Costly Mistakes

I recently acquired a new client. Part of the process of agreeing about what needs to be done on a new project involves a careful appraisal of the website. On first inspection, I was amazed to find that this one had typos. Not the text. That’s bad enough. But these typos were in the code.

The keyword tags to be precise.

Negating Hard Work
Now this defeats the object in no uncertain terms. Why would anyone go to the trouble and expense of setting up a website, and then allow this to happen? The sad facts are that the task of creating a website is nearly always delegated to an “expert.” Just because someone sets themselves up on the Internet and calls themselves an expert doesn’t always mean they are.

I’m not sure who was responsible for that gross oversight, but it was either the website designer or a copywriter. These professionals are often paid thousands of dollars for a critical service. If there are typos in text it looks sloppy. If there are typos in the keywords, it will have a tremendous negative impact on search engine rankings. A search engine doesn’t determine that, hey, you’re only one letter off, so let’s include it. A word is either there, or it’s not as far as the engines are concerned.

This means that the final responsibility has to be up to the owner of the website. It has to be done. Going through content and code with a fine-tooth comb just to make sure that time and money is not going to waste all because of a small typing error somewhere. It is definitely a case of buyer beware!
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