hal9000.ie

Optimising a site for searchers involves doing some keyword research to see what exact terms searchers are using to find what they’re looking for. And the Google Keyword Tool is your friend here. Once you’ve discovered which keywords have the highest traffic, then you optimise the page accordingly.

But what if your searchers can’t spell?

Take a look at this piece of research from Google where they show just how many ways Britney Spears fans spell her name.

Then you might want to start optimising the site for the misspellings. But having poor spelling across your site is not the ideal situation either.

It’ s much easier to target these kinds of spelling variations in a PPC campaign as you can target any spelling but this spelling does not have to be in your ad.

But for SEO it’s a bit more challenging.

Take Dún Laoghaire for example. Even if we ignore the fadas, some research shows us the local monthly search traffic in Ireland on the term and it’s variations.

1. dun laoghaire    135000
2. dunlaoghaire    110000
3. dun laoire             12100
4. dunlaoire                8100
5. Dunleary                   720
6. dun leary                  590
7. dun laoghare            28
8. Dunleery                    12
9. dun leery                     5

Google itself is very good at understanding different spelling variations and will often show you results based on what it thinks that the searcher meant. Which is very handy when your typing is wonky.

But one way of optimising a site for a term is to use the anchor text in a link to the site to associate the site with the different spelling. For example, a fantastic site was built for Dun Laoire and you can find Dunleary news and the Dun Leary gallery on the site.

Want to win €500??

Well it’s the last chance to enter the BlueBrick Video Competition. The idea is to create a video which encourages prospective students to visit BlueBrick and upload it to YouTube – what could be easier.

BlueBrick is an education portal that allows visitors to search for a huge range of higher level courses throughout Ireland and also to compare and then apply online.  The projects aim is to increase the number of part-time and flexible learning students in Ireland.

Video Marketing has become a huge growth area and is a great way of engaging visitors on your website and helps to decrease bounce rate. Also, having well-optimised videos on YouTube or Vimeo and video-sharing sites is a great way of link-building.

For example, if you’re interested in digital media what about taking a look at this digital media course in Dublin?