Cattle Ramp SEO Resources

Keyword spelling is an aspect of keyword research you don't seem to read much about. I have been involved in SEO for a couple of years now and there is some emphasis on targeting misspelt keywords, but not on keyword spelling. Why is that?

Given the fact that we have different spellings for some words, surely, when you want to decide on keywords for your site, the spelling issue should come up. The issue applies also to the spelling of words to use on the web site, and not just to keywords.

For example,

• if you have a graphics site, should you use 'colour' or 'color'?
  
  
• if you have a plane site, should you use 'aeroplane' or 'airplane'?
  
  
• and so on . . .
  

Have a look at http://www3.telus.net/linguisticsissues/BritishCanadianAmerican.htm for more examples of different spellings between the US, the UK and Canada.

There are some many words that have alternate spelling that some thought needs to go into which spelling to use/target at a site. I would therefore recommend the following:

1. use the spelling that is correct for the market you want to attract. For example, if you have a graphics site and you want to target the US market, then use 'color'. If on the other hand, you want to target the UK, then use 'colour'. A similar idea can be used for targeting other English speaking countries such as Canada and Australia,
   
   
2. if you are not wanting to target a specific country but are targeting the English speaking world, then I would recommend using the spelling that is correct for your country and making it clear on your home page what country you are living in (this can easily be done by adding the flag of your country at the bottom on your page).
   

Given the importance of keywords, spelling is something that one should seriously think about when adding content to our web site and when deciding on what keywords to target.

Serge