Can Typos And Errors In Website Content Affect Search Rankings?


Typos and Errors in Website Content Affect Search Rankings

This is a good question, isn’t it? Will grammatical errors, errors in punctuation marks, and typos have an impact on your search rankings? 

There was a time that it did, and a lot of SEO experts took advantage of this. They purposely misspelled words in their SEO meta-data, headings, and website content because they knew that people spelled these words wrong. 

Here is an example: “Shofer” instead of “chauffeur”. But does it still work today, or are these days gone? 

Here is the answer: Typos and other writing errors are bad for seo.

That is what we will discuss today, and I will show you the impact of misspelled words and typos as far as SEO is concerned. 

Effects on Backlinks

How can you expect someone to link back to you if you have a lot of typos and grammatical errors? Take note that whenever someone links back to you, his reputation is at stake. 

A badly written blog post is an embarrassing piece of material to share. Anyone who shares content knows that what they share is a reflection of their standards. Think of memes and jokes as an analogy. You will not share any memes that are offensive if your friends do not appreciate a joke like that.

You will also not share jokes that you think aren’t funny. So why would you do it for blog content? 

As you can see, people will only create backlinks to a website if the content is awesome and professional enough to meet their standards. Their subscribers and regular visitors trust them, and they do not want to share links to content that was put together in a rush—bad grammar and all that. 

If you want your website to receive backlinks, you do not just have to focus on providing numbers or stats, but also high-quality content that helps people. While people can argue that depth is more important than spelling, we need to come to terms with the fact that perception is everything. 

Misspelled words and bad grammar have no place in the world of professional publications. Unless you get your act together, no other webmaster is going to link back to you.  



Bad User Experience

One typo is okay. Two typos are forgivable. But three in an article? 

That tells so much about the quality of your content and your general attitude towards the work that you put out there. It is true that no one is perfect, but too many mistakes is an indication that you do not care. 

You see, people read your blog because, well, they love to read. As such, you need to provide them an article that has little to no errors. While writing a flawless article is a tall order, it is something that you need to strive to achieve every time you publish a post. 

It is not like as if you are writing a novel—this one has its own challenges and you need a professional editor to the editing job for you.  

In a blog, the usual word count is only 600 words. You can never really have an excuse to tell your readers for your mistakes. It is easy to edit 600 words—it will not take more than a few minutes of your time. If you cannot make that commitment, your readers will see through it. 

Typos affect user experience. While many writers think that it is fine, the readers do not think the same. Just imagine if you typed “ine” instead of “one”—readers will find this confusing, especially so if the sentence does not give any context that what you meant to type was “one”.

Typos and misspelled words annoy readers. And if they do get annoyed, they are going to leave your blog post and stop visiting your website. 

This is where the bad SEO impact starts to happen. Google measures how long a user stays on a page, and whether or not users browse more content from your site. The more time they spend, the more Google would think that you must be providing value to your customers.

If they love your content and read more posts, your bounce rate will naturally go down because they do not exit on the same page they came in. Lower bounce rates tell Google that your site visitors are exploring your pages, which is an indicator that they love the content that they see. 

And if this happens, Google will rank your page better based on the algorithmic assumption that you are providing value.

Google Does not Care, But People Do

According to Google, there is no part of the search engine algorithm that measures spelling and grammar issues. However, Google’s SEO expert Matt Cutts explained that there is a positive correlation between a blog’s ranking and accuracy in spelling. 

What does this mean?

In a study, Google experts found out that websites with professionally written articles—those that are free of spelling and grammar errors ranked higher compared to those that have typos and grammar problems.

Matt said that high-ranking and reputable sites spell better than low-ranking websites. He strongly advised that if you can spend the time to invest in both spelling and grammar for your website content, do it.

He said that you should not just do it for the search engines, but also for your site visitors—they will appreciate it if your blog posts are of professional quality.

He also said that readers can tell if the blog post is just a hodgepodge of content taken from various sources, or if the blog post went through some serious editing process, including fact-checking.

So, while spelling and grammar are not part of any signals that tell Google to rank a page, they surely make your customer experience better, which in turn will affect how much time they spend on your website, and  whether they will consume more of your content or not. 

Great Content Equals Better Reputation

We should not misunderstand what Matt Cutts said. While it is true that reputable sites that rank high on Google have no spelling and grammatical errors, this is merely a positive correlation. 

But this is not causation.

At the end of the day, there are many factors that impact your search engine ranking. Great content is still what dominates the ranking pages. But remember, spelling and grammar are small structural pieces of what makes great content.

You have to see the bigger picture, though. Good content is something that adds value. Depth and meaning are the two things that readers are looking for. Your blog posts may be grammatically faultless—they may not have spelling errors—but if they have no depth and value, readers will still go away. 

Summary

Always double-check and proofread your content. A typo here and there may be negligible, but if it happens all the time, it can hurt your ranking. Use the services of a proofreader if you must. This, of course, entails a cost for every material you produce.

A better option is to use free tools like Grammarly and Readable.IO. Both of these tools do not only check grammar and spelling, but also your voice, tone, and how readable the content is.



John Kilmerstone

I'm an Aussie living in Japan who enjoys traveling, photography, and blogging. Please visit this website and explore the wonderful world of blogging. Discover how to turn your passions and pastimes into an online business.

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