Website SEO Tips
SEO and Spelling
 There is nothing more annoying than coming
across grammar and spelling mistakes on a Web page. The Website is immediately devalued
in the visitor's eyes.
The number of spelling errors found on the Web is high. Programmers are good at
technical issues, but spelling is seldom one of their strengths. The spelling of
each Web Page should be checked thoroughly.
Spelling mistakes can be avoided by:
- Asking a gimlet-eyed English teacher or a professional proof-reader to proof-read
the text.
- Copying each Web page to Notebook, and then checking the spelling and grammar with
Microsoft Word.
- Using the free AddIn for ASP.Net
Spell checker
which will help to avoid most problems.
Deliberate Misspelling
Misspelled words are not likely to be helpful in attracting visitors.
The idea seems plausible enough. Misspelled words that are frequently used by visitors
are inserted into a Web page. If the Website is the only one to contain these misspellings,
then the Website will achieve a higher hit rate.
But misspellings do not attract visitors – the Search Engines are clever enough
to ignore the error, and will substitute the correct word. Any visitor to the Web
page is unlikely to be impressed by spelling and grammatical errors. An unprofessional
Website is unlikely to be trusted, and the visit will be short.
As an example, a visitor found my programming Website using this phrase "LEARNIGN
VB IS EASY?". The Search Engine was intelligent enough to list the Visual Basic
Website on page one of the organic search results. The Web page would not have looked
good with "learnign". BTW, the answer was that learning Visual Basic.Net involves
"a huge learning curve".
Australian and USA spelling
To ensure an Australian audience, I have consistently used the British spelling
of "Optimisation". This Table shows the difference in the number of results for
the two different spellings, as returned by Google.
|
Phrase
|
Results
|
|
"search engine optimisation"
|
3,670,000
|
|
search engine optimisation
|
36,700,000
|
|
"search engine optimization"
|
31,200,000
|
|
search engine optimization
|
207,000,000
|
At one stage, Google used to return much the same numbers for each spelling. Now
due to localisation with more relevant and local results, the numbers are very different
for each spelling. This could be due to most people using "optimization" rather
than "optimisation" when they search.
|