Orthopaedic or Orthopedic...that is the question?.

When it comes to digital marketing, keywords are consistently at the heart of what we do..

• Where are our keywords ranking?
• How expensive are our keywords?
• What keywords lead to conversions?
• Can you do some keyword research?

As well as analysing and refining the list of brand and subject related keywords we can also understand what stage of the sales funnel people are by the types of keywords use.

For example here is a list of some Google searches starting from the initial broad research searches to the specific searches for surgeons names, indicating what stage the user is in the sales funnel:

This is really helpful in understanding how to bring people back to the website or ensure you have content to support what information they need for each stage of the purchasing decision.

Healthcare, can be even more complex due to the medical terms that are used by professionals. Sometimes there are correct medical terms and more slang terms for the same procedure or condition, this means that keyword research can take time and testing is key when it comes to using Google AdWords.

Many medical terms originate from other countries (via journals and research) and therefore the spelling becomes confused.

Here is a list of some common spelling differences in medical terms in British and America English.

A full list is available online from:

Source: http://translation-clinic.com/spelling-medical-terms-british-american-english/

Why is mis-spelling/language variations important? 

Organically - If you find that the american spelling of ‘Orthopedics’ has a higher search volume in the UK than the British spelling ‘Orthopaedics’ then you should optimise your website content accordingly to rank for the correct terms. Google is likely to be clever enough to realise the spelling variations, however it doesn’t hurt to include both spelling variations in your meta data.

Paid - In relation to Google AdWords, you can target the different spelling variations and mis-spellings to ensure you are targeting all the relevant searches.

This is especially important when you are targeting a niche keyword that does not get much search traffic. If can also have lower competition as less of your competitors are bidding on these.

So, what spelling are people most likely to use?

If you look at Google trends at some of the examples above you can see the search volumes for the different spellings:

Orthopaedic Vs Orthopedic

Tumour vs Tumor

Here we can see that over the past 12 years UK searches of the British spelling has increased steadily but the American spelling has increased significantly, narrowing the gap. Therefore both spellings are important if you are targeting people searching for ‘Tumour’.

Source: https://www.google.co.uk/trends

Google using autocomplete

It is worth taking into consideration that Google has over the last couple of years rolled out autocomplete in search browsers, so when users start to search for a term, it will automatically suggest options. This will then influence the searches made. This is a handy function, especially for mobile searches (which is a growing trend).

If you would like to to us about your digital marketing requirements, please get in touch! You can email me at lucie@sagittarius.agency or call 01233 467800, I look forward to hearing from you!