content.readability-low
Flesch Reading Ease below 30 (very difficult). Only evaluated for English or unspecified language, 100+ words.
What to change
Shorten sentences and prefer common words. Aim for a Flesch score of 50-70 for general audiences.
A finding of this rule on a page carries the exact edits for that page: the markup it quotes, and what to write instead.
When it runs
Runs on every SEO audit: of a page, a crawl, a build directory or HTML. Info is a best practice: worth doing, rarely urgent, and --no-info leaves it out. Each finding takes 1 point off the page's score.
The severity here is the rule's usual one: a finding can be raised or lowered when the page gives a reason.
Run it, or skip it
Check a page for this rule alone, after a fix for instance:
npx @rivi-software/agentic-seo-check audit https://example.com --rule content.readability-lowOr from an assistant, with the MCP tool seo_audit_page:
{
"url": "https://example.com",
"rules": [
"content.readability-low"
]
}To leave it out of an audit, pass --disable content.readability-low on the command, or disableRules: ["content.readability-low"] to a tool.