Readability is a measurement of how complex a piece of content is. It can be measured as a grade level, the school grade level required to be able to understand the text.
I’ve done a bunch of research in the past into how readability effects sharing, and I’ve found that especially on Facebook, simple language is shared more than complex language.
To help you write highly-readable blog posts, I put together a little plugin that sits in the side bar of your WordPress blog’s post writing page and allows you to analyze the reading grade level of your content with one, quick click.
It’s still very beta, so it may break. But it’s pretty simple code, and doesn’t change anything on your site or store anything, so there isn’t much danger it will mess your blog up.
If you want to download it to test it out, simply subscribe to my blog (either by RSS or by email below). In RSS, you’ll see a link at the end of each post (including this one) that you can click to download the plugin. And if you’ve signed up by email, you’ll get a link to download it once you’ve confirmed your subscription. If you’re already subscribed, look in the sidebar of an email you’ve received from my blog to find the download link.
To install it, simply unzip it, upload the directory to your “wp-content/plugins” directory and activate it in your plugins section. Then when you’re writing a post you’ll see the analyzer.