Keyword misspellings that can't be on the page

[Johnny Jupiter]

Is there an easy way to get Google to return my site for a keyword that's not anywhere on the site? It's not a competitive word. The situation is, I'm doing a site for a client and he wants his site to come up on Google if people use a common misspelling of his name. But he obviously doesn't want the site to misspell it, cause that'd be confusing. Any suggestions?

[edited by: tedster at 5:35 am (utc) on Feb. 20, 2008]

[martinibuster]

Try meta keywords. You could also try a link to the page with the misspelling as the anchor however the linking page might start ranking for the phrase.

[vincevincevince]

As martinibuster suggests, use anchor text from other sites to build this up. Don't use high-ranking sites, and use a few of them.

[Gavolar]

Just add at the bottom of the page "common misspellings: "whatever it is"

Also add it in the meta tags.

[Hissingsid]

Hi,

I have a page of common misspellings with a link from my home page to it. That page is at #1 for virtually every 2 and 3 word term listed on it.

The Serps page says "Did you mean ...". My site (other pages) rank well for the correct spelling as well which may help.

Probaly not relevant but I have the word list in the keywords meta.

Cheers

Sid

[Miamacs]

I don't get it, if the misspelling is so common why doesn't Google know about it? I get SERPs corrected for me all the time without asking... sometimes for no reason ( i.e. the typo is an actual brand/name/word, just not as common as a query )

But, you can always 'educate' Google through AdWords, just start bidding for both the normal and the typo version. altho, again, if the search volume for that typo was so big, it'd be known by now. AdWords will only remember associations that proved to be successful ( as ads ).

...

Alright then, organic.

Add the word to the end of the TITLE tag, just make the tag long enough to be off-screen and short/relevant enough not to get you penalized - you'd rank instantly.

though... not sure if I'd ever do this myself
*smirk*

Finally, add the misspelled words to alt-attributes of images - preferrably pics below the fold so that the association of the visually impaired won't sue you over it. Google treats alt text as plain text, all you'd need from that point on are some inbounds that 'somehow' got misspelled just on time to support the new 'content'. I mean 'if' there's a competition for the typo.

Seriously though if it really was common you'd be ranking for it without asking.

...

[Bewenched]

personally I'd buy the domain of the mis-spelling but a bit of content with a link that states. You are really looking for "..." and link to it.

[acemi]

I set up a forum primarily to catch traffic in my niche for misspellings, weird kw phrases and content I didn't want on site.

It worked a treat and brings in a lot of traffic for off the wall searches (and it's almost all visitor generated content). It generates almost as many visitors as the main site and has recently been awarded "sitelinks" for the forum name as well as for a few 2 and 3 word kw phrases.

I have set up a blog recently to cover editorial comments best kept off the main site and have been writing content targeting up-and-coming keywords. Results are getting better by the week.

[Smark]

Use your misspelled words in anchor texts of incoming links.
It works in my case.
I have a bunch of links with misspelled anchor text pointing to my site but these words don't appear anywhere on the site. The site ranks very high for these misspelled words.
If you somehow add these misspelled words to your page the effect will be much higher and may be less missppelled links will be needed to achieve the same results.

[acemi]

use anchor text from other sites to build this up

Link building can be difficult enough without lexical issues. I find it hard enough to get a "widget problem" link, so going after a "wigget porblem" is almost impossible. If I could get such a link, it would reduce the value of the link in the eyes of the user (who we are supposedly producing the sites for).

I personally would never post a link that was not lexically correct on my main sites. When I do accept a link request, I always clean up or rewrite the link text to be more realistic and descriptive of the resource as I see it and not as per the request.