March 15th, 2010 by Nick

If you’re looking to improve your search engine optimization strategy, one of the more surprising ideas might be to target mis-spelt keywords. An unusual tip? Perhaps, but if you think about it the concept makes a lot of sense.

The whole point of SEO is to target keywords that people are actually searching for, and a lot of the time people make spelling errors. This presents a great opportunity to appear in search results, and companies can often gain increased visibility in searches simply by adding a few carefully considered misspellings into their optimisation link building strategies.

In fact, statistics show that there are approximately 10 million mis-spelled searches on Google alone each and every day, and knowing the most common errors in specific keywords can lead to huge success. The potential for improved search rankings becomes even greater when you consider the fact that there’ll be far less competition – most webmasters use spell check software so won’t have any misspellings in their site, so it’s a great chance to capitalise on a largely under-appreciated area of search engine optimisation.

Now, this may come as a huge stretch to spelling perfectionists who can’t bear to see a letter out of place, but it’s one of the easiest ways to increase visibility in search engines. The fact is that a lot of internet users aren’t particularly concerned with proper spellings, and targeting these common mistakes with SEO link building can easily lead to increased traffic.

It doesn’t have to be that difficult either, and a lot of it comes down to research. It’s a good idea to look for the most common mis-spellings of specific keywords and go from there, and this can often be pretty easy. Try searching on Google to find popular misspellings, or look at your own records and see what past visitors have searched for before coming to the site. It often helps to try thinking like a bad speller, and while this could be difficult to some people it’s bound to pay off.

However, bear in mind that obvious mis-spellings across the main content of the site can lower its credibility, so never be too blatant and instead use a few carefully-chosen words in the right places. This could mean things like using the mis-spelt words in the anchor text when link building, or even adding them into the user-generated part of the site such as a few misspelled comments on blog posts. There’s also a great opportunity to use these spellings in your paid searches, as these terms will be incredibly cheap yet could easily drive traffic to the site. And that, above all, is what SEO is all about.

As you can see, bad spelling really can be great SEO link building strategies. It’s all about targeting what people are actually searching for, and a lot of the time what they’re searching for is misspelt. Use this to your advantage and incorporate a few misspelt keywords into your SEO campaign and you’re sure to experience great results, but always remember to use them carefully to get the most benefit.