How Does Misspelling Affect SEO?

Share to:
Copy link:
June 5, 2021
Author: Antonio Fernandez
Results Image

To what extent does misspelling affect SEO rankings? This is a question that many marketers probably wonder about – how does incorrect spelling affect the ranking of articles, especially when it comes to transliterated words from foreign languages that seem to have multiple ways of being spelled? In this article, Relevant Audience will answer these questions for everyone to understand.

Understanding SEO

Writing articles to help SEO is an important way to help your website pages easily rank on the first page. If you select keywords that match the search behavior of the general public, however, keyword selection is not the only factor that will allow Web Crawlers to process the article as a good one. There are also factors related to content involved, such as if the presented article is poorly written, intentionally filled with keywords but doesn’t understand the entire content, or uses incorrect grammar making it difficult to understand, or has complexities that make it difficult to comprehend, as well as having misspellings throughout which affects readability, which will also result in a high Bounce Rate, causing Web Crawlers to process the article as bad and unsuitable for presentation.

Problematic Transliterations: How to Spell Them “Correctly”

As mentioned earlier, misspelling affects SEO rankings, but one of the problems with the Thai language is the spelling of transliterations. There are methods of spelling that are correct according to Thai grammar. For example, the word “Application,” which the Royal Institute has transliterated as “application.” However, Thais often misspell it as “application” or “application.” If you use the meaning translated into Thai as “applied program,” it is a term that is not widely used. You can see the search statistics from Google as follows:

This kind of confusion may lead many people to be unsure which spelling method they should choose to use in their content. Should they choose the spelling that is correct according to the Royal Institute, or the spelling that people generally use? Generally speaking, in writing for print media, choosing a spelling method that is correct according to the Royal Institute is often something that print media editors emphasize greatly. But for SEO writing, the purpose is different from writing for print media. Because SEO writing is writing to allow Web Crawlers to read it, and also writing to match the search behavior of the general public. Therefore, if the word “Application” is the main keyword you want to rank on SEO, choosing the spelling “application” will best match the search behavior of people.

Similarly, if your article is related to applications for taking or editing photos, choosing the keyword “photo editing app” may not align with people’s understanding. Because looking at the recommendations from Google and the number of searches, it is found that “photo editing app” is more popular than the correctly spelled version.

  • Photo editing app has 40,500 monthly searches and 91,900,000 results.
  • App photo editing has 3,600 monthly searches and 72,300,000 results.

However, choosing keywords that match people’s searches may not always be the best choice. Because choosing such a thing means choosing a competition that is high, which may result in difficulty ranking. Therefore, sometimes choosing other spellings of keywords or spellings that are correct according to the Royal Institute may make it easier to rank.

About Linguistics

In addition, when looking at it from a linguistic perspective, language is a system of symbols created by humans to convey meaning, with certain rules to agree upon within a group that objects have a spelling and meaning. One important thing is that language changes over time. For example, the words “normal” and “ordinary” both mean common and can be spelled in two ways. The difference between these words comes from “ordinary” being a Pali word that can be read as Pa-ka-ti and Pok-ka-ti, while “normal” is a Sanskrit word read as Prok-ka-ti. Generally, people tend to use the word “ordinary” more often than “normal,” which is often used in official documents and by the Royal Institute. Allowing the use of both spellings reflects linguistic fluency and changeable rules.

Besides spelling, the change of meaning is another property of language. For example, the word “bird” previously meant a vertebrate animal with a backbone, warm-blooded, with two feet, two wings, and covered with feathers, laying eggs before hatching. Currently, the word “bird” for teenagers means to fail or drop. It can be seen that the meaning of a noun has become a verb. If this context of meaning is used continuously for a period of time, it may cause the Royal Institute to adopt the meaning of failing in the future.

Finally, choosing keywords for SEO and writing articles is another discipline. Sometimes, choosing a misspelled word that matches search behavior can be a good choice for SEO. On the other hand, misspelling, using incorrect grammar, and trying to stuff keywords until the content is incomprehensible will negatively affect SEO. If anyone needs to understand SEO, they can follow the articles of Relevant Audience. And if anyone is interested in using SEO services for their own website, they can contact Relevant Audience, a leading digital marketing agency, immediately because we have quality teams and experts ready to provide advice and services transparently, focusing on creating results for all our customers.

Antonio Fernandez

Antonio Fernandez

Founder and CEO of Relevant Audience. With over 15 years of experience in digital marketing strategy, he leads teams across southeast Asia in delivering exceptional results for clients through performance-focused digital solutions.

Share to:
Copy link: