As you do your keyword research to find your targets, you may notice that some searchers "misspell" kung fu as "kungfu." Now, typically, search engine marketers would recommend that alternative spellings or misspellings be subtly inserted, or be used consistently on a page-by-page basis. Those solutions never sat well with me. One is definitely unprofessional -- no matter how subtle, and the other is just plain annoying.
Let me suggest one more hack -- a better one. There's a property called "letter-spacing" in CSS, and it can be used cleverly as follows:
Kung<span style="letter-spacing:-4px;"> </span>fu.
The result looks just like the real thing:
Kung fu. (View the source!)
So, let's call this the "zero-space hack." Deceptive? I don't think a search engine would make a big deal out of a space. Do you?
Looks more like a lousy WYSIWYG editor on a rampage to me.
April 27th, 2007 at 2:32 pm
Great tip, very smart!
April 27th, 2007 at 6:52 pm
[...] Ejemplo de SEO Egghead: [...]
April 30th, 2007 at 12:55 am
I can tell there's a space, and my minimum font size is set to 14pt.
Shouldn't it be like this anyway, with misspelling actually used:
Phone<span style=”letter-spacing:4px;”></span>sex.
April 30th, 2007 at 1:54 am
That would be the inverse. Same idea.
May 7th, 2007 at 10:49 am
Same trick for other characters:
CSS:
.dash:after { content: "-"; }
HTML:
Kungfu.
Replace the "-" with whatever you want.
July 2nd, 2007 at 4:56 pm
Perhaps a -1em would be better for the pixel-perfect perfectionist?
July 2nd, 2007 at 5:10 pm
To Andre Scholten: that doesn't work in ie, perhaps you'll need some ie specific fixes?
July 10th, 2007 at 7:49 am
You know, it should really be "gong fu" - the name kung fu is based on a really old method of writing Chinese using Latin characters, and is officially deprecated. Bet no-one searches for it though (yet)..
September 22nd, 2007 at 3:30 pm
Me likey...have to tried this cross browser? I'm going to give it a shot. Thanks for the tip!