9 replies to this topic

[samt]

Hi everybody, I've been reading the posts here for a while and I've learned a lot, thanks. I'm new to this whole concept and I have a question I'm hoping you all can help out with. My company sells a certain line of products called Glas-Craft. I'm trying to set up web pages for this line right now, and of course I plan to put the brand name in as much as reasonable. But, I notice that our customers misspell this name the majority of the time, they put 'glasscraft'. On overture's suggestion tool, I notice that there are way more searches for 'glasscraft' than 'glas-craft'. Now I don't want to put a misspelling all over my page, I feel like I'd look ignorant, and the manufacturer probably wouldn't be happy with me for it either. But someone suggested to me that I use the misspelling in the file names and alt tags for the pictures, to possibly pick up those misspelled searches. This sounds like it may qualify as spam to me because it's something that doesn't show anywhere on the page... but then again, it is a very common misspelling of a specific brand name. Any thoughts? Would that even work?

[Haystack]

Welcome to the forum, samt.

If you don't use the word on the page, it's going to be tough to rank high for the term. With a few hundred searches related to the misspelled term and no current bids, you could use PPC advertising for the misspelling for only a few bucks a month.

[SearchRank]

Hi samt,

One thing you can do is make sure 'glasscraft' is included in your keyword meta tag. Keyword meta tags aren't of much use anymore but I have heard that you can place mis-spelled words in there and sometimes they can be picked up.

You may also create a page that specifically targets the mis-spelling and on that page put some kind of verbiage explaining to those that land on it that they may have found this page because they mis-spelled your brand name and then direct them to different areas of the site - kind of like a custom error page but not an actual 404 custom error page. However, you will have to somehow provide a link to this page from somewhere in your site so that it not only gets crawled but so that it is not anything more than an orphaned doorway page.

I am not a believer of using doorway pages but we do have a client that had the same problem and they did not want to include the mis-spelling of their company name anywhere where an end user could think they were dumb or something. So we created the type of page I'm talking about and it works quite effectively. This is not a license to go ahead and create a 'special page' for every mis-spelling you can think of but to create one page that explains the mis-spelling of your brand name would be okay IMO.

[BrianR]

If the culture of your company allows it, perhaps you can use a bit of humour to get the misspelt brand name mentioned naturally in the copy:

"Header: So why are we called Glas-Craft and not GlassCraft?

You wouldn't believe the amount of discussion generated by the Glas-Craft v GlassCraft debate! On one side, were the GlassCraft people who said that this was the most intuitive spelling. Ranged against them were the Glas-Craft people who very much liked the individual spelling of the brand name."

Etc, etc.

BrianR

[Haystack]

samt, another thought: maybe those visitors are not misspelling your company's product? There are a quite a few companies named or having products called GlassCraft, so you might get more traffic to your site using that phrase, but it might not be spellingly challenge potential customers.

[bwelford]

To reverse an old saying, "Isn't it better to switch than fight."

With so many other whole companies with Glasscraft in their name, I think it's a losing battle. Why not change the name of the brand to something that isn't so mixed up with so many other companies and products.

Barry Welford

[franckey]

I take care of accommodation site. We decide to make also site visible for acomodation, accomodation and accomodation misspellings. I've added this misspellings to 3 different subpages (each misspellings to each page). I've also added links, but I've hided it in <noscript> tag. Now I'm waiting for results.
I hope it won't be recognized by google as a spam.

Franckey

[qwerty]

Welcome to the forum, Franckey

I don't recommend hiding anything in a noscript tag. It should only be used to display information that otherwise could only be seen by users that could run the script. Anything else can be dangerous.

[Jill]

As I mentioned to you in this thread, it is spam.

Jill

[franckey]

I'm worry, that 'it can be dangerous'. I've never used since I had started with SEO any spam.
But do search engines have algorithms which are able to compare result of script and <noscript> tag?
However, I've added such a text (with small fonts, but visible):

Budapest Acomodation. This link is here only because of English misspellings. People sometimes use 'acomodation' form.
Budapest Accomodation - people also search with accomodation or like in this phrase: Budapest Acommodation