StoryChief enables you to optimize your stories for search engines and readability.
Step 1. Open a story inside the editor and click on the SEO and Readability score.
Step 2. You will now see the sidebar for optimizing your story. It contains two sections, SEO and Readability. Fill in the focus keyword or phrase you want to optimize your story for.
🔔 Note: Color coding is used so that you can easily identify which suggestions need action. Edit and show links are displayed if a certain part of the story needs to be added or changed. If you click on them, you'll directly go to the section you need to update.
The suggestions are updated in real-time and completing one results in the total score to increase. Try to aim for 100%!
Let's take a look at each section in-depth...
SEO
SEO stand for Search Engine Optimization, and is crucial in getting your story found organically.
Add a focus keyphrase to tailor the suggestions to that. It is recommended to use the topic of the story as your phrase.
Now that the keyphrase is set, StoryChief will provide you with tips on how to improve your story. The 18 suggestions are listed below:
Function words in keyphrase: a keyphrase should never consists only of function words (e.g. 'and', 'more').
Keyphrase in introduction: checks if the keyphrase appears in the first paragraph of the story.
Keyphrase distribution: checks if the keyphrase is well spread over the story.
Keyphrase length: checks if there is a keyphrase set and if its length is acceptable.
Keyphrase density: checks for the amount of keyphrase occurences in the story and if this amount if acceptable.
Stopwords in keyphrase: checks for stop words (e.g. 'but', 'how') in the keyphrase which is not always recommended.
Links: checks if there are any links, if there are enough links, and if those links are not all no-followed.
Keyphrase in meta description: checks if keyphrase in meta description and its amount (max 2).
Meta description length: checks if there is text in the meta description and if its length is appropriate.
Keyphrase in subheading: checks for use of the keyphrase in subheadings to the recommended amount.
Link keyphrase: checks if the keyphrase is a link which is not recommended.
Image alt attributes: checks if there are images, if the keyphrase is used in the alt attributes and the amount.
Text length: checks if text has the recommended minimum length.
Keyphrase in title: checks if the keyphrase is included at the beginning of the SEO-title.
SEO title width: checks if there is a SEO-title and if it has the recommended width.
Keyphrase in slug: checks if keyphrase of more than half of it appears in the slug.
Slug stopwords: checks if stop words are used in the slug which is not recommended.
Language: checks a language as some assessments are language based.
Readability
This section will make sure that your story is easy to digest for your readers. A critical part of the writing process!
A total of 11 guidelines are given:
Flesch Reading Ease: checks how readable the text is, based on the Flesch reading ease test.
Language: checks a language as some assessments are language based.
Paragraph length: looks for paragraphs that are longer than the recommended length.
Passive voice: An active voice is recommend to be used in text. It looks for sentences that have a passive voice. (Active voice example: Batman threw Joker from a building. Passive voice example: Joker was thrown from the building by batman.)
Consecutive sentences: checks for sentences that start with the same words and recommends mixing things up instead.
Length sentence(s) meta description: checks if sentences in the meta description are too long.
Sentence length: checks in the story for sentences that are too long.
Subheading distribution: checks for paragraphs that are too long that could use subheadings instead.
Not enough content: if the story has less than 50 words advises to add more content.
Transition words: looks for transition words in sentences and recommends the use of it if the usage percentage is too low.
Word Complexity: words with more than 3 syllables are considered complex. Checks for percentage usage of complex words.
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