Focusing a domain on a misspelled high traffic keyword
For the last past days I’ve been doing some research for a couple of new domains and kept stucking with the same question: "Is it OK to focus a new domain on a misspelled keyword that has the potential to bring high traffic from search engines?" . That means, would it be OK to buy a domain that has such a misspelled keyword in its name and built a site around it?
After debating this for a while (with myself 
), i put together a list of pros and cons, list that you can find bellow:
The pros
- could give you an increased chance to rank for that particular term if you have it in your domain name, as we know this is a ranking factor .
- if you focus the entire home page and link building around that term, you could end up with very nice ranking positions for it
- has a smaller competition than the right spelled form, thus better chances of ranking .
- You might get traffic on the site faster, as you have less competition
The cons
- while having the term in the domain name might help you, that’s not such an important criteria in SE’s algorithm, especially if you plan on ranking in Google (will help more for Yahoo and Msn) .
- while having less competition, the search volume is also a lot smaller than the one of the correct spelled keyword .
- Search Engines will automatically offer spelling suggestions for those who search the misspelled form of the term. Thus, some of the searchers will use these suggestions and will not click the results .
- will affect your site’s branding ability (people are less willing to remember misspelled domain name) .
- will have less SE potential traffic than a site focused on the correct form of the term .
- in the future, search engines might even cut out from the results misspelled results, you may never know .
So, if you plan to use a misspelled keyword and build a site around it, don’t. Even if this might seem like a smart choice on the short term, you’ll end up regretting it after an year or so. Try choosing domains that are both brand-able and have some search traffic potential and work hard so these domains will get where they deserve to be.
Am i right or am i right?
Photo source: here
A very interesting post. I think one of the contentious issues is centered around branding. It depends whether the brand has a vested interest in winning over the customer. If the brand isn’t key then perhaps it would be feasible. However, I tend to think this could be a potential minefield in the long-term.
I agree. It’s extremely bad practice to optimize for misspelled words. It might work in the short-run, but in the long-run it would probably catch up with you. It’s usually best to take the high road in situations like this.
I favorited it. The last line is so true. I also wish life would be much easier…Thanks for sharing.
Well said. I agree that it would effect the site branding ability and surely would affect your site business as misspelt words would not get good results in search engines. Better to focus on long term goal rather than getting success for short term.
I think it will make your site funny to others. Though you can earn some good traffic but somehow not for long since people will always search on the right spelling.
I was thinking about this same thing today. But every time that I have misspelled a domain as soon as I realize that I am at the wrong site I leave. I wonder how many people do stay and look around the site? I think there are a lot of other internet marketing strategies that we could spend our time working on.
I’m not sure people usually leave. I rank here for a high traffic misspelled keyword and i can say it’s converting pretty well for me .
Not sure what happens if the domain name is misspelled though.
Amen. I had a martial art related domain with a misspelling and it started to move forward a bit, I realized that I wanted to evolve as an author/blogger. I wanted to start branding and building an audience – and I felt the misspelled domain detracted from my authenticity.
I think that it looks bad to have a misspelled word on your site, but what about an alt tag for an image. Nobody reads those.