On paper, they have the budget and resource to offer killer content on every page, so why are so many big brands failing miserably when it comes to web content?

Restrictive sign off

Big businesses often have slow and painful sign-off processes for even the smallest of content changes. With Google’s algorithm increasingly rewarding freshness, this means they are their own worst enemies when it comes to SEO.

Duplicate content

For many brands, populating pages involves lifting and shifting directly from manufacturer-supplied copy and images. If they are late to the party in being indexed by Google, this content will be seen as duplicate, which will prevent them from ranking. For businesses operating multiple brands under one umbrella, this is a massive headache.

‘SEO’ copy

All too often, big brands make the mistake of distinguishing between regular copy and SEO copy.

Argos Dishwashers page 5/12/2011

Many websites allocate a portion of the page (usually just above the footer) to poorly written, keyword stuffed copy, in the misguided belief that this will improve Google rankings.

Argos are one of the worst offenders of this, with a formula-based approach that generates some interesting results…

Multiple agendas

Most big brands have several stakeholders producing content, each with very different agendas. In many cases, they do so without communicating with each other. This leads to a lack of consistency, not to mention duplication.

The solution

In his presentation at the SearchLove 2011 event, Distilled’s Tom Critchlow discussed what he refers to as ‘The Content Gap’, a lack of consistent strategy between teams in the production of content.

To combat this, Tom proposed the introduction of a ‘Chief Content Officer’ position within a business. The idea is that by having someone with top level visibility and responsibility for all content production, you can prevent the above from happening.

Yo, sound the bell, school is in, sucka

For every cardinal grammar sin committed on the web, there’s a grouchy grammar bore out there waiting to pounce – and that’s exactly what we’re doing today with this list of top 10 grammar gripes. What would you add to the list?

1. Your versus you’re
One is very obviously short for “you are”, so why do so many people write “your”? For future reference, writing “your beautiful” in a text = instant turn-off.

2. The apostrophe debacle
Nobody seems to be able to use an apostrophe properly these days, so they just stick them in willy-nilly and hope for the best, resulting in grammar horror “until the cow’s [sic] come home”. People do it with dates too, e.g. “the 1970’s”. You wouldn’t write “seventy’s”, you’d write “seventies” – unless you wanted to be extremely moronic, of course.

3. It’s versus it is
This one we can sort of understand, because it’s quite confusing. See what we did there? That’s the only proper way to use an apostrophe in conjunction with the word “it”.

4. Then instead of than
Ok, so “then” and “than” do sound rather similar. But you just don’t say “we’ve got more cake then you”. Quite frankly, writing “then” when you mean “than” is a guaranteed route to gormlessness.

5. Could of instead of could have (and should and would)
Just because the shortened version sounds vaguely like “of” – i.e. “could’ve”, “should’ve”, “would’ve” – doesn’t mean you can get away with saying “of” when you actually mean “have”.

6. Amount versus number and less versus fewer
We like to explain this one with a simple cake illustration. “A greater amount of cake; a greater number of cakes”. Bonus – the same applies to “less” and “fewer”: “less cake, fewer cakes”.

7. To versus too
“Too” means “as well”. You wouldn’t ask “can I have one to”, because it would naturally be assumed that you are someone who has a problem with finishing sentences.

8. Myself and Rob
It’s “Rob and I” not “myself and Rob”. And not “me and Rob”, either. You wouldn’t say “me are eating cake”, so don’t say “me and Rob are eating cake”.

9. Invite versus invitation
Oh, you “received an invite” did you? I think you’ll find that was an invitation you received, actually.

10. There versus their versus they’re
To be honest, if you don’t know how this one works, there’s probably no hope for you.

So there are our top ten (stopping at ten took some restraint, we can tell you) – what are YOUR pet grammar hates?