Software programs like Grammarly and Hemingway are designed to improve your writing by finding inconsistencies. And other tools like Yoast are designed to help your writing rank better with search engines, which can also lead to stronger writing.
These software programs help ensure you submit (or publish) polished work. But beyond that, they’re another way to improve your writing skill.
When you use these tools, you’ll get suggestions for improving your writing — its ease of reading and effectiveness. You’ll receive recommendations for correcting spelling and grammar errors, fixing punctuation, writing in an active voice, being concise, and using keywords properly.
Using these tools will make your writing easier to read and make it easier for search engines to find.
An Online Editor Always at Your Service
Think of these software tools as an online editor reviewing your document… one who can find typos, missed words, wordy phrases, redundancies, and even missed opportunities.
According to Grammarly, surveys of their premium users show that people who use their tool feel they’re stronger writers (85%), have increased writing confidence (70%), and find writing more enjoyable (76%). From my own personal experience, these tools have made me a better web-content writer.
But how exactly does that come about? Let’s look at a few examples…
Grammarly Software
Grammarly (Grammarly: Free Online Writing Assistant) is the most popular digital-writing assistance tool on the market today.
You can use the online version of Grammarly Premium as a separate application for Windows or an add-on within MS Office and MS Edge.
As an add-on in MS Word, Grammarly opens a separate side window.
It highlights potential issues in the text, like spelling, grammar, word usage, wordiness, style, punctuation, and plagiarism, and suggests a possible correction or improvement.
For each proposed change, Grammarly explains the reasoning behind it. You decide if you want to implement the program’s suggestion to correct the issue.
Over time, using Grammarly makes you a better writer by making you more aware of common pitfalls, like writing in the passive voice or being overly wordy. The result is better-written emails, business documents, and social media posts.
Hemingway Online Editor
Another popular online application is the Hemingway Editor (hemingwayapp.com). With this app, you can write a new document or edit an existing one right on the Hemingway web page.
It’s similar to Grammarly as an advanced spelling and grammar usage checker. They both find text you can correct or improve. The Hemingway Editor provides an overall readability grade score and looks for five common writing pitfalls, highlighting each with a different color:
- incorrect use of adverbs
- use of passive voice
- phrases have simpler alternatives
- hard-to-read sentences
- very hard-to-read sentences
One of the perks of Hemingway is that you can export your work directly from the app into WordPress or Medium. Once you do that, another software application can improve your content writing.
Yoast SEO Premium
With more than 5 million users, Yoast SEO Premium (SEO for everyone • Yoast) is a popular online search engine optimization (SEO) tool for WordPress users. The program has two main functions: It analyzes web copy for SEO and for Readability.
In the SEO section, there are fields where you can add metadata, such as your primary keyword phrase, essential phrase synonyms, title tag, and meta description… all without messing with the HTML source code. It does that part for you.
Analysis results
Analyzing your content is where Yoast can help you improve your work. After it reviews your blog entry or web page content, the program tells you how to improve your content based on standard SEO rules. The following are examples from my web pages, which I’ve fixed:
- Keyphrase density: The focus keyphrase was found 0 times. That’s less than the recommended minimum of 2 times for a text of this length. Focus on your keyphrase!
- Keyphrase in meta description: The meta description has been specified but does not contain the keyphrase. Fix that!
- Keyphrase in the introduction: Your keyphrase or synonyms do not appear in the first paragraph. Make sure the topic is clear immediately.
- Text length: The text contains 126 words, far below the recommended minimum of 300 words. Add more content.
An added feature allows you to specify titles, descriptions, and images for social sharing, giving you more control of how your content appears when your share it with your social media audience or when someone else shares it with their audience.
The Tools at Your Disposal
We’re fortunate to have many tools to help us do better work for ourselves and our clients.
I find using these tools makes my writing better. They’ll help you write content that’s easy to read and engaging. And they’ll make your content more appealing to search engines, too. These may seem like little things, but they lead to better search engine rankings, more traffic, and more leads. That’s good news for you and your clients.
