International Keyword Research: The Human Factor

2018-11-26

Internet searches are as imperfect as the the humans that are behind them. And we have to embrace that imperfection.

There is a general consensus regarding every bit of text that hits the internet: Errors are bad. Especially on a business websites that can live or die by transmitting an aura of professionalism, typos or common misspellings are the thing of the devil, and can look like a stain on an otherwise perfectly good site.

But when it comes to keywords, it’s another story altogether.

Internet searches are made by humans, and humans are prone to lacerating their language when it comes to correct spelling. This happens for multiple reasons that can range from autocorrect or autocomplete acting up, typing in a hurry, not knowing how certain words or product names are spelled, or simply being absolutely terrible at grammar.

Whatever the reasons, these are the searches that go into the engines and our keywords have to be tailored around them, even if they can be a bit painful to look at. An easy way to figure out a few is to look up common misspellings and see if any of these words are related in any way to our keywords. Sometimes, words that are pronounced in a notably different way from their spelling can be big offenders. “Invented” words like product names can prove confusing to people that remember how the word sounds, but don’t know how it’s actually written.  

The medical industry is particularly susceptible to all kinds of errors in the search box. If diseases can sometimes have profoundly odd names, the drugs to treat them tend to go even further, to the point of inducing a headache just by trying to read their names. It’s hard to blame someone for not writing Phensuximide correctly off the cuff, so including possible variations of the word into our keywords can help people find what they are looking for.

This applies to all the fields that often use overly complicated words like science, technology, or Welsh towns. Remember that the goal of keywords is connecting customers with your business, and if offending the dictionary helps to connect both parts, then so be it.

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