Although it might seem as though people communicate with “text speak” these days, your website business should not take that approach to building your brand’s reputation online. As a search engine marketing expert who wants to sell your online business and its services or products, you will get much more mileage out of a well-written and thoughtful website.
Despite your best intentions, though, your web content may get speckled with a few punctuation errors that can change the tone of your message (or just make your online business look silly). While web design is important for the functionality, if it’s too annoying to read, your bounce rates are not going to look pretty. To keep you honest about your website business’ brand management, here are a few common punctuation errors to look out for with your website’s content.
1) !!!!!!!!!–Nothing is so exciting that it requires multiple exclamation points. In fact, your website may be better served without having any exclamation points in the web content. It’s the difference between sounding like an overexcited teenager, and like a serious SEO online business.
2) Apostrophes.–The difference between it’s and its is fairly important. One mean’s “it is” and the other is a possessive. For example– “It’s a lovely day.” v. “Its a lovely day.” The first is correct, because it says “It is a lovely day.”
3) Semicolons–The rule of thumb is, if you don’t know how to use these—don’t. Nobody’s impressed by a semicolon so don’t risk your SEO or the quality of your web content by trying to get fancy for no reason. If your heart is set on a semicolon, however, please consult a grammar guide.
4) Ellipses–These are the “…” that are used to shorten a long sentence so you can get to the point sooner, by glossing over some fine, non-crucial details. You cannot, ever, use ellipses to change a sentence, especially a quote. Generally speaking, for SEM, it might not be necessary to use these, unless there is some definite style purpose.
