Important Tips for Professional Proofreading Services

Most people recognise the importance of error-proofing a piece of written work before showing it to an audience. However, the importance of professional proofreading services, should not be underestimated . The incredible utility of having a fully trained professional check over your documents cannot be overestimated. If you’ve ever received professional proofreading services, you will know this from experience. For this reason, it is unsurprising to note that the online proofreading services sector is one of the fastest-growing in Internet-based education services.

Rapid growth in the proofreading services sector means that, for consumers, the number of options to choose from is truly enormous.Therefore, the first critical tip in selecting professional proofreading services is to do thorough research about your chosen proofreader or proofreading company before hiring them. Although most service providers offer reliable and cost-effective services, consumers should also ask questions, read reviews, and – ideally – receive a free sample before entrusting a proofreader with their mission-critical documents. If a company does not offer a way to receive a free sample on their website, you can send an email and ask for one – in most cases, companies will readily provide these samples.

Tip #1:Research helps you find the best proofreader

If you are a first-time hirer in the proofreading services space,it is also important to identify the qualities your proofreader must have in order to work most effectively on revising, correcting, and error-proofing your document. As a case in point, even if you have written a very technical document, you should know that, in most cases, you will not need a proofreader with an equally technical background. Instead, you can look for an experienced proofreader, ideally with some technical knowledge, who is an expert in English rather than being a subject matter expert in your field. Unless you want someone to look over your manuscript and offer technical advice, an English language expert is a far more valuable asset than a technically knowledgeable but somewhat clumsy proofreader or writer.

Tip #2: Think about the qualities you want in a proofreader

Supposeyou’re submitting an article to Frontiers in Chemistry, and the journal has told you that, in order to be published, your article should meet international standards in written English.They then advise that, if you choose their recommended professional proofreading services provider (and, in the case of Frontiers in Chemistry, pay a high fee to work with a subject matter expert),you can improve your article’s standard of written English and increase your chances of successful publication.If you want to receive advice, comments, and technical feedback on your document, proofreading is the wrong service at this stage (look for copy editingor general editing instead). However, if you just want your written English polishing,you can find just assuitable and more cost-effective services elsewhere online.

Tip #3: Find an English language expert, not a subject matter expert

There are other useful things to consider before hiring a freelance proofreader or a proofreading company, ranging from finding the best value service to always using discount codes (when available – and, in most cases, they are!). However, if you pay attention to the three tips given here, the outcome of your collaboration with your proofreader is much more likely to be successful.

Things you should know before hiring a Professional Proofreading Service Provider

It is not necessary to have specific qualifications to become a proofreader, unlike other regulated professions such as nursing or electrical engineering.Therefore, when you hire someone to provide professional proofreading services or book proofreading services, it is essential to ensure that they have the expertise, experience, and know-how needed to provide an excellent service that completely addresses your needs.

At some proofreading companies, high service standards are maintained, and rigorous testing and interview processes are used to select only the strongest proofreaders to work on your book, essay, and other writing-related projects. However, at other service providers, low-quality proofreaders with very little experience, potentially even without knowledge in your area, are recruited to work on your important projects. This is a critically important thing to know before hiring someone for professional proofreading services, since it highlights the importance of getting to know the company and proofreader you are working with to realise the direct effect these services have on written work.

For book proofreading services, learning about what your proofreader, or what the service provider’s team, can offer you is the first important step, and you should do this before purchasing any services. For example, most online proofreading companies allow you to order a service and make the payment without asking any questions or interacting with their team first. All you have to do is pay (e.g., see the image below), send your document, and a proofreader will begin providing a service.

Instead of doing this, (i) get in touch with the service provider’s team, (ii) tell them what your book is about, what your aims are, and provide other essential information; (iii) get a clear sense of how the book proofreading services on offer can specifically benefit you.

Image: Navigation interface with payment option, website of a well-known proofreading company

Before you purchase professional proofreading services or book proofreading services, it is also worthwhile to consider a set of all-important questions relating to issues such as your personal needs, your deadline, and your budget. The main questions you should ask yourself are the following:

·         Do I need this?

·         What’s the maximum amount I’m willing to spend?

·         When do I need my proofread document returned by?

Image:Three all-important questions

The first of these questions, “Do I really need professional proofreading services?”, is an especially critical one. This is because, for example, if you have not yet finalised your document but you still pay for it to be corrected by a proofreader, you are likely to need to change it at a later date, in which case you will need to have it checked over again. This is something to avoid, and so you should only ever use a proofreading service as the very last step before submitting an essay, a book, or any other piece of written work.

Knowing all of the above can save you a lot of money when you first begin using these kinds of services, which greatly improve your writing outcomes.As for the final two questions of your budget and your deadline, you must ensure that you find someone to check over your written work who is not only qualified but also who can return your document for a reasonable fee and in a timely, efficient manner.

How Professional Proofreading Services can help improve your search engine ranking

It is well-known that proofreading services and paraphrasing services can improve the quality of a document. In the case of proofreading services, these “error-proof” your written work, safeguarding against inconsistencies, typographical errors, and awkward or incorrect grammar and punctuation. Paraphrasing, by contrast, deals with plagiarism and the general flow and style of a piece of writing. Paraphrasing services enable paraphrasers (also known as “rewriters) to improve the overall readability of the text, and they ensure that none of the content in a document is identified as plagiarised.

It is less well-known that proofreading and paraphrasing, even when used together to improve a single document, can positively influence a company’s search engine ranking. So if you are not a business owner, marketer, or entrepreneur, then this may not be relevant to you. However, if you are, then the decision to include proofreading and paraphrasing in your search engine optimisation (SEO) strategy could yield substantial benefits, especially in exposing your website. This article stresses why SEO is relevant for most businesses, and it discusses how and why writing services can improve your search engine ranking.

Why is a search engine ranking relevant to me?

For most businesses, especially those involved in e-commerce, growing website traffic is a mission-critical goal. For example, products or services may be sold using a website as the main digital channel, which means that the number of visitors finding and engaging with the website is relevant in determining business success.

In marketing, SEO is an important tool used to increase website traffic because it helps to increase search engine ranking. SEO can also be used to achieve broader strategies and objectives, including improving many of the key performance indicators (KPIs) that marketers care about (e.g., market share, brand recognition, brand image, brand loyalty, and brand awareness).

 Benefits of proofreading services in search engine rankings

The algorithms that the main search engines (e.g., Google and Bing) use to rank search results are continuously being developed by programmers and computer scientists. For this reason, the points made in this article about the impact of proofreading and paraphrasing on your website’s search engine rankings may grow more or less relevant over time (i.e., based on how companies like Google and Microsoft decide to change their algorithm).

Since proofreading or paraphrasing a piece of text improves its accuracy, this can prevent situations arising in which errors undermine your search engine ranking. For example, if you are writing a webpage on the “AKS primality test”, which you intend to publish and present using a mark-up language like HTML, misspelling the acronym “AKS” (e.g., writing it as “ASK”) in the <title> tag in your <head> will mean that the search engine will not find it.

Internet users are more likely to spend time engaging with, and even re-visiting, a piece of written content (e.g., a blog post or a product/service page), if it is written in attractive, easy-to-understand English. Furthermore, errors in a piece of writing lower user trust in the credibility of the author, the brand, and the website overall. Therefore, since paraphrasing services and even proofreading greatly enhance these aspects of a document, they can increase the time users spend on your website, which most search engines (e.g., Google) consider when ranking search results.