With so much online content churned out day after day, it’s easy for mistakes to slip through the cracks. Errors can have a detrimental impact on a business’s credibility and professional, even affecting how potential customers interact with you… if they even choose you. So knowing the importance of proofreading for websites is essential for helping your business grow.
Website proofreading is an essential step in the content creation process. Proofreading involves carefully reviewing your text to identify and correct any errors in grammar, spelling, punctuation, and style.
However, proofreading is best done by someone who hasn’t written or edited the content, because the more familiar you are with the text the more likely you are to skip over mistakes.
The impact of error-free and polished content on website success
According to Google’s SEO Starter Guide, the popular search engine prioritises easy-to-read content, so avoid “writing sloppy text with many spelling and grammatical mistakes”. If your website is riddled with errors, search engines will dock points off of your ranking in favour of content from your competitors.
So why don’t you just use spell-checking software like Grammarly?
Software powered by AI can be helpful, but they’re not foolproof. They often miss contextual errors, like incorrect word usage or inconsistencies, so it’s important to hire a reliable website proofreader with the attention to detail only a human reader has.
Proofreading for websites: formatting and consistency
The formatting of a website is just as important as any content, especially in making sure the content it contains is legible and easy to access. Poor contrast on a website looks ugly and, worse, can be completely inaccessible to a large chunk of your potential audience.
To a lesser extent, consistency can do the same. If you switch between US and UK English, your potential customers will be confused and could even worry that it’s a scam.
Proofreading for websites: user experience and readability
Human proofreaders are better at reviewing text as it appears to a customer compared to software. While there are many tools that rate how readable your content is, only another human will read through it properly.
Readability can also be affected by a website’s formatting, so website proofreaders look for how images are set on a page to ensure they’re placed in the right place.
Manual proofreading vs. automated proofreading tools
Still not convinced a human proofreader beats out software?
A hired proofreader brings with them human expertise used to catch subtle errors that automated tools might miss. While the cost of hiring a proofreader can seem steep, the potential value a proofreader can bring is immense.
The speed of automated proofreading comes at the cost of a lack of nuance and contextual understanding. This is especially obvious for UK businesses, as most software is trained using US English text which confuses text even further.
Hiring a professional proofreader for website content
When hiring a website proofreader, you need 3 things: to know where to find one, to know what you need proofreading, and to know what your budget is.
You may need proofreading for a website homepage, all of your website pages, or for a blog. You could even bundle up multiple at once, for instance by hiring a proofreader with their hourly rate to go through your whole website and all of the content on it. Or you could gather your future blog posts together to send to a proofreader ahead of posting.
To find a proofreader, you can post on socials or check out the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading’s directory, narrowing your search by using any keywords related to what you want proofread and your industry.
I provide proofreading for websites and blog content, from £20 per hour or per 3000 words for blogs.
For websites, I need no access to your website, just a link so I can see the website as any visitor will view it, and then I deliver a website proofreading report containing mistakes and corrections and SEO recommendations.
For blogs, I typically prefer to work month-by-month with your blog content bundled together. This saves you money and reduces the time I spend on admin, so it’s the best of both worlds.
Get in contact via email if you have any questions or would like a quote.