How to target for misspelled Brand name searches

[manasag]

Hi to all the SEO experts here,

I am working on SEO of my 4 months old website. For example, its 'abz.com'. We like the brand name 'abz' for the business and we are able to SEO well for keyword 'abz'. However, we would also like to target for the keyword 'abc'. There are 2 reasons for that:

• 'abc' is an actual word. So there is a possibility that our users may type 'abc' instead of 'abz' to reach us.
• For 'abc', the top result is 'abct.us', which is a site of adult in nature. Also our website doesn't feature at all in the results. This is hitting us hard in terms of or brand visibility.

So the questions are:

1. How to feature in results of keyword search of 'abc'? Will the following approach work:

• Buying an available domain 'abc.co.in', and use it to feature in 'abc' results and 301 redirect to 'abz.com'
• Having 'abc' in the page meta (title and description). This is hard for us, since we need to rethink our taglines and copyrights.

2. If we search for 'abz', Google says "Do you mean abc". Is there a way to not have this suggestion?

It would helpful to have some more ideas for this problem.

[ChrisAshton]

Hi Manas,

It's quite tough to give general advice on something like this because it often needs quite a specific answer, depending on your company name and that keyword you want to target.

If your company name is very close to that larger keyword, like Car Hirez and you're trying to rank for that branded term and Car Hire, it can be a little tricky. Without further info, my best suggestion would be to put that company name everywhere that it makes sense, and always in the same order.

I don't mean cram your company name whenever you can, just make sure it's in all the usual places like the page title, logo alt text, in your content, in all of your NAP listings, your link anchor profile etc. Keeping it to the same phrasing each time is also important for you to establish that those 2 or 3 words as your actual brand name, rather than words.

For example, don't allow alternation between ABC Car Hire, ABC Rental Cars, Car Hire from ABC etc. if the name is ABC Car Hire, make sure it's written that way wherever practical.

Of course, to rank for that broader term, the usual rules apply. Include that keyword in your page title, H1, content, internal link anchors etc etc. Treat the branded term and the keyword as separate items; that's how you want them to be viewed.

[Everett]

Great answer Chris!

Manas,

It sounds to me like Google does not consider your brand to be an "entity" worth ranking for it's own brand name. This is why you're getting the "Did You mean?" link or "Search instead for..." in search results for your brand. The stronger your brand becomes - in Google's eye's - the less likely it is that people will see "Did You mean?" for the search.

Of course, without actually knowing the terms, it's difficult to say. If your brand name is "Helocopter" it would need to be VERY strong for Google not to show results for "Helicopter". However, if your brand is "HeelCooper" you could probably resolve that problem, and several of your others, with the suggestions below.

1. Go Through This Presentation and implement what you can, such as:

• Organization Schema with Schema.or Markup in the HTML or with JSON-LD

• Add and Define your brand on WikiData, Wikimedia and other open data sources, or repositories for brand entities

• Work your way up to WikiPedia by doing noteworthy things that generate press

3. Make sure your Name, Address and Phone Number (NAP) are consistent across the web.

• There are many ways to format things:

• (Street, St. | Road Rd. | 1800, 1-800 | 555-999-5555, (555) 999-5555) | ABC, ABZ.

• The important thing is consistency. You need to "Disambiguate" your brand from whatever that other keyword is. This is important for search, but also in reducing the amount of your potential customers who misspell your brand.

6. Drive more searches for your brand, and subsequent clicks to your site by generating positive publicity.

• Use PPC ads for your branded terms, and that other term if possible, to get as much of that traffic as possible to your site, even if you aren't ranking #1. Also, google will be less likely to recommend another search if the one you performed is generating income for them. And they can use the data gained from those real user searches to inform their algorithms, which will - hopefully - eventually result in your site showing up, as it should, for branded searches.

8. If none of this works, consider re-branding.