Use PPC To Dominate Your Typo SEO Landscape
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April 30th, 2008 
Posted in: Search Engine Marketing 
52 CommentsPPC advertising is not only great for generating sales and qualified traffic, it’s also the BEST possible keyword research tool available. While other keyword research tools offer a general “starter” set of keywords in most verticals, most only give general words and without demographic information. PPC data can be used for a whole lot more and is completely customized to your market. You’ve paid a premium for this data, now use it to your advantage…
With PPC, you can get detailed demographic data, hourly conversion data and of course what we are going to touch on here… typo conversion data.
PPC data comes with a huge bonus, conversion data. If you bid on typos, you can see what typos are actually converting. While the volume is usually a lot lower, over time, this conversion data can be very valuable in optimizing for organic search engine rankings.
Lets use the screenshot here as an example. If you were presented with this data, you can see that the search term “londkon hotel” over the past year and a half has had 314 conversions. With each conversion being valued at $80, that’s a little over $25000 in revenue for this “fictional” company.
If this “fictional” company was to organically optimize their organic rankings for for the search term “london hgotel” they would probably have seen zero results. If they had optimized for “londkon hotel” they would have seen some fantastic results. Assuming the organic number one position gets (a conservative) double the number one PPC result, that would be an additional $50,000 in revenue for this company. That’s just for one search term! More than likely, they wouldn’t have organically optimized for ANY typos.
Caveat: Bidding on typos in Google Ads and Yahoo will usually result in a poor quality score for those keywords.
Now, if we take this data and write a press release, an article and a blog post all containing links to the company site with the anchor text “londkon hotel” that would probably be enough to rank their site for that search term seeing there is much less competition for it. Organic search engine optimisation without conversion data for each keyword is not where you want to be focusing your efforts. Most online companies engaged in active search engine marketing know that and focus on their core keywords. This leaves the competition in the typo landscape for that niche much easier to compete in.
So there’s another good reason why SEO and PPC compliment each other. So while your competitors are eating each other alive in the PPC Pirahna tank, take a step back and see how you can take advantage. If you’d like to know more about how our digital marketing agency can help your business dominate in paid search, you should get in touch.
May 2nd, 2008 at 4:43 am
I like the tie in to quality score. What I find weird is that two goofs at a keyboard, essentially going for the same search, could have such radically different purchasing habits…
May 2nd, 2008 at 4:52 am
Thanks Gab, I should have actually gone into a bit more detail about that. If your quality score is in the poor “$1-$5” range, you might be able to continue to bid on the terms. Ultimately, it will be worth your while.
Another thing I didn’t mention is that the CTR for the number one organic listing is usually less for a typo as a result of the “Did you mean…” link that Google displays.
May 2nd, 2008 at 1:07 pm
Dave – Fantastic article, thanks!
One question: Your mention that bidding on typos in Google and Yahoo usually will give you a low quality score for that keyword, however in the screenshot provided you are scoring “Great” for the “londkon hotel” example. Was your screenshot and example done before a tweak in the quality score algorithm? i.e., is it possible to still get a QS of “great” for typo keywords?
Thanks!
– Dave
May 5th, 2008 at 5:10 pm
Hi Dave,
I was thinking exactly the same as Dave (above me). Is that a fictional quality score?
Cheers,
Michael.
May 6th, 2008 at 8:37 am
Great article Dave. Generating traffic needs to have a holistic approach, SEO , PPC, social media. To be true I’ve never really thought about capitalising on misspelled words in PPC.
Paul
May 6th, 2008 at 10:42 pm
This is a great way to squeeze some extra mileage out of a paid search campaign! You were right in that the “Did you mean” feature in Google really kills it for organic conversion on misspellings though.
Taking the impressions data from your paid search campaigns is THE best way to do keyword analysis! There are no accurate tools our there other than this. An impression = a search (considering that you are placed on the first page at all times for that term).
May 6th, 2008 at 11:09 pm
Great Article!
One more thing to keep in mind is the match type. It appears that in this example one is using broad match which can trigger the keyword based on a wide variety of actual queries. There are some very interesting rules on broad match that can be found in the AdWords help center as to what triggers a particular keyword to fire VS another. Perhaps a more accurate way to measure this is using exact or phrase match. Either way, I really enjoyed the post!
May 8th, 2008 at 4:54 pm
Thanks! In Pune real estate market, quite frequently, i come across “Did you mean…” . Till now, i used to just ignore it. Hence forth, I am going to put it to good use. You know i can start with my own name “Ravi Karandeekar” When one enters it in the search box, Google asks “Did you mean Ravi Karandikar?” I have only one blog post where i have spelled my cousin brother’s name as “Karandikar”! Hi! have i already started!! Thanks! I am very curious to find out how it works. Sure, i will keep you posted!
May 9th, 2008 at 8:46 am
I loved that article, Dave! It was very interesting and informative. I’ve always been interested in typos but never found good posts on that subject, thanks:)
May 10th, 2008 at 7:10 am
Interesting coverage. That’s why some people also grab the typo domain names so rather than have your competitors grab those names, it’s best that we grab our own misspelt domain names too
Regards,
Fione
May 14th, 2008 at 5:55 am
Is this going to work? I heard about PPC and still I am not sure if this is going to help me make money or simply draw traffics.
May 14th, 2008 at 7:32 pm
Interesting article. A great way to know top typos and using them to great effect.
On another note, PPC Advertising is getting more and more expensive by each day. Wont be surprised if someone comes up with a brand new means in online advertising.
May 14th, 2008 at 10:59 pm
Interesting post. I’ve done some research into SEO-ing for spelling errors and the best solution is to have users rate/review your service, this adds lots of new long tail keywords to your site and includes user spelling errors without having to add spelling errors yourself (that just looks bad)
May 15th, 2008 at 7:53 pm
Interesting one…though on my site I would keep less keywords and no typos, but for CPC think is cool
May 16th, 2008 at 4:26 am
I didn’t know that typo searching could affect in such a big way towards the revenue of a company. Very interesting.
May 16th, 2008 at 9:09 am
Wow! It’s amazing to see how just a simple typo can have such effect. Looks like now we can make use of such typos. Thanks for the article.
May 26th, 2008 at 7:56 am
It is a really nice result you have. Conversion rate seems to be very law for words you tried
May 26th, 2008 at 11:07 am
Hi,
Thats good stuff.I like your article though i never used PPC, I support PPC. Good Going!
May 26th, 2008 at 3:17 pm
Thanks for the article. It’s especially interesting as I have a UK car parking website. I’ll definitely be following this up over the next week to see whether it’s worth targeting “londkon parking”.
May 27th, 2008 at 5:19 pm
great article! thanks for giving that such interesting idea.
May 29th, 2008 at 7:59 pm
This is great but Google and Yahoo in these cases ask you: “Did you mean …?” and in most cases show results for the correct keyword, thus all the work might be worthless. I think people who try to monetize on this should first check the keyword on this matter. Loved your article anyway. Thanks.
May 30th, 2008 at 12:18 am
I believe that as search progresses that this “niche” of web marketing will become smaller as the search engines adapt to not only spelling errors but local colloquialisms as well. Some day soon for example the search results for a weed wacker, grass trimmer and a string trimmer will be much more similar then they are today. Thus an extension of this would be that common misspelling of these terms would also garner more similar results in the near future.
June 3rd, 2008 at 11:05 am
Very interesting subject!
June 9th, 2008 at 12:31 am
Very interesting stuff, I tried a similar concept for a specific keyword phrase on one of my blogs ! It was no easy to find that keyword, but after some time of analyzing I found it and in joust one day I did get 400% more traffic for that new keyword phrase! And I am Getting it all time from that day! More of Those keywords are out there, and it is just the matter of time when I will find them!
June 10th, 2008 at 2:32 pm
Typo seo campaigns are extremely useful to me. I currently use it to rank for several keywords that are often misspelled. Definitely a niche advertising source.
June 10th, 2008 at 11:04 pm
It’s true that most people aren’t aware of the different ways pay per click advertising can be used in conjuction with other advertising. I myself (The Pay Per Click Queen) use it as a keyword research tool. I love your comments on the misspellings. This is a goldmine most people aren’t taking advantage of. Thanks for sharing this amazing information!
June 17th, 2008 at 9:54 pm
Dave, I’m always looking for new ways to get create more traffic on my web sites. Thanks for the insight.
June 19th, 2008 at 3:27 pm
I think the advice about coming up organically for typos is great, and if you can have an ad showing on those results as well, it will be another doorway to the site.
I get what people are saying about the “Did you mean…?” But, if no one clicks, no one pays. So what is the harm. Great article Dave. Thanks for the insight.
June 20th, 2008 at 11:27 am
Just wildered. Is PPC applicable only for commercial websites or every personal sites…
Anyhow keyword optimization is the only technique to bring the relevant advertiser. Wrong keyword optimization may cause to bring irrelevant advertisers such as a porn advertiser may focus the Tutorial site for their advertisement.
Thanks for your useful tips Davis.
June 21st, 2008 at 6:55 am
JSchooley said it. If no one clicks, no one pays. Thanks Dave for great info!
August 6th, 2008 at 8:49 am
Another great post Dave.
I’ve been doing this for a while but was more focused on the volume than conversion data. I need to rethink that and let the ads run long enough to get some statistical significance.
Thanks again.
August 8th, 2008 at 8:07 pm
Keep the typo ads in a separate campaign so low quality scores don’t drag down the rest of your ads
August 22nd, 2008 at 12:07 pm
Dave, the article is very interesting and informative. I like it and it gave me very useful information because I am always looking for ways in order to create more traffic on my personal website.
August 24th, 2008 at 10:07 am
The article is very interesting and by the way very useful. Generating traffic needs to have PPC (pay per click). Furthermore it’s also important to focus on excellent SEO-Marketing.
September 4th, 2008 at 11:23 am
Hey Dave , great article there , very interesting
October 15th, 2008 at 6:39 pm
Taking the impression Data from your paid search campaigns is the best way to do keyword analysis. It’s a very interesting and Instructive Article.
October 27th, 2008 at 5:08 pm
This makes absolute sense. Pay lower for PPC and get traffic. Although small, it all adds up.
October 28th, 2008 at 4:28 pm
Hi Dave, I agree. You must capitalize misspelled words in PPC. On another note, it might be a good idea to call SEO, Organic SEM, and PPC, Paid SEM. It helps to clean up the nomenclature of the SEM or Search Engine Marketing profession.
October 28th, 2008 at 4:29 pm
Hi Dave, I agree. You must capitalize on misspelled words in PPC. On another note, it might be a good idea to call SEO, Organic SEM, and PPC, Paid SEM. It helps to clean up the nomenclature of the SEM or Search Engine Marketing profession.
October 31st, 2008 at 5:59 am
Only the most common misspellings would draw enough search volume to trigger ad, therefore, a good idea to begin effort with traditional kw research… eg. mispellings from keyword discovery for example. I’ve used this approach when concatenating keywords, to good effect, although one can quickly hit “the wall” as far as adwords keyword account limits, eg. 50,000 kws.
November 27th, 2008 at 12:19 pm
Hi This article is very interesting.PPC is very good for generating traffic. SEO marketing is also equally improtant.Nice article.Thanks
December 23rd, 2008 at 1:58 pm
Hei Nice Articles you got there, actually i’m kind of person who doesn’t like targeting from error spelling, but you open up my mind. Thanks
January 2nd, 2009 at 4:53 am
PPC and typos, interesting approach to PPC. I think people are right when they say that google kills the concept with the spelling corections. That being said, there are allways a percentage of people who pay no attention to a think. I can still see this concept as one that could be somewhat successful.
January 15th, 2009 at 3:23 pm
Yes, I’m currently looking at common typos that cost pennies in PPC! I’ve been detered with Google’s ‘Did you mean….’ little helper, but I hope some people ignore this (as they do with pop-ups).
Great article, would like to see more written on this subject.
January 20th, 2009 at 6:22 pm
interesting article, we bid on a number of common typos and often see good levels of traffic and return from them. A good example for us would be a supplier called “littelfuse” which is often spelt “littlefuse”. Quite an obvious mistake really!!
January 24th, 2009 at 12:34 am
Good article. The number of possible typos and miss-spellings obviously varies greatly according to the industry/niche but they can certainly be terms worth pursuing, particularly in very competitive sectors.
January 24th, 2009 at 8:19 am
Wow, I’m shocked at the number of clicks you got for those typos. I never would have guessed it would be that successful of a strategy. My challenge is that we target very niche keywords and try to dominate them. As such, the volume doesn’t justify going after typos. However, for London Hotels…nicely done!
January 27th, 2009 at 8:16 pm
But do you think it makes any point to fight for typos.
I mean the following. When someone puts a typo into Google, then Google instantly suggests a corrected version.
Thus, most of the people see they have made a mistake and follow the correct version – click Google link with correct version and the traffic is funneled away.
Most of them do not even get to the organic SERPs.
P.S. Well, to be frank I was never fighting for the typos, that is why it is an assumption of mine. But to me this assumption makes sense.
February 12th, 2009 at 7:49 am
Unfortunately, its not true. My website has high rankings for these typos keywords and I have only few clicks. My website is first for “londlon hotel” and third for “londkon hotel”.
June 2nd, 2009 at 10:03 pm
I think the point of this is that you should use an enormous (in # of keywords) PPC campaign BEFORE doing organic SEO. I agree and we always recommend burning acouple hundred in adwords PPC before we do any organic seo. It just helps us find what keywords will work for the clients site, and sometimes they get a few sales along the way which usually pay for the experiment.
July 28th, 2009 at 2:25 am
In my experience the Quality Score does not get much better after you remove a big bunch of typo´s….it seems the damage stays.
December 14th, 2011 at 6:16 pm
I had to +1 this article. Very good indeed.
Clients, and indeed SEO companies and web designers often boast about getting clients to position 1 in the SERPS for a chosen key phrase. If only the did the research that you suggest – it would show them that there is actually very few people searching for those key phrases.
Keyword research in adwords would definitely flag up much more relevant key phrases that could then be used on site.
Keep the articles coming. Very good Dave.