First, a story

Motivated by the excitement of naming our first company together, my husband and I huddled in our New York City apartment for hours brainstorming unique names that worked for SEO, AND sounded as timeless as the memorial products we were designing to celebrate the lives of pets.

We toyed with Bonne Nuit – French for good night – and a myriad of options before agreeing on “GNight Fetcher”, an endearing, yet accessible term representing the final goodbye one might say to their beloved furry companion named Fetcher. 

What we, at the time, could never imagine, was an amalgam of harsh letters as crass as “g knight flecter” to ever be associated with our brand.

But sure enough, during my weekly review of search terms that led consumers to our storefront, here it was — “g knight flecter sympathy card”…

The silver lining? 

I was inspired to get a comprehensive list of misspellings of our brand, and target those search terms in our digital ads. 

If you’re not running any ad campaigns

Kudos to you if that’s the case! — misspellings are still great additions to website and listings backend keywords, in the form of alt text (read more here if you’re not familiar).

How to implement cost-efficiently

To ensure no ad spend is wasted, I recommend adding a description of your product before or after the misspelling. For example, Nikey + running shoes (though by now, I doubt anyone is spelling Nike wrong).

Thanks to ChatGPT, I have a solid start:

If your brand name, like mine, is pretty “un-generic”, and you’re not Nike or Chanel, misspellings are likely unique to you and low cost in a pay-per-click campaign, since no one else is bidding for them. 

Another way of generating more comprehensive long tail variations of misspellings and product keywords is a free tool such as Papaya Search:

Example search input:

Tool output:

• [Gnight fletcher Pet Urn]

• [Gnight fletcher Pet Sympathy cards]

• [Gnight fletcher Pet Memorial gift]

• [Gnight fletcher Dog Urn]

• [Gnight fletcher Dog Sympathy cards]

• [Gnight fletcher Dog Memorial gift]

• [Gnight fletcher Cat Urn]

• [Gnight fletcher Cat Sympathy cards]

• [Gnight fletcher Cat Memorial gift]

• [Gnight fletcher Rabbit Urn]

• [Gnight fletcher Rabbit Sympathy cards]

• [Gnight fletcher Rabbit Memorial gift]

• [G knight fletcker Pet Urn]

• [G knight fletcker Pet Sympathy cards]

• [G knight fletcker Pet Memorial gift]

• [G knight fletcker Dog Urn]

• [G knight fletcker Dog Sympathy cards]

• [G knight fletcker Dog Memorial gift]

• [G knight fletcker Cat Urn]

• [G knight fletcker Cat Sympathy cards]

• [G knight fletcker Cat Memorial gift]

• [G knight fletcker Rabbit Urn]

• [G knight fletcker Rabbit Sympathy cards]

• … you get the idea

  PS the square brackets here exist to tell Google ads to target the exact combination of those words via what the industry called Exact Match, whereas no brackets mean Broad Match, which isn’t recommended for our use case unless broad match modifiers are used. 

Here’s my final list of misspelled search terms that I launched as ads on Amazon and Google:

Campaign 1: Human urns 

1. g knight flecter urns

2. Goodnight fetcher urns

3. Goodnight fletcher urns

4. GNite fetcher urns

5. Goodnight fetcher sympathy cards

6. Night fetcher urns

7. Night fletcher urns

Campaign 2: Pet urns

1. g knight flecter urns

2. Goodnight fetcher urns

3. Goodnight fletcher urns

4. GNite fetcher urns

5. Goodnight fetcher sympathy cards

6. Night fetcher urns

7. Night fletcher urns

Campaign 3: Human sympathy cards

1. Night fletcher sympathy cards

2. Night fletcher memorial gift

3. Night fetcher sympathy cards

4. Night fetcher memorial gift

5. g knight flecter sympathy card

6. g knight flecter memorial gift

7. GNite fetcher sympathy cards

8. GNite fetcher memorial gift

Campaign 4: Pet sympathy cards

1. Night fletcher sympathy cards for pets

2. Night fletcher pet loss sympathy cards

3. Night fetcher sympathy cards for pets

4. Night fetcher pet loss sympathy cards

5. g knight flecter sympathy card for pets

6. g knight flecter pet loss sympathy card

7. GNite fetcher sympathy cards for pets

8. GNite fetcher pet loss sympathy cards

The benefit? 

Takes 10 minutes, yields all upside. 

The customer likely is looking specifically for your product when they type into Google / an e-commerce search bar, it’d be tragic if instead of your assets, competitors’ or irrelevant results show up and the customer gives up.

Bottom line: This strategy falls in Quadrant 3 in the illustration below, and is likely implemented after you’ve optimized your Quadrant 1 and 2, higher value targets:

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