Are Readability Metrics Ruining Your Blog Posts?

Readability metrics are not necessarily based on how people read. They are based on how they scan.

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Fanatical search-engine optimization has had a major effect on blog writing over the past decade. Merely every blog post out there reads the same, often trading valuable, well-written content for scan-worthy content.

Don’t let it ruin your company’s website content.

Writing is not a list of elements or “metrics” that are the foundation of content.

Yes, some readability metrics should be activated when we write, but when we become too obsessed with it, it gives our writing a boilerplate, platitudinous tone that makes it read like every other article out there.

For instance, read an article for a literary publication, like The Atlantic. Writers for these publications often do not use much heading distributions. The articles flow freely, with the meaning of the paragraph being interpreted by the reader, rather than using a heading to tell the reader.

The paragraphs direct the article rather than the headings.

People don’t read articles looking for readability metrics. When was the last time that you read an article and checked to make sure that every paragraph mentions the focus keyword? When was the last time that you got fed up with an article because it didn’t have enough bullet points?

So, why should we structure our articles that way?

Readability Metrics Stress Scannability

If you have a company blog, then you’ll want to read this article so that you can learn about why too much optimization can be bad for readability.

The point is, readability metrics aren’t for good reading. They are built for scanning.

And, it’s important to consider that. Almost 80% of people scan articles, and around 15% read them. What the other 5% does, I have no idea.

Now, if your main goal is to get conversions through lead generation with your articles, you may believe that is more important than writing a good article. However, why would you get conversions from an article that says nothing, and is just there for keywords?

In 2010, you could write a Wordpress blog post without doing much special formatting and as long as the article was good, you’d get dozens of reads overnight. No algorithms. Yes, you needed the keywords necessary for SEO, relevant titles, but they sprouted naturally with the flow of the article. People would read what they were naturally inclined to read.

This approach is based on the belief that users are stupid animals who don’t have enough sense to read things unless you throw word kibble out there for them.

The truth is, you have to have some readability metrics. The other truth is that you also have to make the article read like an article and not like a “blog post”.

Think About It This Way

What if Tolstoy had written War and Peace using Grammarly?

What if he had written it with keywords, readability metrics, and transition words placed throughout each paragraph in a consistent, predictable way?

What if Hemingway had written The Old Man and the Sea with the guidance of Yoast SEO or RankMath?

What if Einstein or Issac Newton had written books about physics and classical mechanics using repetitive keywords, frequent subheading distribution, short paragraphs, and bullet lists?

These things would have likely gotten in the way with their ability to communicate their ideas.

The Problem With Over-Optimizing Blog Posts

Articles have always been an important content element for both companies and publishers.

You may believe that a blog article doesn’t need to read like a work of literature. And you would be right. However, it doesn’t need to read like an instruction manual for an appliance, either.

Following the metrics can be useful, but there is a point of diminishing returns.

Yes, you have articles on your blog for SEO. However, you also have content for people to read. What are all of these inbound/outbound links really about anyway? It’s about readers navigating through your website, and giving them outbound links so that they may help the readers solve a problem.

The Problem With Too Much Optimization

Optimization isn’t for us. It’s for the algorithm. The more you “optimize” your article, the less it looks like the article that you really want to write. That matters because there is an opportunity cost between content made for optimization, and content made for people. How do we balance it?

In traditional writing, these readability “metrics” came naturally, with the flow of the writing. Now, your SEO plugin tells you that you need to chop up an article that is fine the way it is. You then see that the headings have equal keyword distribution, and that you repeat words or phrases throughout your article. Then article sounds too commercial. Too markety.

For instance, let’s say that you own a dog-grooming business. You write articles about dog grooming.

If you have to type “Dog Grooming in Colorado Springs” in every title and subtitle, and throughout the article, I wouldn’t blame anybody for wanting to leave the article and the website altogether.

Read the following paragraph …

How to Groom Your Dog At Home in Portland Maine

Grooming your dog at home can be a real chore. However, it is not impossible. With the right equipment, you can groom your dog at home in Portland Maine with no problem. Before you learn how to groom your dog at home in Portland Maine, you need to buy dog brush at your local Portland Maine pet shop.

This is not the way people read. They don’t want to be constantly reminded about the location 5 times in a paragraph. Not everybody who reads your blog is from Maine. If you sell products that are distributed nationally, you need to keep in mind that someone who is in a different area may not care about the fact that your company is in Portland Maine.

This is the real reason why people don’t want to read blog articles anymore.

Why Substack/Medium Are More Popular Than Blogs

You hear people say that people do not want to read blogs anymore because they would rather watch TikTok, or some other red herring.

If that is true, then why are Substack publications so popular?

Substack has 5 million paid subscriptions! It is simply a blogging platform with a newsletter built into it.

Why would people pay to subscribe to a Substack publication, rather than a free blog article?

With Substack, there isn’t the pressure to adhere to the “SEO rules” that have ruined blog articles. You can use heading distribution if you like, but you can also skip them.

The articles don’t have to be “chopped up” to contain repetitive phrases, focus keywords, and other such metrics that can get in the way of the natural flow of the article. That’s because Substack has its own domain authority. A “blogger” would have to play both the role as a writer/content creator and an SEO specialist, making sure to sew his or her articles with strategies that are effective for blogging like topic clustering.

“It’s supposed to sell.”

I’ve written blog articles for about two decades.

I’ve watched blog writing turn from its early days of free-form blurbs that pay little attention to rules at all, into a standardized set of “rules” that need to be in place for optimization. This began when companies started to rely on blogs for SEO, making them predictable and formulaic. At some point, a “blog” became synonymous with a website.

The result of that is that website content, such as blogs, are written for people to “scan”. Yes, people do scan. However, if you make things too skimpy, you risk depriving your content of value and uniqueness.

A lot of marketing people and copywriters believe that elements have to be minimized to its lowest common denominator in order to sell.

That’s not always true.

The Lord of the Rings has sold over 150 million copies worldwide. It is one of the best-selling books of all time. Would that book had sold as many copies if the title was “Quick Question”?

Rules of Good and Bad Writing

For instance, today’s writers believe that passive tone is “bad writing”. Active tone is the best, they say.

It’s not. It is simply a shared belief.

In fact, “passive tone” used to be very common in formal writing. It was an indication of thoughtful writing. It can sometimes count for a poetic rhythm that the active tone may not have.

There are times where passive tone is tedious for our modern-day attention spans, and so it is wise to avoid it most of the time. This is why we use active tone so much today in modern English. We use it to consider the attention-span weakness that we all have.

If I write “the dog chewed the steak”, or “the steak was chewed by the dog”, it has the same semantic meaning. The same action is going on in both statements.

However, the first way makes the dog more prominent. The second way makes the steak the center of the statement. Despite these differences, the way both statements are structured doesn’t change the meaning of the action, just the central focus. If the context of the paragraph is about the steak, then wouldn’t that make more sense?

Which way is best? That depends.

Even so, we avoid “passive tone” because it’s breaking the rules.

It is the same thing with cooking. You can throw several ingredients together, and the way they combine can depend on when you add them.

The ingredients come together in a specific way because there is chemistry going on. In some recipes, the onions are cooked first. In others they are added later. What is right or wrong? It depends.

However, if all that you want is to eat the ingredients, then it doesn’t matter either way.

It becomes a problem when we believe that “content creation” is simply a matter of throwing together different elements, and as long as those elements are there, then it’s “good content”. Especially when that content is written content.

They listen to Yoast SEO, which suggests that an article is “bad” if it doesn’t have all of the optimal elements. I’m not saying Yoast is always wrong, but if you’re wondering why all blog articles “read like that”, then this is why.

Therefore, the content serves optimization before it serves the reader. So, is it really good content? Or is it simply optimized content?

Optimization is Important

I’m not “bashing” optimization. I’m saying that some careful thought is needed into putting something together where the “optimization” doesn’t spoil your article and turn it into a piece of boilerplate reading.

For instance, headlines are important. I may change the headline 15 times after I publish an article. Headlines are expendable.

What makes that so nice? Because there are many ways to make a headline that gets attention. However, getting the attention of readers and algorithms are two different things.

Although, when we begin to dismantle the actual article for the sake of following “rules”, we can sometimes ruin something by trying to repair what wasn’t broken to begin with.

The Key Point

The reason why we structure articles with these qualifications is because if we do not, then we believe that our articles will be less likely to be scanned by people and search engines.

So, it really is an opportunity-cost situation.

Algorithms are made by programmers. Writing is done by writers. SEO is a combination of writing and formatting articles for search engines. The writer is trying to structure his or her writing like a programmer is structuring code.

The problem is that when we believe that doing or not doing something is “good” or “bad” in all circumstances. We apply these readability metrics like boolean logic can sort them out at all times.

“Passive tone bad.”

“Focus keyword good.”

“Short paragraph good.”

“No bullet points bad.”

The result from everybody doing things this way is that blog articles all read the same way.

Solutions

• Balance. Build the foundation, and then refine it. Write the article like you normally would, and then decorate it with the links and readability metrics that you need for SEO.
• Variety. Sometimes, write an article that is not built for SEO at all.
• Agency. If you believe that your article is fine the way that it is, it’s okay to refuse some of the changes that your readability plugin suggests.
• Evergreen content. Your evergreen content should be the most readable content. If your SEO optimization is good enough for your “cluster content”, then when people find your evergreen content, they will find better writing that is not entirely structured on SEO.
• Intentional smaller content. Your bite-sized articles should have as much care as the evergreen content, and not just “canals” that lead to the lead magnet.