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Let's say I sell blue widgets. But people sometimes enter blue WIDETS into the search engine.
If Google isn't using the meta tag, how can I capture traffic for this misspelling without using the same misspelling on my own site and looking like a fool to those who did type it right?
Right now, I have set up Google Adwords, but I would still like to be indexed for the keyword.
Thanks!
you probably arrived at this page because you are looking for widgets, but accidentally typed widets, wigets or wodgets into a search engine.You're not alone! Plenty of people arrive here the same way... but they all leave happy with their widgets
Works like a charm, and you don't look like a twit.
That sounds like a wonderful strategy. I will go ahead and do that.
SKS
Thanks.
Go ahead and type 'wodgets' into the Google search window and you'll see what I mean.
Maybe you can still do this with the secondary search engines but you'll probably not get much traffic from them and they'll probably follow Google's lead if they haven't yet done so.
As Vitaplease said, Google = 10% misspellings, also interesting is:
[google.com...]
once they are on your site it is verygood explanation line but what if they see this line in SE results? why would they click on it?
This is really no concern as this specific page is only going to be returned on misspelled searches. So... you're not compromising your descriptions for correctly spelled returns, and I'll second lazerubb's experience that there can be plenty of clickthroughs for frequently misspelled words.
My experience is that if the Title is spot on, people generally click without even reading the description.
The description generally comes into play if the title is generic or ambiguous.
Not a waste of time for other search engines that don't correct spellings.
If (say) 40% of traffic comes from non-google engines; and 10% of searches are misspelt, you could be losing 4% of all referrals -- those misspelt non-google searches that don't find you.
Worth a couple of hours work for that extra traffic?
I handled it like so ...
Jost Van Dyke (pronounced Yost Van Dyke) is a wonderfull blah, blah, blah.
It works for words which are frequently mispronounced/misspelled.
if you would see these two(misspeled and description cut becasue everyx SE cuts description...):
wodgets of all kinds, cheap price and online order. you cna get quality discounts if you purchase from us.....
or
you probably arrived at this page because you are looking for widgets, but accidentally typed widets, wigets or wodgets ....
whcih one would you choose? i would go for the first one..:)
if i would make pages with mispelling i would jsut incorporate it in normal page, no explanation . One idea is to use this sentence on your page "query=wodgets" somewhere on the page or next to sales words..
a philosophers stone
to
a philosopher's stone
(poor real example perhaps, but makes the point).
That is easier to go for both options, and worth having.
Nice one Lazerlubb, I never knew shed had a sister:
brieney spears!:)and I wonder what these are:
britney's spearsthe mind boggles.
George
george,LOL, btitney spears (anotehr mispelling)is the answer to your question :)
What if it was just a page that had common misspellings. Google could index this, but I don't know how high it could rank vs. someone that had a normal page with products built aroudn the misspelling.
i call misspell pages, "pages for 'typo-surfers.'" always calling these 'typos' instead of 'misspellings' removes any stigma.
also, i get the figures from spellweb and include them in a box labeled "typos happpen," then a list: "every (week) 100,292 people looking for "widgets" typo "woogets;" 55,288 "wodgets," etc. this also lets you get some density without looking completely stupid.
i've found several huge keywords misspelled almost as commonly as spelled correctly. as has been said, it doesn't take a lot of effort so why not give it a shot?
Since people get there by typing the missppellinggg in their address bar, I don't know of anything I can do about it, but I think I will add the misppeellingg to one of my pages anyway.
They came up with some interesting stuff so I popped it on the site, and next month, no.1 on Googs for a misspelling that gets us about 300 uniques a month.
Easy life :)
Cy
When i look at my logs for December i can see that the hit from wrong spellings are so common that they rank in the top ten searches that send people to my site. i can't believe it. And i have found not even one other flower arranging site using this technique--although i do see "flowr" spelled wrong by mistake on a few sites.
Steveb, there may be a lot you can do about it.
this may be off-topic, and i'm not advocating coming down on a legitimate business person, however, if this is a serious domain problem and if there is a clear sleazy side to your competitor's actions, sticky mail me with further details and i may be able to offer some advice.
there are many complex factors to consider such as how famous and or unique your domain name is. one needs only to show a name is "confusingly similar" in order to make a case for infringement or dilution. it is key to note the way the other person is using the domain and what is his business plan. depending on the top level domain involved, the burden of proof may be very low.
good luck in any event.
1) Create a page called 'Common Typos' and show people the common typos for the keywords. And possibly put some statistics in there to make it interesting.
2) Put the keywords as hidden text.
What would people use? The first seems safe but might not end up indexed high. The second seems like it would work better if it was on a key page, but dangerous to use. What if the text is hidden using CSS. If it's not for spamming purposes, would this be fine?
Thanks.
- Include them in images ALT tags
- Create a "misspelled words" directory page with all the known misspelled words linking to the respective pages, for example:
red wodgets -> red widgets page
blue wodgets -> blue widgets page
purple wodgets -> purple widgets page
Not sure if it will work - never tried it.
When this thread was started I immediately built a small page created around this misspelled word. Took me less than 5 minutes to build and upload the page. Has the website title as a part of its own title. A title that is immediately recognised as relevant by people searching on the word.
This page is now #1 for its misspelled keyword. Bringing in visitors too.
"When this thread was started I immediately built a small page .... This page is now #1 for its misspelled keyword"
congrats. i'm not surprise as the competition for these misp's is amazingly weak. i wonder, though, how did you get listed so fast? i've built a number of these several weeks ago and they simply don't exist in serps.
That struck me too. People writing articles seem to be more careful with their spelling than people making searches. For anybody with a little knowledge about seo it's easy and fast to make a page that may gain a good position on a misspelled word.
> how did you get listed so fast?
This is the crucial question. A significant part of it presumably is sheer luck! But I made a link to this new page from a page, that is often visited by freshbot. A link from a word that is also on the new page, a relevant word, one of my stronger keywords and part of the title and main text on that page. This link is half-hidden. (Duckin' head for GooogleGuy and the Google lurkers.) Which means that it is very easy to find for bots and for human visitors that are actively looking for half-hidden words, but it doesn't disturb those who are not.
Spam? Perhaps. The word was already on the page and I was #2 and #3 for the word and still am. I consider changing it to a . now!
Troels
