How a Deliberate Typo Can be Good for Pay per Click

Usually when you’re trying to sell a product or service online I’d recommend you get someone to check the spelling on your website.

However, when it comes to some Pay per Click (PPC) campaigns, a typo can actually work in your favour.

Keyword research

Before you start building your Pay per Click campaign you should have a good idea of what keywords you want to target.

People tend to type quickly into Google and as such may make a small mistake when it comes to spelling. For example, someone might enter “motgages” instead of “mortgages” in error.

If you bid on “motgages” then potentially you could pick up a lot of typo traffic.

The benefits of targeting typos

For popular search terms, the PPC costs can be prohibitively expensive. If you’re smart about it and use typos, you can benefit by:

Saving money on click costs

With some search terms it may cost more money per click to target the correct spelling of a word rather than bidding on a version with a typo.

Getting traffic you may otherwise have missed

Not everyone is a great speller and potentially when looking for mortgages for example, someone could type “motgages”, “mrtgages”, “ortgages” or anything else similar.

Get data on how well typos convert over a period of time

One of the great things about PPC campaigns is that they allow you to gather data on how effective your keywords are. So, you may find that it’s cheaper and better in terms of conversions to target misspelled words rather than the correct spelling.

No two keywords are the same, so it’s definitely worth testing this out for your business.

A useful little tool

Something you may find beneficial when trying to think of typos is the Keyword Typo Generator from SEO Book.

The tool allows you to search for different kinds of typo related to a particular keyword. For example, typos with a missing letter, double letters or letters in the wrong order.

If you liked this article you should also read: Six little Google Adwords tips to try

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 28th, 2012 at 8:28 am and is filed under Pay per Click. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.