Would you ever develop a typo?

[soggyindo]

I've seen typos lately with lots of great traffic stats. I figure I should bite the bullet and try to develop one, but there's something about them that makes me think twice...

Has anyone ever developed a typo name (of a service or keyword, etc - not a TM). If so (or if not) - what issues have you thought through to make your decision?

Some that have passed through my head are resale values, low clickability in search engine results, feeling like a dweeb...

 

[netfleet]

No reason why not as long as they have the traffic to justify it.

Wouldn't bother with non-generic typos (ie TMs) as you will always have a risk of losing it & wasting all that time (aside from any moral/legal issues)

In addition to type-in traffic, people search using misspellings & typos all the time & a typo domain could give you the edge in the SERPs although Google's:

"Did you mean: XXXX"

might reduce CTR as you suggested. The other thing that might be tricky is chasing backlinks. Other websites would likely be less inclined to link to a typo domain.

You are also right resale values would be compromised.

In summary IMO if it already has the traffic to justify it then jump at it. Do a little bit of onsite & offsite SEO targetting the typo & see how you go (what i mean is if you have morgage.com.au, make sure you repeat the work 'morgage' in the content and as anchor text in backlinks - don't try and correct the mistake within the site but target the much less competitive typo search)