Spelling & Readability: Working Together for SEO

If you are working to achieve search engine optimization (SEO), you know that "content is king!" Your website must have high-quality, informative, and engaging content. Proper spelling and good readability are two integral elements of high-quality content. Often overlooked, these factors play a crucial role in how search engines perceive your content and how accessible and engaging it is for all users.

Spelling

A poorly written website with spelling errors can damage your credibility and turn away potential customers. Roslyn Petelin is an associate professor of writing at the University of Queensland in Australia. "Nothing can make you lose credibility more quickly and seem uneducated than a spelling mistake, including apostrophes," she says. 

Oh, and don’t forget to check if autocorrect made an embarrassing substitution. 🤦🏼

With DubBot, you can be sure of consistent spellchecking throughout all your sites with DubBot's universal spell-checker and support for multiple languages and customizable, brand-specific dictionaries.

cross-section of the drop-down list of available dictionaries. This shows French (Canadian), Finnish, German and Italian.

Readability

Readability refers to how easy or complicated the written word is to comprehend. Several factors affect readability, with spelling being one of the most important. Other factors include typography, grammar, vocabulary (are you using complex or easy-to-understand words?), sentence and paragraph length, page layout, color choice (are your colors colorblind safe?), proper color contrast between the text and background, proper heading hierarchy, and use of white space.

Specific to digital, like your website, readability is affected by the accessibility of your content to screen readers and keyboard-only users. This means creating a logical order for content headings and interactive elements such as links and buttons and labeling those links and buttons using discernible text.

To help you achieve a more readable website or digital document, the W3C has provided a specific conformance technique with a list of guidelines and how-tos. That conformance technique is Technique G153: Making the text easier to read.

DubBot provides you with six readability metrics and six different readability formulas.

In the Readability panel of the Detailed Page View, are metrics Word Count, Sentence Count, Letter Count, Syllable Count, Avg Words per Sentence, Avg Syllables per Word along with the six readability formulas - Flesch Reading Ease Score, Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level, Automated Readability Index (ARI), Coleman-Liau Index, Gunning Fog Index, SMOG grade.

A readability formula measures or predicts the reading difficulty of text by analyzing sample passages. No formula is precisely like the other. Each one measures readability differently:

  • Flesch Reading Ease – Counts average sentence length and average syllables per word, gives a number up to 100, and weights long words more than long sentences.
  • Flesch-Kincaid – Counts average sentence length and average syllables per word, gives a grade level, and weights long sentences more than long words.
  • Automated Readability Index (ARI) - Calculates the number of characters, words, and sentences and gives a suitable grade level reader needs to understand the text.
  • Coleman-Liau Index - Calculates the number of characters, not syllables, per word and provides the number of years of education required to understand the text. 
  • Gunning Fog Index – Counts average sentence length and the percentage of long words.
  • SMOG Index – Counts the percentage of words with three or more syllables.

These formulas are excellent diagnostic tools, highlighting areas where the text might be too complex or verbose and could benefit from some editing.

The relationship between spelling and reading is undeniable. By prioritizing accurate spelling and readability factors, you elevate your content's comprehension and create an easy-to-read, easy-to-understand, search-engine-optimized website. 

So, before you hit publish, take a moment to proofread and leverage spell-check and readability tools like DubBot to ensure a polished and professional online presence. Your readers (and your credibility) will thank you for it!

Resources

Maggie Vaughan, CPACC
Content Marketing Practitioner
DubBot