Brainstorming for the Right Keywords

We ask clients to write down every imaginable keyword that someone might type into a search engine to find their site. Usually, the client returns a list that is very specific to their product, what they sell or their industry. We have to help them go beyond that. If you are a wedding planner, what keywords will someone use to find your site? Most clients would tell me something like this:

weddings wedding planners
wedding planning bridal consultant

What they forget is that people who are planning weddings may be surfing the Web for a variety of wedding-related things. Sometimes people planning weddings may be conducting keyword searches for things not directly related to the actual wedding ceremony. For these reasons, we advise clients to consider keywords such as the following as well:

bachelorette party bridal registry engagement rings mother of the groom bachelor party bridal shower flower girl ring bearer banquet halls bridal veils groomsman toasts best man bridesmaid dresses honeymoon wedding bouquets bridal bouquet boutonnieres honeymoon vacations wedding cakes bridal decoration caterers limousines wedding invitations bridal gowns disc jockeys limos wedding rings

And the list goes on. We encourage clients to come up with at least 50 keywords before we go about the business of creating a site title and description. For example, you might create a title for one of your pages "Bridesmaid and Best Man's resource area - boutonnieres to bridal bouquets!"

Don't Forget Misspelled Keywhoods - Whoops! Keyworks, Nope, Keywords!

There is a famous marketing folktale about misspelling being used for a marketing advantage involving MCI and AT& T. AT& T wanted to counter MCI's highly successful 1-800-COLLECT campaign and introduced a collect-calling product of its own. Have you ever wondered why AT& T keeps asking the world to dial 1-800-CALL-ATT? The reason is simple. AT& T learned firsthand that people often make obvious spelling mistakes.

AT& T started to advertise its collect-calling service, and then the number was 1-800-OPERATOR. Do you remember that short-lived ad campaign? Well, it turned out that many Americans can't spell and were dialing 1-800-OPERATER by mistake. Well, wouldn't you know it that some sharp-eyed employee at MCI noticed an unusually high call volume on an MCI-owned 800 number. Believe it or not, MCI owned 1-800-OPERATER! So the folks at MCI redirected that number to point at MCI's 1-800-COLLECT product and raked in the bucks until AT& T figured out what was going on.

The point is to think hard about keywords that people will be looking for you under and decide if they frequently misspell those words. If they do, include these misspelled keywords in your submissions and META tags!

Common-Sense Strategy for Misspelled Keywords

Here's a really good idea that can save you hours of time. While we firmly recommend that you consider optimizing your pages for misspelled keywords, why not take a moment and make sure there will be a return on this effort.

Here's what we do. We purchase banner advertising with some of the search engines. For those of you who haven't yet experimented with banner advertising, you may not know that you can purchase specific keywords so that your banner ads are only displayed when someone visiting that search engine searches on that specific keyword. Your banner would display with the results
of that search, and conceivably, the search engine user might be enticed to click on your banner ad and visit your site.

If you build a relationship with sales representatives at a search engine, you can ask them how often the misspelling of one of your keywords is searched on, as opposed to the correct spelling. We were surprised to learn that two misspellings of the keyword "balloons," both "baloons" and "ballons," were very rarely searched on - we thought misspellings would be more common. In fact, the two misspellings combined didn't even account for less than 10 percent of the total occurrences of the correct spelling of balloons" in Yahoo!.

What did this mean to us as Web site promoters? Even though these misspellings were rare, they are still worth targeting because the competition will be much less intense for a misspelled keyword. You can probably get top rankings on both "baloons" and "ballons" without too much effort. This means that you can guarantee yourself some traffic from the 10 percent who are searching on misspelled words. This may be the easiest traffic you will ever attract!

Here's a list of commonly misspelled words you might wish to consider when deciding if a keyword pertinent to your Web site might be frequently misspelled.

believing changeable fourteen oversight bouquet chosen fulfill parallel campaign collateral government payroll accelerate committee grateful percent accessible congratulate liquid personnel accidentally control guaranteeing phenomenal accrued controversy harass policyholder achievement courtesy hindrance postmortem advertise criticize identical postgraduate advisory cynical indictment preponderance affiliate deceive installment privacy benefited defense intelligence procedure airport deferred intercede promissory

alignment delegate issuing questionnaire alleged desirable lacquer unanimous alphabetize dilemma liaison worthwhile analyze disastrous losing recede annulment ecstasy maneuver referring apiece efficiency merchandise regrettable apostrophe embarrassing mortgage separate archives enforceable preferable serviceable article everyday professor simultaneous assessed exasperated negotiate someday assignment excitable nickel spontaneous attorneys fascinating ninth stimulus bankruptcy lien miscellaneous receive bureau mailbox notifying subsidiary cancellation mediocre occasion substantial casualty fireproof occurrence susceptible
comparative foreclosure offense tariff compromise forfeit omission warehouse conference optimistic welfare

Take your time reviewing this list. Find any keyword that might pertain to your Web site and ask a few friends how to spell the word - chances are one will misspell it! Take note of the many close, but not quite right, spellings of each word. Consider incorporating these misspelled words into your promotion and Web page optimization efforts.

A good example of when a Web marketer should consider optimizing commonly misspelled words for Web pages is for a current news story. For instance, recently the presidential scandal was spiraling out of control. How do you spell the infamous intern, Monica's, last name?

A. Lewinski?
B. Lewinsky?
C. Leuinsky?

The correct answer is "B." J Know that when the story broke, many people searched for the spelling that sounded correct - "A" an incorrect spelling.