Should we pay attention to grammar and spelling in SEO or site optimization for search engines? Does Google reduce page rank due to misspellings? What effect does semi-space have on the understanding of keywords? All these are questions that concern the mind of every writer, content manager, or SEO expert. In the old days, experts used to do their work by guesswork, but not now. With the growth of the Google search engine, the world is now a better place for SEO and content marketing specialists to have accurate and up-to-date information. Join me so that once and for all we will get rid of all the contradictions about half space and spelling mistakes and… In SEO of the site.
Although the web is growing day by day, especially in the field of content, there are still many spelling and writing mistakes in the content. This a subject that can be investigated and overlooked, because it is always possible to change a word, phrase, or letter. We are not talking about the cause of wrong spelling or half-spacing, this becomes an issue when content with these conditions is published and no one knows whether Google’s crawlers will ignore them or not.
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Google claim, spelling and writing problems are effective.
Understandably, many content marketing professionals overestimate the impact of bad writing on content articles. We have all heard and read Google’s emphasis on publishing high-quality content. For example, Google’s SEO guide for content marketers writes:
Publishing one high-quality content weekly is better than publishing seven low-quality content daily.
Or the central blog of the Google search engine wrote in part of its educational article about poor-quality content and its effect on site rankings:
Another guideline in the ranking of site pages is that poor quality content can affect the ranking of the entire site, or the entire page and its content can be removed from the SERP pages.
Also, in the first cases of guidance for SEO sites, Google suggests that:
Avoid publishing messy texts full of grammar and spelling mistakes.
In part of the guidelines or factors for detecting poor-quality content, Google specifies the following criteria:
Content with incorrect or nonsensical information + lack of complete content editing that leads to misspellings or writing errors is the reason for the low rank of the content.
Of course, Google has not left its hand behind and has taken steps to guide users about this matter, because it explains in a post that with the development of an algorithm based on artificial intelligence and machine learning, it now has a system for detecting writing and spelling errors that directs the user to the phrase He directs what he wants. It means that even if you search by mistake, you will get the result you want, and we are aware of this issue.
Evidence-based on the effect of spelling mistakes and typos on SEO
To answer this question, by examining the evidence at three different times, we arrive at a point that I will explain below.
In 2011, Matt Katz, head of Google’s web spam team, was asked whether spelling mistakes affect the ranking of content in the SERP (Google Results Page) or not.
He says:
(The last time he checked, this issue does not have a direct effect on the ranking of content in search results.) But he goes on to say: Google has specified that magazines with high-quality content, i.e. without writing errors or different from the guidelines of poor quality content, are more valid in Google’s view. He finally mentions that: (Content should be written regardless of rank for a better user experience.)
A month later, Katz is asked again if the sarcastic or meaningless comments published by users have an effect on the results or not, should site owners edit these comments or publish them without editing? Kant says:
These comments are also published on a platform like YouTube, but this does not prevent high-quality content from being rated well. Content marketing professionals should strive to create quality content.
In 2017, the famous John Muller was asked again whether grammar or spelling mistakes are effective on content ranking. He answers:
It doesn’t affect the ranking, but it creates a bad experience for the user, which is much more important.
Four years later, Mueller is asked which is more important for SEO between typos and broken HTML pages and whether Google checks them or not.
In response, Mueller says:
Typos and content errors are important issues because if typos and misspellings change how Google’s crawlers perceive your content, they won’t be able to index the content properly or rank the content for the right terms.
He also points out that Google’s goal is to provide high-quality content to users, and content that has grammatical errors and spelling mistakes does not look high-quality. So most sites should care more about the quality of their content than worrying about broken HTML unless the programming structure is so broken that crawlers don’t understand it at all.
From the speeches of John Mueller and Matt Katz, we can see that since 2011, Google has made every effort to increase the quality of web content. Now, in 2023, it is no secret to anyone that high-quality content that creates a good user experience for the user can rely on Google’s first rank and zero ranks without any backlinks from the competitor shaking its throne. Good content is the king of results in 2023, no doubt.
Do typos and spelling mistakes have an impact on SEO?
Now, after examining the claims published by Google and interviewing Google leaders, we can conclude whether this issue affects SEO or not.
Maybe typos don’t have the direct effect they do, because if key phrases are misspelled, content will struggle to rank for the correct form of those phrases.
In addition to Google, other search engines have also become sensitive to this issue. 2014 Bing search engine product manager writes about content quality:
All of these (spelling mistakes) may not seem important, but just as you compare other people’s writings, we are sensitive to how we rate them by checking each other’s content. These explanations are consistent with the guidelines published by the Bing search engine itself.
Typing errors and spelling mistakes for the quality of the content are like a spontaneous goal that is scored in the 90th minute of the game. Unfortunately or fortunately, all users read the published content very carefully, and when they see a spelling mistake, it is naturally not a pleasant experience for them.
At first glance, the problem ends here, but when he has a negative experience with your brand and site, he will certainly not go for your link in the next search. In a statistical community of 2000 people, this work is like a disaster, it affects all the fields of the SEO team and has a direct effect on the ranking of all pages.
In addition to the discussion of the result, when the key phrases are not written correctly or, better to say, according to the general search of people you have given the wrong address to rank the content. That is, between the two phrases, the meaning is the same, or rather, similar, you should choose a phrase as a keyword that the general public searches for the same.