Comments on: SEO Advice: Spell-check your web site

By: Brian

Brian — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 22:22:29 +0000

Spell check is usually a pretty reliable source for most documents and such, but it has a tendency to not catch certain things (such as different types of spellings of words; their, there, they’re) but for the most part that shouldn’t be spell checker’s problem.

I use the spell check built in with my Fire Fox!

By: Emily Johnson

Emily Johnson — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 10:28:15 +0000

Hi Matt,
It’s always great to read your posts. I would like you to write a post on how to analyse a website giving links to tools to be used and also to find strengths and weakness and optimization recommendations. How to document for a site as a website analyser.

By: Nate

Nate — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 01:09:31 +0000

Hello, Matt.

Just one point of nitpickery here (and yes, spell check software will flag this neologism) that I feel compelled to point out since no one else did.

Mind you, this is a question of grammar rather than spelling, but as a professional nitpicker, I feel compelled to mention that the sentence

“There’s also the spell-check on webforms that the Google Toolbar offers, and there are numerous plugins for stuff like WordPress that does spell checking.”

should read:

“There’s also the spell-check on webforms that the Google Toolbar offers; and there are numerous plugins for stuff like WordPress that do spell checking.”

A great post though; if you want someone to do business with you, it’s imperative that you can demonstrate at least a minimal level of professionalism by bothering to use spell check.

By: chiba

chiba — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 06:13:08 +0000

honestly after reading all of this and some people typing liek dis wiff der gibberush it really is comprehendable (which seems to be wrong spelling) and the funny thing about it is if you can read it and understand it doesn’t that make it applied communication? It’s like ok… so the grammar is horrible, yet somehow we still can make sense of the phrase or statement, which seems to be the ultimate goal in this here scenario. So, basically, if you can get your point across, then use whatever means necessary to do it. If you want to type in shit-grammer then by all means do so if it applies to your audience. It’s really hard to determine your real target audience when some people’s patience differs from others. It’s like one guy is drinking Black Label and laughing at your horrible shit-grammar yet understanding, and another is a grammar nazi, and then of course you have the people that find it really hard to wrap their mind around emptying the recycle bin.

chaos.

By: Paintball Spyder

Paintball Spyder — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 19:04:03 +0000

Rather than focusing on the UK or the US versions of words, I think google is certainly looking at pages as a whole more carefully. I think they want to see contact pages, about us pages, etc. I don’t think they actually look at the spelling of words in order to decide if it is good content or not.

By: spenser

spenser — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 21:02:10 +0000

Mighty small world. Or maybe the people I know all have the same interests.

In reading the posts, I spotted at least four people who have corresponded or done business with me.

By: Vishal Agrahari

Vishal Agrahari — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 05:15:05 +0000

Hi Matt,

This is my question to all those who good SEO webmaster but can’t write good english. I meant don’t have good command in english writing.

What they do and how they do SEO for any site?

Thanks,

By: Martin Feuchtwanger

Martin Feuchtwanger — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 22:19:11 +0000

After posting the above, I thought I should have first checked out Keith Mains’ article on “Optimisation” and “Optimization”. Unfortunately, said article seems to have been written for search engines, not for people: It repeats, over and over, the various different UK/US spellings of words and concludes, rather anticlimactically, that one can write in UK english, in US english, or in a mix of both UK and US english. Is that so? Just how do I write for both a UK and US english audience without reverting to the very awkward “optimise (or optimize)”, “colour (or color)”, “litre (or liter)”, etc, style? Search engines would love that but I think humans would not. It makes me think that Google still has a long way to go in encouraging good content writing technique.

To Keith’s credit, I did learn, assuming he’s right, that my 2nd option (in the previous post) of putting the alternative spellings only in the meta content, would fall foul of Google.

By: Martin Feuchtwanger

Martin Feuchtwanger — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 21:23:49 +0000

Hamtoucher’s assertion about [photos] and [photo's] — albeit poorly written and quite wrong — reminded me of a question I have:

When there are two correct-but-different versions of a word, how do I write my web source matter to appeal to both audiences’ search terms?

For example, if I write extensively about a “centre point” and yet 80% of my actual audience might search for a “center point”,

do I always add the clumsy-looking “(or center)” every time I have a “centre” in my content,
do I just add “center point” to my meta-keywords-content and stay with only “centre” in my main content, or
do I “fuhgeddaboudit” and assume that search engines know that there are two valid spellings of the word and make the appropriate substitutions when searching.

My guess would have been that the 3rd option would not work and I’d have to do some careful web content writing. However, and here’s the Hamtoucher connection, when I tested [theatre] versus [theater] on http://www.googlebattle.com (I don’t know why I didn’t test centre/center) one of the highest ranks for “theater” was the AMC Theatres Homepage which didn’t have “theater” anywhere — not even in any meta-keywords-content. It had “theatre” everywhere.

What’s happening?

By: Jamie Kitson

Jamie Kitson — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 10:40:27 +0000

> If you search for [spell check web page]

Kind of ironic that this page is the first hit