I had developed a large amount of content for a website and was working with the web developer to ensure it was properly uploaded. At one point he said to me, “On a lot of the pages the SEO tool says the readability is poor, I guess we need to hire a writer.”
What an insult! My core skill is SEO writing!
I went into the backend of the site and looked at the SEO tool he was talking about. Almost half the pages had red warning indicators saying the pages had poor readability.
I clicked into the pages and looked at the text. There was nothing unreadable about my writing. What could be the problem?
On some of the pages there were bullets, numbers, symbols, and prices. Over the years, I’ve noticed those types of items can trigger lower readability scores.
But there were other pages, without those items, that still came up red in the tool’s readability meter. The only thing I could think of was those pages had a lot of plug-ins and maybe that was mucking things up.
If that’s not the problem, then there’s probably another geeky answer as to why the SEO tool is rendering the warnings. But I’m sure not going to waste my time trying to figure it out.
Maybe one of my tech readers can tell me. In the meantime …
Easy Web Tip #251: Whenever a web tool tells you something is wrong, don’t be too quick to believe it.
