This month marks our fifth anniversary since the Yoast SEO Readability Check was first released! Since then, we have continued to make improvements. We sit down with our linguistic leader, Manuel Augustin, and researcher-developer, Hanna Worku, to get a deeper picture of how the readability control works and how they adapt the tool to provide support for it more languages.

The Yoast Linguistic Team

Can you tell us a little more about the team first? What is your background, for example, are you all linguists?
Manuel: “Our team is one of the most international teams and we are all linguists. Although most of us are big language nerds, our other interests include: walking, dancing, playing music and gardening. We also continue to learn coding to grow as developers, which was a bit challenging but a very rewarding experience. ”

How many languages ​​do you speak together?
Hanna: ‘Although it is very important to know language, it is definitely useful! This makes it much easier to work with lesser known grammatical systems, for example. Our team generally speaks 14 languages. ”

The ins and outs of readability checking

Can you briefly explain what the readability analysis of Yoast SEO does?
Hanna: “The Yoast SEO Readability Check analyze the user’s message and tell them what can be done to make it more readable. The analysis shows the user where the readability of the text can be improved, for example which sentences to rewrite. These inputs help users create posts that are SEO-friendly, engaging, accessible to a wider audience and higher rank.

How do you know what makes a text readable? How do you measure it?
Manuel: “A text is considered readable if it is easy to read and understand. There are several main properties of a readable text. For example, short sentences are easier to understand than long sentences. The use of conjunctions (eg ‘However’, ‘further’, ‘concluding’) and subheadings make the content more attractive and easy to follow. Depending on the language, prefer the use of active voice (‘They built the house’) passive voice (‘The house was built by them’). ”

Hanna: “Our initial research helped to estimate the ratios that make text analysis more consistent. For example, if at least 30% of the sentences in your text contain a transition word, the column for the transition word control will be green. If used in more than 20% or in less than 30% of your sentences, you get an orange bullet. And the dot will be red if less than 20% of the sentences in your text contain a transition word. ‘

From research on readability to readability control

Can you explain a little more about the research process and how you translate it into readability checks?
Manuel: ‘We are always starting to add a new check with the research into the language. The first aim of the research is to find out if (and how) our existing readability checks apply to it. The second goal is to find ideas for readability control that can be added specifically for that language. After research, we add all the necessary data to analyze a text in the language: for example, what passive voice looks like in that language, or how many words you can expect from an average sentence length. ‘

Hanna: “To ensure that we take as much relevant knowledge into account as possible, we work with a native speaker consultant who participates in the research and provides feedback on the first version of the function. Some readability controls are used for each language (e.g. paragraph length, subheading presence), while others depends on the specific language. Because language characteristics play a major role in making a text readable, researching the specific language is an important step in adding the assessments. ‘

The overall readability point

Yoast SEO gives a score on individual checks but also an overall score. How do you balance all these checks? When do you consider a complete text to be readable enough to get an overall green dot?
Hanna: “Indeed, there are multiple checks that analyze the readability of your message, some of which are language dependent. Many of these checks are based on sentences. For example, we look at whether too many sentences start with the same word, and see if enough conjunctions have been used across sentences. Other assessments note how the content is organized: e.g. Paragraph length and presence check of subheadings. ”

Manuel: ‘The overall bullet turns green when the majority of readability checks be covered. It is noteworthy that an individual check should be used as a guideline rather than instruction. Ultimately, it is up to the user to decide which assessment is most relevant and feasible based on their style and genre. ”

The readability check has been around for five years now, how has it evolved over time? Have we changed or adjusted our checks?
Manuel: “So far there have been no drastic changes in the way we assess readability. However, we continue to work on improving existing readability controls and exploring ideas for new ones. For example, we have the idea to add a double negative check. It is important that we also plan to add readability checks that are more language specific. Deeper insight into a specific language can help us improve the assessment by adding the checks that are specific to the user’s language. ”

Readability in different languages

The complete readability analysis is now available in 15 languages. Are there noticeable differences in readability between languages?
Hanna: “So far there have been no noticeable differences, but there is a considerable variety in languages ​​regarding the length of the sentence. For example, an average sentence in Spanish is longer than an average sentence in English. We also examine word groups that affect readability in one language, but not in another language.

What about non-alphabetical languages? What would a readability in Japanese look like? Are we planning to add non-alphabetical languages?
Manuel: “This is something we want to work on in the future. The most unknown writing systems we have worked with so far have been Hebrew and Arabic. Our future plans include Japanese and Farsi. There are definitely some differences. Languages ​​such as Japanese and Chinese, for example, have no spaces between words, so the concept of counting the number of words for long sentences, for example, is not quite the same. ”

Work on the readability check

What does a day in the life of a Yoast linguist look like? Do you spend most of your time on the readability check?
Hanna: ‘We spend a lot of time reading and SEO (keyword) analysis, especially for Premium features. For example, the research for the addition of word form support is particularly extensive because it implements code that can recognize different forms of one word (e.g. planted is recognized as plant). Another big part of our job is to improve the existing code (for example, to make it more understandable), to address user feedback and to share new ideas for more ways to analyze texts. ”

We are looking for linguists

As we continue to add languages ​​to Yoast SEO, we are expanding our linguistic team. Are you a linguist and would like to join Yoast? We have 4 vacancies in this team right now! Change of a Junior researcher linguistics to a Senior Computational Scientist. Look at us worksheet for all our vacancies.

Do you feel in your work that you are more of a linguist or a developer?
Manuel: “It definitely depends on the task. Adding a new language to the plugin always involves both linguistic research and coding. As we focus on making our functions available in as many languages ​​as possible, both coding and linguistic research are always in the picture. One of the most exciting research tasks is the exploration of ideas for new features, for example a language level assessment that can help users determine the difficulty level of their text. Another large part of the research is devoted to improving the feedback we provide for user content. To make it more feasible, for example. Sometimes we work purely with code: we reorganize it, add documentation to it, and refactus it to understand it more consistently and easily. “

What is your biggest annoyance when it comes to text readability? Do we have a check for that?
Manuel: “For English, I would excessive use of passive voice. It makes a text sound more impersonal and less dynamic. When we add a new language, we examine whether the passive voice affects the readability in that language. If this is true, we’re exploring how to detect passive voice in the language and add it to the readability check. ”

Check out the latest languages ​​and features

Thank you for sharing these behind-the-scenes insights, Manuel and Hanna! You can read more about the five-year anniversary of our readability analysis here interview with Marieke van de Rakt, CEO of Yoast, and Irene Strikkers, the original creators of the analysis.

We are constantly developing new features for the Yoast SEO plugin and also adding new languages. Want even more features in your SEO toolkit? Upgrade to Yoast SEO Premium to access the complete collection and take your SEO to the next level:

enjoy it all the latest features with Yoast SEO Premium!

Access the Premium Analysis, including word form recognition, synonyms and related keywords and courses such as SEO copywriting, when upgrading to the Premium plug-in.

Read more: The Ultimate Guide to Content SEO »



Source link