Is bad English detected by Google
-
Hi,
I am based in the UK and in a very competitive market - van leasing - and I am thinking about using an Indian SEO company for my ongoing SEO.
They have sent me some sample artilces that they have written for link building and the English is not good.
Do you think that google can tell the difference between a well written article and a poorly written article? Will the fact that articles are poorly writtem mean we will lose potential value from the link?
Any input would be much appreciated.
Regards
John J
-
Thanks for the responses. I think I will stay away from the Indian SEO companies.
It really was for link building and not onsite stuff but it still does not seem like the best way forward.
Regards
John
-
Matt Cutts has stated in the past that poorly translating pages into another language (i.e. dumping out a raw translation) could get you devalued. Now, he's talking primarily about duplicate content but it seems that he's hinting that poor grammar could also play a role in evaluations. At the bare minimum, it could affect your bounce rate, a known SEO factor.
Let's put aside the SEO role for a second. I'm a customer who just found your site, written by your India firm. The grammar looks worse than my daughter's (she's in first grade) and is a chore to read, let alone understand. Am I going to stay and listen to/buy anything else on your site? Nope. I'll go to your competitor or I'll just give up. And you can forget any tertiary SEO benefit of my linking your article except to ridicule it. From a business standpoint it doesn't make sense. It's sloppy and people hate sloppy (unless you're selling really good hamburgers, which you're not).
If you still don't think it's important, check out Engrish. I hope you don't wind up there!
-
I agree w/ @kevinb. Google & Bing track results like high user engagement, low bounce rates, etc. Check out the infographic below.
If these articles aren't useful to users, Google will notice.
-
Awkward syntax and poor or incorrect use of idiom erect roadblocks to the flow of a narrative, depreciating the user experience.
It's been my experience that when a writer attempts to replicate a particular cultural context that is not natural to him or her, the user will recognize its artificiality—even if only on a subconscious level. An analogy would be a motion picture with dubbed—rather than subtitled—dialog: There's something that's just off.
According to Google user experience trumps, doesn't it? (See, I used an idiom right there!) So, for what its worth my advice would be to stay away.
-
Even if Google can't detect poor English now, it will be working towards it.
Surely your money is better spent elsewhere. Invest in the long term.
If the articles they are writing for you are low quality, you can bet the sites they are able to get them on are low too.
Keep away from them and work on quality. Nothing is quick and easy and that's how it should be. If people could so easily buy their way to the top, the search results wouldn't be worth using.
-
Do yourself a favour, stay away from this out-dated and damaging technique!
Create some amazing content on your own site/blog......examples could be how to reduce insurance costs when leasing a van or the best vans to hire for home removals etc etc.
Make your content the go to source for that particular problem then start contacting other webmasters of similar (non-competitor) sites to share/link so their readers benefit!
The game has changed a lot from when you could buy 50 articles from Indian SEO firms for less than £20 and churn out for links from low quality sites!
-
Wesley & Jesse hit the nail on the head. Don't do it. Even if Google possible can't detect it directly, they can spot it indirectly in the means of user experience.
Is the only reason you are using this team is price?
-
I'm not sure if Google if able to tell the difference between good or bad English at this moment.
But i do know that this is one of the criteria which they want a website to rank as is described in this document about Google Panda: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.nl/2011/05/more-guidance-on-building-high-quality.htmlThis method is not permitted though and you may have a benefit for this on the short term, but i can tell you that it won't be long before you will get a penalty for this technique. Link building is not about buying links in any form. It's about creating awesome content that people want to share just because they think it is awesome.
Of course reaching out to people is also part of the process. But the key is always to make sure that you have to create a site that people **want **to link to because it is awesome of because their website will get better from it because your website offers great value to their visitors.
Always keep this in mind
-
What Google definitely does recognize is the exact services you are considering. Google's webspam team developed Penguin specifically to target sites that have subbed out SEO to blackhat organizations. What you are describing is exactly what they are targeting.
Don't do it! You WILL be sorry.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Submitting a page to Google Search Console or Bing Webmaster Tools with nofollow tags
Hello, I was hoping someone could help me understand if there is any point to submit a domain or subdomain to Google Search Console (Webmaster Tools) and Bing Webmaster Tools if the pages (on the subdomain for example) all have nofollow/noindex tags ... or the pages are being blocked by the robots.txt file). There are some pages on a data feed onto a subdomain which I manage that have these above characteristics ... which I cannot change ... but I am wondering if it is better to simply exclude from submitting those from GWT and BWT (above) thereby eliminating generating errors or warnings ... or is it better to tell Google and Bing about them anyway then perhaps there is a chance those nofollow pages may be indexed/contextualised in some way, making it worth the effort? Many thanks!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | uworlds
Mark0 -
Tool to check google index status for backlinks?
I would like to check to see which backlink urls are indexed in Google. Is there a tool that can automate this work or will I have to do it manually?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Choice0 -
11 000 links from 2 blogs + Many bad links = Penguin 2.0\. What is the real cause?
Hello, A website has : 1/ 8000 inbound links from 1 blog and 3000 from another one. They are clean and good blogs, all links are NOT marked as no-follow. 2/ Many bad links from directories that have been unindexed or penalized by Google On the 22nd of May, the website got hurt by Penguin 2.0. The link profile contains many directories and articles. The priority we had so far was unindexing the bad links, however shall we no-follow the blog links as well? Thanks!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | antoine.brunel0 -
Keywords in Google Local results
We have a client in the moving business and I'm absolutely flabbergasted by the "local" results and the number of them that are not following Google's guidelines for Google Local accounts. 3 of them are using exact match keyword strings as their company names. I've reported all 3, every week for the last 2 months and have not seen a single dip in the rankings. Meanwhile our client has a duplicate listing we've verified and "suspended" and it hasn't changed for 4 months! Any tips? I've attached a photo of the listings as well. xwWZWyT.gif
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | SmartWebPros0 -
Is article spinning bad?
I have been looking up different seo tactics to use on my website. One of the ones I came across is article spinning. It's interesting that if done right you can create total unique content within a few minutes. However will it be considered black hat? And does Google penalize you for it?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | simplistics1 -
Can anyone recommend a Google-friendly way of utilising a large number of individual yet similar domains related to one main site?
I have a client who has one main service website, on which they have local landing pages for some of the areas in which they operate. They have since purchased 20 or so domains (although in the process of acquiring more) for which the domain names are all localised versions of the service they offer. Rather than redirecting these to the main site, they wish to operate them all separately with the goal of ranking for the specific localised terms related to each of the domains. One option would be to create microsites (hosted on individual C class IPs etc) with unique, location specific content on each of the domains. Another suggestion would be to park the domains and have them pointing at the individual local landing pages on the main site, so the domains would just be a window through which to view the pages which have already been created. The client is aware of the recent EMD update which could affect the above. Of course, we would wish to go with the most Google-friendly option, so I was wondering if anyone could offer some advice about how would be best to handle this? Many thanks in advance!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | AndrewAkesson0 -
Why is Google not punishing paid links as it says it will?
I've recently started working with a travel company - and finding the general link building side of the business quite difficult. I had a call from an SEO firm the other day offering their services, and stating that they had worked with a competitor of ours and delivered some very good results. I checked the competitors rankings, PR, link profile, and indeed, the results were quite impressive. However, the link profile pointed to one thing, that was incredibly obvious. They had purchased a large amount of sidebar text links from powerful blogs in the travel sector. Its painfully obvious what has happened, yet they still rank very highly for a lot of key terms. Why don't Google do something about this? They aren't the only company in this sector doing this, but it just seems pointless for white hats trying to do things properly, then those with the dollar in their pockets just buy success in the SERPS. Thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | neilpage1230 -
How does someone rank page one on google for one domain for over 150 keywords?
A local seo is exclaiming his fantastic track record for a pool company(amonst others) in our local market. Over 150 keywords on page one of google. I checked out a few things using some moz tools and didn't find anything that would suggest that this has come from white hat strategies, tactics or links etc. Interested in how he is doing this and if it is white hat? Thanks, C
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | charlesgrimm0