Is bad English detected by Google

[Johnnyh]

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

[Johnnyh]

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

[Highland]

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!

[AndrewAtMGXCopy]

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.

graph-future-of-search.png

[RScime25]

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.

[Houses]

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.

[PIXUS]

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!

[KevinBudzynski]

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?

[WesleySmits]

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.html

This 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

[jesse-landry]

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.