Gaining extra clicks with typos

Easy AdWords trick

[TomWaits]

When I have a high traffic keyword or words, to gain extra traffic I also add misspellings like this:

if the word is "word", I also enter --

ord
wrd
wod

So I add every permutation that excludes 1 letter.

Then I also look at the Qwerty keyboard and for "word" I'd enter the letters immediately to the left and right of the letters, --

qord
eord
wird
wprd
woed
wotd
wors
worf

Now if any of these combinations are actually words that mean something completely different, I don't enter it, so in no way is this misleading the visitor. It's just an attempt to capture a large portion of misspellings.

I've goosed our AdWords traffic by at least 10% using this, because the click-throughs are much higher for the misspellings since they can't find what they were looking for. I know it's not remotely rocket science, but it's a way to put to a simple algorithm how people misspell words. It's actually pretty predictable and takes only a little bit more time.

[Nick_W]

How do you include these words without making your page look bad?

Nick

[TomWaits]

Not on my pages, in the list of AdWords advertising keywords.

[bnhall]

I bet he does it in Adwords, not in regular G.

[Nick_W]

Ahhhh... gotcha! Thought you meant in your page copy ;)

Neat!

Nick

[saurabh]

There a script on some website which would give you the common misspellings and variations of a given keyword. I can't remember the website. If anyone does let me know.

[sun818]

The ones I found are all spammy with tons of pop-ups. I am not a programmer, but I do not imagine it would be difficult to create a web script that generates a misspelling list.

[defanjos]

TomWaits,

I have been doing that for some time now, and it is a great trick. That particular campaign has an average CTR of 8 - 9%

Adwords is great because it lets you enter misspellings, overture does not.

[fathom]

Not on my pages

Why not in alt="" of spacers and/or small graphical images where mouseovers are very limited.

Just because someone type in "wod" doesn't mean they don't want "word" -- how many of these are or are not your most profitably customers. Cheap people are not the only ones that mis-spell online.

Added... not all content posted is written by professionals. There are more mis-spelled words in web pages than people that mis-spell at search engines.

It's a little like the accidental tourist "beecause thheir ccarr brroke downn. And the city says... "not in my town... get out, your not good for business".