When it comes to writing content for your audience, you want to make sure that the work you’re producing is something that they’re actually wanting to see. Part of this includes having correct grammar so that the readability is to a high standard.
This applies to any sort of content you produce as a company; the quality of the information you choose to have published online is a massive reflection of how you will be perceived overall by your audience. An enormous downfall for a lot of sites is that the SEO makes sense in theory, however, when keywords are used in content with bad grammar, it can become an obstacle more than you may first assume.
Distributing Content Across the Web
If you’re wanting to achieve a successful content marketing strategy, good grammar is definitely something to take into consideration.
Think of it this way: if you received an article via email riddled with misused punctuation and spelling mistakes left, right, and centre, would you publish this work with a backlink if that’s what the sender was requesting? The answer is likely going to be no. The impression that grammatically incorrect content gives is not a good one, with many online businesses simply taking one look at the email and hitting delete. A lot of readers of your content may feel they don’t have the time to decipher what you’re trying to convey and click off. This can lead to a high bounce rate for pages on your website that contain unacceptable grammar.
Simple Grammar Rules to Consider
There are a lot of different grammar rules to take into consideration when writing content for your audience. Let’s start with the basics:
- Capital letters where necessary: at the start of sentences, correct usage in titles, and for proper nouns
- Correct use of punctuation (commas, full stops, hyphens, semicolons etc).
- Using consistent pronouns throughout your content
If you can get these right, then your content should be seen as acceptable by the majority.
Implications of Using Incorrect Grammar
As a consumer, navigating a website with poor grammar is something that is not usually overlooked. Particularly with ecommerce websites, bad grammar can ultimately lead to adverse effects on your revenue.
Another implication is the reputation that your company may obtain. Ill spelling and grammar can typically be associated with spam websites or just all-round unprofessional companies. Hence why it is so important to proofread your content before distributing it online.
There will be room for minor errors, but as a whole you want to ensure that you’re aiming for your content to be grammatically correct. Google will still be able to recognise what you’re trying to rank for even if it’s not conveyed in the most accurate way. Just make sure your content makes enough sense for your audience.
For example, when conducting keyword research, you may discover that a grammatically incorrect term ranks rather than it’s proper counterpart. However, Google can comprehend similar phrases and will not disregard your content if there are slight alterations with grammar. So, do not deliberately make your grammar incorrect so that it ranks, because search engines already take this into consideration.
The lack of the apostrophe in the search query does not affect the search engine results, as seen above. The “Did you mean” function allows users to correct themselves, but even without this, still lists related searches that are in fact grammatically correct.
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