Affiliate Basics
Profiting From Mistakes
For many years now, getting traffic from search engines when
people misspell a word has been a popular technique. I've often
read that you should include spelling errors in the meta keyword
tag on your page. Unfortunately, there is a problem with this
advice.
None of the search engines actually index the meta keyword tag!
So, this doesn't work. It did work a few years back but not any
more. Before I tell you what you need to do to target typos,
lets look at a few example to see if it's actually something
that you should bother with.
I spent a day this week looking for signs that people do
actually make mistakes when searching for stuff. Here are my
findings. The numbers associated with each term are the total of
searches performed on Overture last month.
eBay: ebey - 6852, rbay - 1055, dbay - 383, sbay - 248, evay -
681, enay - 516, ebqy - 318, ebzy - 202, ebsy - 1010, ebau -
2077, ebah - 99, ebaj - 36, webay - 177, rebay - 197.
Amazon: anazon - 372, amaxon - 486, amazom - 2104, amazob - 38.
Corey Rudl: cory rudl - 702, corey rudel - 40
These are all brand names. Let's take a quick look at some
generic terms.
Soccer: socer - 1098, socccer - 147, soocer - 619, sooccer - 47,
soceer - 226,. Food: fod - 1299, ffod - 198, fodd - 74, ffood -
56, foood - 242.
It's important to note that with some of the above, people were
actually searching for the keywords that they typed in. Also, in
the case of the eBay examples, the keywords that I have used may
often relate to another topic such as a radio station name.
Still, it's easy enough to see that lots of people do make
mistakes when they search.
There are a few things that we can learn from this. The first is
that the more a keyword is searched for, the more chance there
is that someone will make a mistake - this is obvious. The
second is that sometimes people just don't know how to spell
what they are looking for. This is most common with names and
technical terms. The third is that people often make mistakes
when searching for words that have letters repeated - soCCer,
fOOd. They double up the wrong letter or type it too many times.
I actually find myself doing this quite often.
Now, keywords that are spelled incorrectly are extremely easy to
target on the search engines. Why? Because people who run
websites tend not to include information on their sites with
major spelling errors. The more professional the site, the less
likely it is that there will be a spelling mistake. The sites
that do spell keywords wrong tend not to be too hard to beat in
the rankings because if they are unprofessional enough to have
spelling mistakes for important words, chances are they don't
have too many links pointing to them.
This is where it gets tricky. You don't want to be appear
unprofessional by having spelling mistakes on your site. I don't
recommend doing this just to target the search engines.
So, how do you get some of this traffic?
As I said previously, the search engines do not use the meta
keyword tag so this option is out.
This article is, in itself, a big clue. When I put this article
on my site, I'll rank quite well for all of the terms that I
mentioned above. I will also add some links to the article. For
example, "If you are looking for eBay, Click Here". Of course,
I'll include my affiliate link.
Therefore, you need to use a bit of creativity on your site to
get the spelling mistakes seen by the search engines. One of the
most popular ways of doing it is to use hidden text. This could
be by making the text really small or the same colour as the
background. Don't do this. The search engines don't like it and
will ban you if they catch you doing it. It's not worth the risk.
Another option is to write an article and then provide a list of
"common misspellings" at the bottom of the article. Generally,
this will be OK if you are targeting a keyword that is
notoriously difficult to spell. However, there is a slim chance
that the search engines would view this as keyword stuffing if
they chose to manually review your site. If you do choose to do
this, don't go overboard. As I said, generally, it'll be OK but
not always.
A third option is to provide common misspellings within the text
of the article. For example, I could write an article about eBay
and put the following in brackets after one of the occurrences
of the term eBay - "not eBey as many people think". If you are
targeting a person's name or a technical term, it can be viewed
as helpful to the person reading the article if you tell them
how to spell a word correctly.
Another example could be for me to write an article about Corey
Rudl. Within the article, I could point out that many people do
spell his name Cory but Corey is correct.
As I said, be creative - don't try to be tricky. You will often
find that, in relation to Google, one mention of the keyword in
the text of a page will be enough to get you near the top of the
rankings if your PR is high enough.
There is one more step that you need to follow. I'm largely
focussing on using this to get traffic for your site or as a way
to get people from the search engines and forward them on to
another site via an affiliate program. So, if people unknowingly
make a mistake when they do a search, the title for your page
must give the impression that they have found what they are
looking for. If they intended to search for eBay, you must make
sure that you grab them quickly with your title so that they
will visit your site. So, "Review of eBay" would be a good
example.
If the title of your listing does not really match what they are
searching for, it may alert them to the fact that they have made
a mistake.
Now, Google offers alternative spellings if they think a
searcher has made a mistake. So, if you are listed at number one
for the incorrectly spelt keyword, you have a chance to get them
before they click on the link that Google provides to the
results for the correct spelling.
The technique that I've mentioned here is a very simple way to
target the search engines and can often be used effectively by
newish sites whose PR is not high enough to target the correct
version of the keyword. It's also useful if you or your products
become well known because it will make sure that people can find
you even if they can't spell the name correctly.
On Overture last month there were 92 searches for Sean Burns.
There were also 91 searches for Shaun Burns and 29 for Shawn
Burns. Now, I won't pretend that all of these people were
looking for me but I should make sure that the ones that are can
find me, even if they spell my name incorrectly.
Who knows? They may be the ones who want to buy my eBook!
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Sean Burns is the author of Search Engine Rankings Revealed. This eBook
provides a step by step guide to helping the search engines send
you traffic. His sites received almost 1 million highly targeted
visitors from search engines last year. Rankings Revealed will
show you how to do it
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