When I first started using a popular online auction website about 8 years ago, I saved myself a small fortune by looking for and bidding on items which had spelling mistakes in the titles. Finding bargains that slipped through the net because they weren’t spelt correctly and therefore had fewer people find and bid on them was a great way to save some pennies and in most cases the ‘mistakes’ seemed genuine. It wasn’t long before I started to see people deliberately misspelling words in their item titles a few times to make sure they got the most exposure possible in searches, which away from online auction sites is an idea often used in search engine optimisation campaigns too.

When it comes to PPC (pay-per-click) marketing, using keywords which you know are commonly spelt wrongly is a sound practice. Someone types in a search term which is spelt incorrectly and your paid search results show up – it is that simple. Your search ads don’t have to have spelling mistakes in them for this to work.  However when it comes to SEO, targeting keywords which are spelt incorrectly is a bit of a different animal. You actually need to have the ‘mistakes’ in your content and metas in order for it to be picked up by search engines and this is where opinion is split.

Is it appropriate to have what will be seen by your visitors and customers as ‘mistakes’ in the content of your site? Having spelling errors certainly doesn’t scream ‘professionalism’ and ‘high quality’ does it? However, the practice can bring more of the right kind of traffic to your site so is the payoff worth the risk to your company reputation? Or are there clever ways to use deliberate keyword mistakes and still come out smelling of roses?

I think that there are ways in which you can include some ‘mistakes’ and manage to escape the amateurish tag – but if your whole search engine optimisation strategy is dependant in picking up users who make mistakes then you are in trouble. We have all seen Google’s ‘did you mean …’ suggestions if we make a typo in our search query and although not everyone may use this feature, it limits the number of mistakes that users are likely to make these days. However, as long as it is used extremely sparingly, I believe there is a place for optimising ‘mistakes’ on some very minor level.

One way is to write a blog or article on the fact that one of your products or services is commonly spelt incorrectly – obviously using all of the alternatives within the blog and hoping that it starts to rank in its own right for these keywords, which it probably will do if your site has a good level of authority with the search engines. This way your website users won’t see mistakes on your site, apart from those which are pitched as known and deliberate errors and worded in a way which doesn’t make you look unprofessional.

Optimising for these mistakes is not something that I would suggest spending lots of time, effort or money on because it can only ever account for a small amount of traffic. You are better off focusing your efforts ensuring that your copy is well written and compelling rather than trying to sneak a spelling ‘mistake’ in there, which may well only counteract all your hard work and reflect badly on your brand image. Building a bespoke positive SEO strategy that is tailored to your needs and requirements is more important.

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