Keyword Spelling

Recognising (or Recognizing) the Importance of Keywords

Thinking of using commonly misspelled words for keyword optimisation? Read on for the pros and cons of using spelling as as SEO tool.

• Internet
• Search Engines
• Domain Registration

Keywords are vital to the optimisation (or optimization!) of your site. Incorporating the most commonly searched terms and phrases in your site's content, page title and meta information will help your website achieve good search engine rankings and help searchers find your site more easily.

A good keyword strategy will consider misspelled search terms and keywords that can be spelled in a number of ways, such as geographically different UK and US spellings. These terms, while highly searched, may not be used on many sites and could therefore give you a competitive edge.

Do your keyword research: for instance, a large number of New Zealand users search for 'optimization' as well as 'optimisation', so by using only the UK version of this word, you'll be missing out on those searchers who use the US spelling.

Remember though, what will your visitors think if there is an inconsistency in your site's written content? Integrating a variety of spellings of the same word (or misspelled words) into your copy may appear careless and could affect the way potential customers view your products or services.

If you've been looking at SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) keyword suggestions to put the icing on your search engine optimisation cake, you may have come across the idea of incorporating misspelled keywords to capture a slice of the search market.

Is bad keyword spelling really useful or does it just make your website look unprofessional?

The answer to this question depends on your point of view. Just take a look at any keyword tool and you'll see that intentional misspellings account for a significant proportion of searches online. So, including misspelled keywords can be useful, allowing you to:

• Target searches that are commonly misspelled, for instance ‘accomodation' instead of ‘accommodation'
• Get good search engine rankings for profitable popular search terms that have low levels of competition
• Capture the market for regional spelling variations, eg. both UK and US spellings of words such as ‘optimisation' ('optimization')
• Help searchers find what they're looking for, even if they enter a word incorrectly

On the flip side, along with these benefits, there are also disadvantages to including misspellings or alternate spellings in your website copy - the most obvious being that visitors and potential clients will see your website (and therefore your business) as sloppy, careless or... lacking in basic spelling skills. Even worse, you may end up losing your search engine friendly status if you, or your Web designer, try to fool search engines with invisible text or other keyword tricks.

Search Engine Optimisation images from Flickr: Keyboard Blur, Transparent Screen and Mac + Starbucks.