A harsh look at poorly written content, and how it will hurt your ranking

byTracyWA

405 followers

6 years ago

The following post is written with the sincere wish to help my fellow WA members who are struggling with creating well written content for their websites. Consider this a virtual kick in the butt, to start taking your content creation more seriously in terms of eliminating grammar, spelling and punctuation errors.

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I recently looked over a WA member's post that had the name of the product they were reviewing SPELLED WRONG in many places throughout the review.

This is NOT the way to bring traffic to your site. If you have the product name spelled wrong, how are you even going to show up in search engines? How will people find your review? (I hope this has sent everyone scurrying to their sites to check their reviews. HA!)

For myself, if I start reading a post that is full of spelling, grammar and punctuation mistakes, I will probably not continue reading it. Perhaps this is unfair, and maybe that post has the information I am looking for, but I really can’t continue reading articles that are full of distracting mistakes.

And, for heaven’s sake, USE PUNCTUATION! Trying to read an article that is basically just one long sentence is incredibly annoying, and just plain difficult. If your reader is having to constantly stop and try to figure out what you’re trying to say, they aren’t going to stick around.

Now, I’m not saying I’m perfect. I make mistakes ALL the time. Typos happen. But I work diligently to correct the mistakes I make. I read my content over and over. And I'll go back maybe a week later and reread it. Fresh eyes find missed mistakes.

In this day and age, there really is no reason to have many spelling, grammar and punctuation mistakes in your written posts. Between spellcheck and online tools such as Grammarly, you have a lot of help right at your fingertips. There is no excuse for poorly written content.

If you can’t afford Grammarly, there are less expensive and free options available. If you pay attention while these tools are correcting your content, you will learn as you go along. Your writing will improve, and so will your rankings and readership.

People like to read well-written articles. If the article is riddled with mistakes, it can be very distracting for your reader. They will not have faith in what you are saying. And we want our readers to have respect for us – we want them to trust us, so they will keep coming back.

If you are new to writing, if English is your second language, or if you just need that little boost to take you to the next level in your content creation, I strongly suggest either getting Grammarly, or trying out the free versions of the tools you can find online. I think you will be very glad you did.

I found this review of the 10 Best Grammarly Alternatives in 2020. So go check them out, and find one that is going to work for you. They are less expensive than Grammarly, and some even have free versions.

Other tips for improving your writing:

• Read. Read books, magazines, and other blogs that are well written. Even if the topics aren’t of interest to you, read them to learn how they are written.
• Read books and articles about learning to write. Soak up all the information you can.
• Write a lot. Even if you’re not writing a post for your website, you can practice writing by keeping a journal of sorts. Just write something every day.
• Read your posts out loud. This is one of the best ways to find the mistakes in your content. Reading it out loud, word-for-word, will help you ‘hear’ the errors.
• Ask someone else to look it over. Fresh eyes are always a good thing.

I hope this post is a helpful kick in the pants to those of you who are struggling with creating content for your websites. I do not mean to sound like I’m better than you; or that you can’t learn to write. You absolutely CAN.

I truly believe that anyone can learn to write well. But, like anything worthwhile, you have to work at it. And it’s not going to happen overnight. Just like getting your website onto the first page of Google, it will take a lot of time and effort. But you CAN learn to write clearly, effectively, and well.

We don't need to be Ernest Hemingway to be effective blog writers. But we do need to make sure that the information we are sharing is actually making sense to our readers; and that we're not distracting and annoying them with unnecessary grammar, spelling and punctuation mistakes.

Once your writing has improved, and you're feeling more confident, you can go back to your older articles and make improvements on them. You'll know how to make them better; and you'll gain even more confidence in your site. And your readers will too.

If you have questions, please feel free to ask in the comments below. I have faith in you! I know you can do this!

Wishing you the best of luck in your ventures.

Tracy