Misspelled Keywords

Keyword misspellings at search engines are common.

Although it is not a good idea to include misspelled keywords in your webpage they can be used very effectively in pay per click campaigns like Google Adwords.

Misspelled keywords are often much cheaper than the correctly spelled word and can generate significant amounts of traffic for greatly reduced costs.

It is estimated that over 20% of all searches are misspelled with some words like calendar, vacuum having a much higher rate of misspellings.

The major search engines have a spell checker that prompts searches if it encounters a misspelling. However most only notice it after they have searched and the search results aren't what they expected.

Google have a page showing all the misspellings for Britney Spears over a 3 month period with the number of searches. The three most common misspellings amounted to almost 20% of the searches.

However the Google traffic Estimator in Google Adwords gives the average click cost for the misspellings as half that for the correct one.

Tools

Here a two tools that you can use to research Misspelled keywords

• http://tools.seobook.com/spelling/keywords-typos.cgi
• Search spell

You can research misspelled keywords in exactly the same way as normal keyword research using Overture and Wordtracker to determine the number of misspelled searches.

Using Misspelled keywords on Your Site

You may find reference to so called black hat techniques of including misspelled keywords at the bottom of the page as hidden text (same colour as background).

This will most likely get you site banned so don't do it.

You could try adding them in parenthesis (2-3 only) with a little note to say that they are common misspellings. This a technique I also use for UK English and American spellings.

If the misspelling is more common than the correct version you could just use the misspelling and add a note at the bottom to say that you did it deliberately. (try stationery and stationary).

You could include them on a webpage like this one and add some suitable content so that they don't just appear as doorway pages.

For this site here are the common misspellings:

Misspellings Website

 webs1te, websiet, webstie, webiste, wesbite, wbesite, ewbsite, websit, websie, webste, webite, wesite, wbsite, ebsite, website

Misspellings Making

making, makeynt, makeigng, makeignt, makiegng, makiegnt, makeyng, makint, makin, makeign, makiegn, maken, makan, makeyn, nak1mg, nakimg, makimg, makign, maknig, maikng, mkaing, amking, makig, makng, maing, mking, aking

Related articles and resources:

• Keyword Tips
• Keywords and Keyword Research