Does correct grammar help your SEO rankings or not? Since the major search engines primarily base their rankings on text-related data, it would make sense that Google uses grammar as one of its 200+ ranking factors. However, this is actually not the case. So, should content marketers take the time to follow grammar rules for better keyword rankings? According to Google’s head of SPAM, Matt Cutts, proper grammar is not a ranking factor that Google currently uses. However, Cutts also mentioned that high-quality sites tend to include proper spelling and correct grammar. That means that, although writing with proper English grammar is not currently a direct ranking factor, content marketers are doing themselves a disservice by writing poorly online.
Correlation is Not Causation But …
Since even Matt Cutts says that grammar is not a ranking factor, it should be the case, I guess. Here’s the catch though. If you use some crazy spelling and grammar in general, odds are, folks will not stay on your site for a long time just because they may find themselves not understanding a single word of what you wrote down there. Your content MUST be readable and not for you only 🙂
If your site visitors leave your site right after they land on it, you get a higher bounce rate, which Google do consider as a very negative ranking factor. That means your grammar is actually a middleman between your reader and bounce rates. Making your texts easy and interesting to read would make the visitor consider staying longer on your site which sends a positive signal to Google’s ranking algorithm. So it turns out that spelling and grammar is not a direct ranking factor only to an extent. Go figure.
A Matter of Trust
Consumers tend to place their trust in websites that have taken the time to ensure they are using proper English grammar. It makes sense — if your site visitors don’t have any trust in your site, they just won’t buy from you.
Also, if the grammar on your site is of low-quality, perhaps all your products and services are as well? Such mental conclusions are called anchoring in psychology. If one thing that is yours is of lousy quality, all other things of yours are of the same quality. That’s exactly how your visitors think about the whole shebang. End of story.
Link Building Issues
Other than that, other sites will definitely at least hesitate linking to your site because your bad grammar casts a shadow on linking sites as well. That especially holds true if we talk about your niche thought leaders. In other words, you will have a hard time doing link building for your site.
Plus it’s going to be really hard convincing somebody to accept a guest post from you. Before accepting a guest post from you, the site owner can (and most likely will) just do due diligence and check your own blog. If he or she sees tons of grammar and spelling mistakes on your site, you’ll get a nice goodbye kiss before you know it.
Now that you got the idea of how improper English grammar can eventually impact your site rankings, what if your commenters don’t take the time to follow most English language grammar rules either?
Bad Grammar in Comments
Thing is, this question was raised in one of Matt Cutt’s videos as well. He clearly stated that bad rankings in your blog posts won’t negatively influence your site rankings. You can see it for yourself.
Being tech savvy guys, Google somehow understand what is your own content and what is user-generated. In fact, that’s a huge relief because it would be a hectic thing to do for huge and aged sites. Now a question for you. How would you feel if you just read an article on a blog and now you go to see the comments so that you know if what the article describes works for other people, but you just can’t figure out what those crazy people doodled down there? I’d personally suggest making it clear to your commenters that you expect readable English or whatever language you use on your blog.
Conclusion
Though correct grammar is not a direct ranking factor as of now, you still want to make sure that your content is at least readable. Plus if you want your site to become a reputable one in the long run, you also want to proofread the stuff you publish on your site. Other than that, Google tend to use more factors that make searches more convenient and useful for the user. Don’t you think that correct grammar does just that?
What do you personally think about how correct grammar and propper spelling interact with search engine rankings?
