Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Should you try to rank for misspelled keywords?
-
Hi there,
2 part question:
- Is it best practice to try to rank for misspelled keywords that bring in lots of traffic or should you instead just try to rank for the correct spelling of that keyword and hope that you rank better on the misspelling as an indirect result?
E.G. The misspelled keyword "Hamilton island accomodation" is a common misspelling that brings in traffic but we have an "F" rank for that term (obviously because we spell accommodation correctly on our site). We don't want to misspell anything but are there techniques to rank better for misspellings that won't hurt content quality?
- The On-Page Optimization tool says that our website doesn't rank in the top 50 on Google Aus for "Accomodation Hamilton Island" or "Hamilton Island Accomodation" but when i do a manual search, we actually are the first result. Is this an error with the On-Page optimization tool?
Thanks!
-
One of the things to consider is not only adding the misspellings to the meta tags but also using them in the URLs.
I've had to get creative on something similar...not so much about misspellings but for targeting terms that are getting searched and have low competition but that my clients don't like.
In the end, the URLs and tags can remain the same with the wrong spelling but the client and searchers see the correct terms.
I am still testing on this--and as you know, testing is about the only thing that will tell you if it works.
Wondering if creating the misspelled version of the page can be created and later changed to a 301 redirect to the right spelling? Anyone have feedback on this?
-
good answer josh.
i would like to add, for bing you should add miss spellings to the keyword tag. Yes Bing uses the keyword tag.
-
Hey there,
Google works hard to recognise misspellings and place the most relevant website at the top of the search results. So the first thing I would look at is where you are actually ranking for those misspellings and secondly, how many searches are there for those terms each month?
To most accurately achieve this, I would run an Adwords campaign using exact match on all the possible misspelling combination, setting an unlimited budget and then measuring the amount of impressions generated. Make sure it is exact match or you will be left thinking you've struck gold, when in fact you have erroneous data.
If you do really want to optimise for this term and you are not coming up first for that term, then I would look below the onpage factors. As I said, Google's pretty dang good at picking up typos, so instead I would focus on improving your link profile so you are an authority on the area. Also creating more deep content and internally linking through to that one central page will help to channel the link juice through to that key page.
There are some that will argue that misspellings on your website look terrible and devalue the brand. To avoid this I recommend focusing on the linking side of things and only onpage typo's if you need to. If you do go down this path, then create a new page and link it in through the sitemap so that the vast majority of your customers are not exposed to the typos and put off your service.
2.) Check the settings for the on-page optimiser and the most recent cache date, both of these could be throwing off your results. Also, make sure you have your computer set to private browsing. One thing Google and Google + are doing now is looking at your history and automatically increasing the rankings of sites you visit regularly.
OK, that's enough of an epic answer for me. Hope you like it
Josh
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
How to Incorporate Awkward Keyword Phrases
Certain keywords are good choices for my website (high CTR, low difficulty, high volume), but they would be very awkward to use in my website content. For example, "therapist near me" is a popular search term, but it would be very strange for me to use those words in that order in my content (I am a therapist). Any thoughts about this are welcome.
On-Page Optimization | | LPantell0 -
Does DA/PA have any effect on rankings?
I have seen many people are concerned about increasing DA and PA of their websites. While I am very curious why do people focus on increasing DA and PA? Does DA and PA effect the rankings of the website? Because I have recently launched my website regarding men beard trimmer and it is ranking on 1st page but not on number 1 position. Will increasing DA/PA of the site help me in occupying 1st position?
On-Page Optimization | | RyanAmin0 -
Higher PA and DA but lower ranking?
I am having problem with my product pages not ranking as high as I would expect them to be. http://i.imgur.com/z3aTwUG.png (or see attachement) This is an example. The fact that competitor C is on position 4 stupifies me. At what areas should I be looking? z3aTwUG.png
On-Page Optimization | | Entertainment0 -
Using keywords in my URL: Doing a redirect to /keyword
My website in "On Page Grade" received an A.Anyway, I only have 1 thing to optimize:_"Use Keywords in your URL__Using your targeted keywords in the URL string adds relevancy to your page for search engine rankings, assists potential visitors identify the topic of your page from the URL, and provides SEO value when used as the anchor text of referring links."_My website is ranking in top10 for a super high competitive keyword and all my others competitors have the keyword on their domain, but not for my URL.Since I can't change my domain for fixing this suggestion, I would like to know what do you think about doing a 301 redirect from / to mydomainname.com/keyword/So the index of my website would be the /keyword.I don't know if this can make a damage to my SERP for the big change ir it would be a great choice.
On-Page Optimization | | estebanseo0 -
Breadcrumbs keyword repeats
Hi I have a client project who's developers platform is populating the category part of the breadcrumbs with the header tag. Since these include the pages primary target keywords/phrase they are being repeated in the breadcrumbs increasing the keyword/phrase count on the page as well as repeating/duplicating the sentence. Can this cause problems ? or not because Google knows its not part of the page content/body copy (because its a breadcrumb) ? Cheers Dan
On-Page Optimization | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
Keyword Density Tools
Does anyone have recommendations on the best tool(s) to use to check the keyword density of each page of a website? I'm not sure if SEOmoz has such a tool.
On-Page Optimization | | webestate0 -
Is it necessary to add keywords to all of your pages?
Hi Everyone he company I work for has just built a new website with approximately 87 pages/sub pages. Should i be looking to add keywords and descriptions to all of these pages, via the allocated areas in the back end of the site? I am using "google's key words" tool to generate relevant key words. If any one has any advice it would be much appreciated. Thanks for you help Regards Pete
On-Page Optimization | | dawsonski0 -
301 redirect and then keywords in URL
Hi, Matt Cutts says that 301 redirects, including the ones on internal pages, causes the loss of a little bit of link juice. But also, I know that keywords in the URL are very important. On our site, we've got unoptimized URLs (few keywords) in the internal pages. Is it worth doing a 301 redirect in order to optimize the URLs for each main page. 301 redirects are the only way we can do it on our premade cart For example (just an example) say our main (1 of the 4) keywords for the page is "brown shoes". I'm wondering if I should redirect something like shoes.com/shoecolors.html to shoes.com/brown-shoes.html In other words, with the loss of juice would we come out ahead? In what instances would we come out ahead?
On-Page Optimization | | BobGW0