Content Quality Score

The Content Quality score measures how well a page's written content serves its audience — is it readable, substantive, well-structured, and engaging? This is the sixth audit category and the only one that evaluates the writing itself rather than technical signals.

Why content quality matters

Search engines and AI models increasingly use content quality signals to differentiate pages covering the same topic. A page with excellent SEO metadata but thin, hard-to-read content will rank and get cited less than a substantive, well-written competitor. Content quality is also the strongest lever for reducing bounce rate and increasing time on page.

Readability (25 pts)

Readability measures whether a typical visitor can understand the content without re-reading.

Condition	Points
Flesch Reading Ease ≥ 60 (standard/plain)	10
Average sentence length ≤ 20 words	6
Average paragraph length ≤ 100 words	5
No sentences longer than 40 words	4

Flesch Reading Ease bands

Score	Level	Typical audience
90–100	Very easy	5th grade
80–90	Easy	6th grade
70–80	Fairly easy	7th grade
60–70	Standard	8th–9th grade (target for most web content)
50–60	Fairly difficult	10th–12th grade
30–50	Difficult	College level
0–30	Very difficult	Professional/academic

For most marketing, product, and help content, a score of 60–80 is ideal. Technical documentation and legal content may legitimately score lower.

Technical quality (20 pts)

Condition	Points
Content-to-HTML ratio ≥ 25% (not tag-heavy)	6
No detected duplicate paragraphs (boilerplate blocks)	6
Low passive voice usage (≤ 15% of sentences)	4
No common grammar error patterns detected	4

The content-to-HTML ratio measures how much of the page's raw HTML is actual visible text versus markup, scripts, and styles. A low ratio (< 10%) indicates the page is predominantly technical boilerplate with thin readable content.

Content depth (20 pts)

Condition	Points
Word count ≥ 300 words	6
Word count ≥ 600 words	4
Named entities present (people, places, organizations, products)	5
Topic covered beyond surface level (entity diversity metric)	5

Content depth does not reward padding. A 300-word page that is dense with specific facts scores higher than an 800-word page full of filler phrases and vague generalities.

Structure (20 pts)

Condition	Points
At least 2 H2 headings present	6
Heading hierarchy respected (no level skips)	5
At least one ordered or unordered list	5
No single paragraph exceeding 200 words	4

Engagement signals (15 pts)

Condition	Points
At least one call-to-action (button, link with action verb)	5
At least 3 internal links to related content	5
Images or video present	5

Brand Voice & Persona scoring

If your project has Personas configured, the Content Quality score includes an additional Brand Voice dimension that scores how well the content matches your target audience's reading level, tone, and vocabulary.

When personas are active, each persona is scored against the page content and the lowest-scoring persona drives a weighted adjustment to the overall Content Quality score. This ensures content works for your most important or hardest-to-reach audience, not just the average reader.

The persona adjustment is shown separately from the base score in the Metrics breakdown so you can see which personas the content is underserving.

How to interpret your score

Score	Meaning
90+	Content is well-written, substantial, and structured for both human readers and AI systems
70–89	Good overall; likely one or two specific dimensions (readability, depth) underperforming
50–69	Multiple issues — typically thin content combined with poor readability
< 50	Significant content problems — either very thin, very difficult to read, or both

How to improve

Readability fixes (highest ROI):

• Break long sentences at the conjunction ("and", "but", "which")
• Split long paragraphs after 3–4 sentences
• Replace passive constructions: "was found to be" → "is", "was performed by" → "X did"

Depth fixes:

• Identify the top 3 questions a visitor would ask about the page topic and answer them explicitly
• Add at least one concrete example, case study, or data point
• Name specific products, people, or places rather than using generic terms

Structure fixes:

• Add descriptive H2 headings every 200–300 words
• Convert any run-on explanatory paragraph into a bulleted list

The Rewrites tab generates reading_level_fix and paragraph_split suggestions targeting the specific sentences and paragraphs that are dragging down your score.