Keyword Tips and Tricks

Now that you're familiar with researching and building a solid keyword list, it's time to
learn some of the more advanced techniques that keyword experts use.
By using the tips and tricks outlined in this section you will be able to increase the size of
your keyword list dramatically. You will also be able to target keywords that are less
competitive. These tips and tricks have given me the edge over the competition, and will
do the same for you.

1 Misspellings and Typos

Don't overlook common misspellings and typos as you are building your keyword list.
You would be surprised how many searches have misspelled words. In some cases, there
may even be more searches for a misspelled keyword, than the correctly spelled version.
Keywords with misspellings and typos are considerably less competitive too.
Here are some strategies that I use to come up with common misspellings and typos:

• Think of how a word is pronounced out loud, and think of all the different ways it
could be spelled or misspelled. For example:
o Their, there, they're
o Sense, cents, scents
o Weather, whether
o Calendar, calender
o Column, colum
o Foreign, foriegn
• Think about common typing mistakes:
o Common omissions (sports, sorts) - The "P" and "O" are close together on
the keyboard
o Double typing: (Google, Gooogle)
o Wrong letter order: (search, saerch)
• Use the free typo generation tool provided by searchspell

2 Plural vs. Singular

It’s always a good idea to consider adding both plural and singular versions of keywords
to your list. If you wanted to get even more specific you could consider plural keywords
with and without an apostrophe. Here are some examples:
Table on the following page…

Singular Plural Apostrophe
shoe shoes shoe's
valentine valentines valentine's
america americas america's
I generally don't take the time to optimize for the plural form of a word with an
apostrophe, but if you find a good keyword that is frequently searched for with an
apostrophe, go for it.

Note:
When it comes to paid search marketing, Yahoo will not always distinguish between
plural and singular keywords, but Google does. When it comes to natural search, nearly
all the major search engines distinguish between the plural and singular forms of a
keyword.

Try these examples using variations of the keyword "shoe"
Yahoo example using the keyword "shoe":

http://search.yahoo.com/search?ei=UTF-8&fr=sfp&p=shoe
Yahoo example using the keyword "shoes":

http://search.yahoo.com/search?ei=UTF-8&fr=sfp&p=shoes
Notice that the paid search results are the same for both "shoe", and "shoes", but the
natural search listings changed.

Google example using the keyword "shoe":
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=shoe&btnG=Google+Search

Google example using the keyword "shoes":
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=shoes&btnG=Google+Search
Notice that both the paid and natural search listings changed for "shoe" and "shoes".