Readability

Summary

Readability refers to how easy it is for visitors to read the content on your site. Factors that measure readability include:

• Difficulty of the words included on a page
• How much written copy you have on a page
• How easy is it to scan the content on a page

Siteimprove uses these variables to determine how a page ranks, and using the Flesch Kincaid Grade Level scale, what demographics (based on age) should be able to successfully read and understand the content that’s written on a page.

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Readability Test Results

Ensuring that users can easily read and understand the content on your website is an important element of web governance. The list of pages presented in this report, which does not include previously excluded pages, is categorized by difficulty level, as well as by age.

Remember who your audiences are when writing content for your site. If you are targeting audiences that are high school or college-aged, you want to make sure the language you use on your site is that which they can read easily.

It’s important to use your best judgement and not just rely on this report to determine if your content is written in the best way possible. It’s best to use this report and Siteimprove as just one of many tools to help you with the content writing process.

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Pages

This is where all pages where a readability score has been calculated. Here you will be provided with a breakdown of how each page performs based on the Flesch Kincaid Grade Level readability test and the following metrics:

• Total words (on a page)
• Polysyllabic words
• Sentences
• Page readability (score)
• Page views

The score each page is given matched up with a specific U.S. Grade Level (below first grade to college sophomore or higher).

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Excluded Pages

These are pages that have been excluded from the selected readability test. If there are pages on your site that show as excluded, but shouldn’t be, please let us know through our web request form so we can submit a ticket to Siteimprove to have this corrected.

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Accepted Words

Accepted words are words that can’t be changed or words that should not be altered irrespective of length or number of syllables. Accepted words will not be highlighted as readability elements on the page report.