Typos and Search Engine Optimization

I hate typos. They drive me insane. A good part of my "day job" work involves hunting them down and killing them. Like many editors and proofreaders, though, I have a weakness: I'm often blind to typos in my own work. Why?

I blame Plato. My opinion, or at least working assumption, is that when I write something it resides in perfect, unblemished form in my brain -- and when I'm reading the typed, file-resident version of it, my eyes insist on seeing the ideal form rather than the mistakes that may have wormed their way into that latter version.

Anyway, yes, I make typographical errors, like the one in the title of a recent post on the US Senate election in Massachusetts.

What's interesting and cool is that that post shows up on the first page of Google results for the misspelling.

What's more interesting and cool is that I noticed the search result (and, for that matter, the typo itself) because I'm getting traffic from it.

I don't obsess too much over search engine optimization. If I did, I think I'd intentionally include typos in my posts so as to gravy train on traffic from the sizable "can't spell to save their lives" demographic. Just sayin'.