'Misspeled' keywords - untapped potential!

[zannix]

I've read a post somewhere about misspelled keywords and their untapped potential of brining plenty additional traffic to your website if you incorporate them correctly.

Has anyone had any experience with this? And how does this work?

I mean, obviously you can't go and misspell in posts on your blog, otherwise it's automatically a negative point in terms of SEO...

Perhaps comments? Does anyone know?

Thank you!

[travlinguy]

Originally Posted by zannix

I mean, obviously you can't go and misspell in posts on your blog, otherwise it's automatically a negative point in terms of SEO... !

Actually, that's exactly what you do. Find the commonly misspelled words and use them in your posts, landing pages, sales letters and anything else you're doing. Just don't overdo it.

[Alexa Smith]

Originally Posted by zannix

I've read a post somewhere about misspelled keywords and their untapped potential of brining plenty additional traffic to your website if you incorporate them correctly.

I do see exactly what you mean: you're trying to get ranked for "brining", I think?

[JamesGw]

I'm not a huge fan of using misspelled keywords. It can make your marketing copy look sloppy.

[zannix]

@Alexa: Now that's really mean - I bet you scanned that deliberately! :P

[JMichaelZ]

Some of the things that people type into search engines are misspellings. In that someone honestly thought that what they typed was the correct way to spell the word.

This happens occasionally with searches from folks who are applying their first language set of phonics to English. Or from folks who are trying to guess the phonic set of the words they are looking for.

So on your costumes site, you wind up with traffic from keywords like hallowin, or halowene.

Many times though, the queries are mistyped rather than misspelled. And this can give an entire new set of query phrases which you can utilize if you apply them judiciously in your content.

Another pretty nice sort of words are plurals and possessives. So many different ways (in English anyway) to show both and many folks will try their best to remember the rules but type what they think and hope for th ebest results. And if you use those carefully, you can get traffic for those things as well.

[kadesmith]

My question is can buying a domain name with the misspelling hurt you as far as SEO goes?

[mervyngoh]

but using mis-spelled phase or words, does it endanger your website reputation of being a poor content provider?

[JMichaelZ]

Originally Posted by kadesmith

My question is can buying a domain name with the misspelling hurt you as far as SEO goes?

I would not buy a domain with a word in it that was spelled differently than the commonly accepted spelling. Using misspellings is an idea to use if you like in the content of your overall site, in amidst a substantial amount of content.

You might indeed wind up ranking for the misspelling, but just as likely you would not.

It is not an idea to base a new business around. Its just adding a bit of extra to your site.

[Leveragist]

I suppose if you're trying to get traffic from people typing the wrong URL, it would work. For example, someone typing in mywebite.com instead of mywebsite.com.

But if you're trying to get traffic from Google search, Google automatically corrects misspellings in search results.

[Mick Meaney]

Yeah, we tried this about 8 or 9 years ago for a laugh and it worked out fairly nice, but since Google started displaying 'Did you mean....' the traffic dropped and we quit using the technique.

[travlinguy]

Originally Posted by mervyngoh

but using mis-spelled phase or words, does it endanger your website reputation of being a poor content provider?

It can. The trick is to not overdo it. As has been mentioned, since Google put in the "Did You Mean…" feature using misspelled keywords isn't as cool as it once was.

But I still get a lot of hits with a deliberate misspelling of the word procrastination. I market a course on overcoming procrastination and have the word misspelled a couple of times in a pretty long sales letter. It sort of gets lost in there. I probably get up to 10 visits a month from people who misspell it so for me it's worth keeping.

[DrewClement]

As mentioned a few times....

This worked well about 5-10 years ago.

[lootbags2010]

Originally Posted by zannix

I've read a post somewhere about misspelled keywords and their untapped potential of brining plenty additional traffic to your website if you incorporate them correctly.

Has anyone had any experience with this? And how does this work?

I mean, obviously you can't go and misspell in posts on your blog, otherwise it's automatically a negative point in terms of SEO...

Perhaps comments? Does anyone know?

Thank you!

I think the main value for using misspelled keywords is in PPC because your competitors are most likely only using the correct spelling and thus your cost per click is lower because there is less competition for the keywords.

I agree with everyone else that thinks it is a bad idea to misspell stuff in your content on purpose.

The ad for the your adwords guide is displayed when someone types "how to use addwords" .

Personally I have been meaning to try some misspellings in my keywords in my next campaign.

[ZaneZenMaster]

A trick I use to rank for keywords especially plural is to leave off the (s)
Like Profit(s) I just try to rank for it without the s.. Way less competition.
You just gotta think of it from the searchers perspective, and how they would commonly spell it.

[webapex]

Diod anyone mention bidding on mis-spellings in Adwords campaigns? it was most effective before the low ctr became a quality score negative.

There's a service that has collected a stable of mis=spelled domain names, they sell traffic via redirects to your site.

www.elephant-traffic.com/

[yukon]

You can still rank for a mispelled word If your external backlinks include the mispelled keyword. Get about 50 PR5+ backlinks & mispell each backlinks anchor-text.

You can also do on-page seo (CSS = display:none). The mispelled hyperlink/text won't show for traffic, still shows on the SERP cache.

[App Developers]

I would never place the misspelled words on the website or on a blog post. Then people think you just can't spell. but you can gain traction for that misspelled keyword with back links.

[UMS]

In ye olden days of the Internet, lots of people used to capitalise on spelling mistakes by registering domain name with the various misspelt combinations.

However, these days, you have auto-correct, spell checkers and Google correcting spelling for you, so there's really not much point.

Go to Google and type in:

doog traning

The only results returned will be for "dog training".