In today's post on Web Positioning Salamanca I'm going to explain how the Gunning-Fog index is calculated and what it's used for. SEO , like other aspects of life, is not about doing one thing well, but rather many things well. That's why we always have to polish all the details of our website or blog that we can, and the content of our site is something that has to be treated with the utmost care, since it is what has to get along with Google and dazzle your readers.
Writing for users
When writing our content, we must not forget about Google and improving our positioning , but in SEO, Google is not everything. We must keep in mind that the person who is going to make the final purchase or hire our services is not a machine, but a person, and people read, not machines, machines interpret.
Therefore, we have to be clear that we have to write for the user, without forgetting Google as I said before, but for the user.
Our content must be readable by an end user and we must adopt the jargon that our potential reader would use. We must also write in a way that can be understood by as many people as possible, taking into account that it will be read by different types of users with different cultural levels.
Writing on the web is a serious matter. You want your text to be read cambodia telegram phone numbers understood by as many people as possible. But you also want Google, as the most used search engine in the world, to interpret your texts as original and easy to understand.
There are various methods for analyzing the readability of a text, such as the Flesh-Kindcaid Readability Tests (only useful for texts in English), the Fernández-Huerta “readability” formula (for texts in Spanish), the Perspicuity Formula or Flesh-Szigriszt Index, the Inés María Barrio Cantalejo Inflesz Scale, Mu Readability (Muñoz y Muñoz), and the Fog Index.
Today we will focus on the latter. To know if we are doing it right we can use the Gunning fog index.
What is the Gunning-Fog Index?
The fog index was created in 1944 by Robert Gunning, an American businessman. It is basically a formula that gives a percentage of the readability of a text. He created it with the goal of helping improve business writing.
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Gunning was a businessman, but had experience in newspapers and publishing. In 1964 he said:
“There are limits related to sentence length and long words that are beyond the average man. The writer’s restrictions may be conscious or unconscious, but they are there. Otherwise, he will not win over the audience.”
The index is a quotient that tells us how readable our content is, that is, it measures the degree of difficulty that a text has to read. The higher the fog index, the more difficult it will be to read said text.
It is said that each point on the fog index , between 0 and 20, is a year of higher level study that the reader must have completed to understand the text, but this is not very accurate in my opinion.
The index generates a level that indicates the degree of readability. The formula estimates the age of formal education that the reader requires to understand the text on the first reading.
So, for example, if your text scores 6, that means it will be easy to read for those who have attended 6th grade in the American school system. This would be a person between 11 and 12 years old.
If you want your text to be understood by the general public, try to get a grade of around 8. Don't exceed 17, because to understand this content they would need a university degree.
Fog index and education level
Fog index Reading Level by Grade Level in North American Education Type of publications
17 University graduate Academic publications.
16 Fourth year of university Medical publications, which only graduates would understand.
15 Third year of university Publications that are not for popular consumption, difficult to read.
14 Second year of university Publications that are not for popular consumption, difficult to read.
13 First year of university Publications that are not for popular consumption, difficult to read.
This is the danger line, from here on up the texts are very difficult to read.
12 Fourth year of high school Newspapers specializing in economics and politics.
11 Third year of high school Magazines with more in-depth reporting.
Everything below
this line is easy to read
10 Second year of high school National Geographic style publications.
9 First year of high school Magazines like Reader's Digest.
8 Eighth grade Local newspapers.
7 Seventh grade The Bible, books by Mark Twain.
6 Sixth grade Magazines for the general public, such as Hola.
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What is the fog index useful for?
It is mainly useful to help writers keep their texts clear and simple . It is also taken into account by researchers when writing their research, especially the summary of it, because the highest quality is always sought.
Basically, this and the other indexes serve to analyze readability for SEO , they allow you to know if your texts are easy or difficult to read. That's why the key is to write for real readers, so you can reach a wider audience.