Grammar and spelling may affect Google rankings

When entrepreneurs are looking to boost their small business websites’ search engine rankings, many focus on the obvious elements: using the right keywords and generating high-quality links. However, according to Google engineer Matt Cutts, Google also considers other signals, such as spelling and grammar.

Cutts recently explained that while spelling and grammar aren’t crucial factors, low-ranked sites tend to have typo-riddled copy, whereas highly-ranked websites are relatively free of errors. If small business owners have struggled to improve their search engine rankings, they may want to check their sites for typos and grammar errors.

“We noticed a while ago that, if you look at the PageRank of a page – how reputable we think a particular page or site is – the ability to spell correlates relatively well with that. So, the reputable sites tend to spell better and the sites that are lower PageRank, or very low PageRank, tend not to spell as well,” Cutts said.

The focus on quality

Google has traditionally focused on website quality when developing its search algorithm. Credibility has always been the goal of the search engine, so just as credible websites would have incoming links from other websites, so too should the copy featured on its pages be clean and relatively error proof.

Google’s Panda Update, which was rolled out earlier this year, emphasized the quality of content. No longer could websites abuse article directories and repost the same content continually to bolster search engine rankings. The search giant even released a Panda “survival guide” so webmasters could avoid being negatively affected by the algorithm update.

Among the questions Google asked website owners included: “Does this article have spelling, stylistic, or factual errors,” “How much quality control is done on content””and “Was the article edited well, or does it appear sloppy or hastily produced?” Clearly, this seems to indicate that Google does indeed value well-written copy on websites.

Although Cutts did mention that spelling and grammar aren’t elements the search engine actively considers when determining PageRank, he did assert it is something Google talks about. The search giant has also mulled over adding a reading level filter that would scan websites to determine how easy they are to read.

Stressing readability

Clearly, this shows that small business owners need to be careful when creating and updating their websites. If entrepreneurs are creating their small business websites for the first time, they should make sure the web design company in charge of the job is writing accurate copy.

Additionally, if a company runs an official blog, it should also try to minimize any typos or grammatical errors that appear in content. Not only does this look unprofessional to readers, but it may also impact their search rankings should Google decide to move forward with any sort of readability filter.

As the number of companies running blogs continues to grow, typos and grammar errors are becoming a bigger threat to brand perception. According to eMarketer data, close to 40 percent of American companies have a public-facing blog for marketing purposes, ranging from lead generation to customer service. Whether businesses have a dedicated blogger or simply leave the task to marketing departments, they should be proofreading blogs before they go live.

What strategies do you employ to ensure your website content is error-free? Have typos or grammar mistakes ever cost you a potential customer or tarnished your brand?

This entry was posted in Advanced, Search Marketing. Bookmark the permalink.