Whether you’re looking for something more lightweight, cost-effective, or something in between, there’s a Yoast SEO readability tool alternative to meet your needs.
Yoast may have one of the most popular SEO plugins on the market, but its readability feature may not be the best choice for everyone. Fortunately, their competition has been heating up, giving you more options than ever to assess both the SEO and readability of your content.
Read on to learn about five alternatives to the Yoast SEO readability tool to find the best fit for your website.
To cover your SEO and readability needs, Originality.ai has a readability checker and a content optimizer.
Originality’s readability tool calculates more than one type of score. While Yoast and many others rely on the Flesch-Kincaid Reading Ease and Grade Level tests, Originality.ai’s tool gives you scores across multiple readability formulas.
From the Flesch-Kincaid tests to the Gunning Fog Index to the FORCAST Grade Level, you can see your readability scores across the board. You’ll also see any text issues, stats, and even the keyword density of the top 10 keywords in your text, making it a valuable free tool to add to your content creation toolbox.
As for the SEO side of things, Originality.ai also offers a free content optimizer. This SEO article checker allows you to compare the keyword density of your content to 10 competitor URLs and gives you a target score to help it rank on the search engine results pages (SERPs). It’s a great, free way to make your content more competitive.
One of the best things about using Rank Math as an alternative to Yoast is that it offers more SEO features for free. For example, it doesn’t charge for basic local SEO schema and optimization or WooCommerce SEO. Rank Math also offers more AI features via an add-on subscription.
However, its readability feature isn’t as detailed. While Rank Math considers readability in its overall SEO score, it only gives you some general notes on improving it.
So, although its SEO and AI features may be helpful when it comes to readability — it’s not as in-depth.
All in One SEO focuses on the SEO features of its toolkit, like its SEO optimizer, advanced SEO modules, and smart sitemaps. However, their readability feature is excellent and almost identical to Yoast’s.
Like Yoast, AIOSEO:
For those who like Yoast’s detailed suggestions to improve the readability of content but are still looking for something a little different, AIOSEO is a great option, although it should be noted that their options are at a higher price point (with basic plans starting at $49.60 per year).
Depending on the plan you choose, you can use one All in One SEO subscription with multiple websites. With Yoast, you’re limited to one website per plan.
The SEO Framework does just what its name suggests: focus on SEO. It’s helpful for avoiding common SEO mistakes and claims to follow Google’s webmaster guidelines.
The base version concentrates so much on SEO, in fact, that you’ll need to download an extension to assess readability.
The SEO Framework’s Focus extension adds readability and on-page keyword optimization features, but it’s pretty bare-bones otherwise.
You’ll get access to a built-in dictionary to look up synonyms and inflections for your content, but that’s about it.
Its readability features are nowhere near as comprehensive as Yoast. So if you're looking for a readability tool that offers more in-depth insights the Originality.ai Readability Checker is an excellent alternative.
Semrush’s suite of tools can help with everything from SEO to competitor research to social media marketing. So it’s no surprise they include a decent readability checker in their SEO Writing Assistant.
Another similar alternative to Yoast’s SEO readability tool, this checker uses the Flesch-Kincaid formula to assess the readability of a text and provides tips to improve your score.
They also offer an AI Rephraser that can rewrite errors for you (though you should consider the pros and cons of AI-generated content before using it).
It’s a comprehensive tool, no doubt, and you can even try it for free. However, access to Semrush’s full features can be pricy (with pro plans starting at $117.33 per month).
It may be one of the top SEO plugins on WordPress with 10 million active installations, but Yoast SEO readability tools aren’t the right fit for everyone.
Whether you need a more in-depth analysis of different readability scores, such as with the Originality.ai readability checker, are looking to optimize content and keywords with a content optimizer, or combine additional SEO features with readability, there are alternatives out there to meet your needs.
It is a well known and almost universally accepted fact that Google will reward your content for something called “Readability”. As a result there have been many off the shelf content marketing tools ( think Grammarly, Hemingway readable.com etc) that have attempted to help people publish content with optimal Readability scores. The thought is that if content is published according to recommendations of these tools, they will be more likely to rank on Google Search Engines.
The Dale-Chall Readability Formula is useful in figuring out readability. It has been used in schools to determine the right type of text to be used, particularly for kids at 4th and 5th-grade levels. The Dale-Chall Readability Formula can measure vocabulary knowledge, language skills, and comprehension knowledge. A top feature of the Dale-Chall Readability Formula is that it helps highlight all the unnecessary words in a text that make it more difficult for kids to read.
If you go back in time, to the 19th century in the USA, schools were quite different from what they are now. Students were never graded on their reading abilities until 1847. A school in Boston was opened where children were given books to read according to what grade they were in. The teachers wanted
