I got curious one day and decided to put one of my own articles through Google’s Natural Language API.
I wasn't trying to find out whether Google would rank it.
Related reads: Semantic Content Writing: Moving Beyond Keywords to Topic Authority.
I simply wanted to know: “If a machine reads my article, what does it actually see?”
The result was more interesting than I expected.
A few sections I thought were perfectly relevant were being associated with concepts I hadn't really intended to make important. That's when I realized something pretty simple:
We know what we mean when we write. The reader—and a machine—only sees what's actually on the page.
What NLP Helped Me Notice
NLP, or Natural Language Processing, is basically a way for computers to analyze human language.
Tools like Google's Natural Language API can look at things such as entities, sentiment, syntax and content categories.
For a writer, you don't need to understand all the technical details.
The useful question is simply:
Does my article communicate what I think it communicates?
1. Stay on the Main Topic
I noticed that some of my examples were taking the article slightly away from its main subject.
The paragraphs weren't necessarily bad. They were just not helping the main point enough.
That made editing easier.
I started asking myself:
“If I remove this paragraph, does the reader lose anything important?”
If the answer was no, I usually removed it.
2. Write Like a Person
The experiment also reinforced something I've believed for a while: natural writing works better than forcing keywords into every sentence.
If a sentence sounds strange when you read it aloud, it probably needs rewriting.
The goal isn't to write for NLP.
It's to make the meaning obvious.
3. Tone Matters
One small sarcastic comment in my article came across more negatively than I'd expected.
It wasn't a major issue, but it reminded me that words can carry a tone we don't always notice while writing.
That's especially important when you're creating content where readers need to trust you.
What I Took Away
I don't use NLP as a scorecard for every article.
I use it occasionally as a second pair of eyes.
It helps me notice things I might miss during normal editing—especially when an article is long or covers a complicated subject.
If you want to see exactly what happened when I tested my own writing, read What Google’s NLP API Actually Showed Me About My Writing.
And if you're curious about how BERT and MUM influenced my approach to writing, I've covered that in Writing for BERT and MUM — What I Actually Changed.
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