The Power of (Mis-)Spelling

October 9, 2006 | By Terry Stockdale | In SEO, Search Engine Optimization, Traffic & Linking, Visitor Experience 

In our early days at school, we were taught to spell words correctly. In the good old days, we “sounded out” the syllables of writen words in order to figure out the sound of the word. Then, we studied and were quizzed on the correct spelling of the words we learned.

Now, you’re older. What happens when you misspell a word in something you write?

Your friends may roll their eyes (or may not even notice). Your business associates may roll their eyes and you slide down a notch in their esteem. Your business competitors smile with glee.

And, you may have a runaway hit in the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) world!

I found one of those little gems on one of my web pages a few months ago. My first thought, when I saw the search term come up in my web stats, was to fix it quickly.

My second thought was “Cool!”

That little misspelling, when I was referring to a large web company, generates an amazing number of visitors to my web site — straight from the search engines.

If you type the URL into a search box, and a lot of people do that for some reason, that particular web page usually comes up #1 in the list. If not #1, then it’s #2.

During the last 7 days, I had 240 visitors who had searched for that misspelled term — they made the same sloppy typing mistake that I did!

Two Hundred and Forty Visitors! All from a tiny misspelling of a URL that was near the end of the article!

I’m tempted to see what else I can misspell…

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