Fault Tolerant Keywords: Incorporating the Unusual - More Sources of Data Errors
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Transcription: The dreaded typo. Of the five, this data error may be the least significant simply because the user will oftentimes catch their own error after inputting the string into the search engine and seeing the ghastly results for themselves. Transcription errors may be the most difficult to anticipate. Watching your own typing habits to see if and when you make any typos when referring to your clients' pages is a good source for keywords to incorporate.
Other times, transcription errors may occur from geographical locations. Adjacent to Ocean City are the towns of Rehobeth Beach and Louis, Delaware. Now, in the previous sentence, neither of those town names are spelled correctly, but if you're just going on pronunciation alone these terms are likely to be entered into a search engine's text box. Locals may know these towns are spelled Rehoboth Beach and Lewes, but extending that knowledge to each and every Internet user is an exercise in futility. Save yourself the trouble and add alternate spellings.
Transposing: The switching of letters in a given word. "I" before "E" and all that. Use both. Problem solved. This is probably the simplest error to combat, while remaining the most maddening. Quite simply, sometimes words, even when spelled correctly don't "look right" to the users, or even worse, they do look right and remain incorrect thus guaranteeing they will never find your site. Don't give them that opportunity.
It's not always vowels that are the subject of transposition errors. You don't have to go far to see a 'teh' when 'the' was the obvious intention. Such errors are so common that in many instances, they're considered jokes. If only it were funny, from an SEO standpoint. Transposition errors occur all the time, and worse yet, they're easy to make. Take care to recognize when your fingers fumble and realize that there are a lot of other people out there making the same mistakes.
Substitution: Using one letter for another. Leaving aside the parlance of phone text messages, which would warrant their own article, some words in and of themselves lead people to make mistakes. For instance, no matter what the physical effect of Italian coffee may be on your body, it's still not spelled 'expresso.' However, the administrator of a coffee-themed site is making a mistake if they neglect such a spelling in their keywords.
It also works in reverse. If your domain is substituting letters or numbers in place of the actual spelled word, you can't depend on visitors being able to crack your code. What may be a simple and convenient abbreviation for you hardly constitutes common sense to another person, especially if you run your site out of Miami and the prospective visitor is in Germany.
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