"WidgeTown" vs. "WidgeT" and "own"

Will splitting link in two make link a keyword?

[tlhmh1]

I work for a website that has a domain name similar to:

WidgeTown

We have a navigation bar on our site of several hundred pages. Like many sites, the navigation bar uses a directory type setup:

WidgeTown > News > August 13, 2002

...where the first two items are links.

Now, the keyword Widget is in WidgeTown, but Google will not credit us for it since WidgeTown is one word.

I am thinking about changing all of the links to WidgeTown to two separate but adjacent (with no spaces) links, "WidgeT" and "own". This way, the link to "WidgeT" now contains our most important keyword. With this done on several hundred pages, we hope it might increase our ranking for the keyword Widget.

What do you guys think? We're not hiding anything. Is this spam?

[Onza]

As for the Keyword, I am sure it would definitely count as Widget if you split it as you said.

Is it Spam however? In my opinion, it is isn't, because you are not misleading the user or SE.

Maybe you should try to use two different URLs for the two links? Someting like:

yourdomain.com
yourdomain.com/index.asp

The other factor is the user. Will it not be a bit confusing if, when you roll over the link, only part of it has the rollover effect? ( underline )

Just my thoughts.. :-)

[tlhmh1]

I forgot to mention that there would be no rollover effects. Both words would have underlines. The user would not easily be able to tell that they are separate.

Also, in case I did not make it clear above, the two links would be immediately next to each other, with no space in between:

<a href="/">WidgeT</a><a href="/">own</a>

Perhaps another question would be, will Google recognize this as two separate words because of they are in separate tags, or will Google view it as one word because they are directly next to each other, with no spaces between them?

[ciml]

I notice this sometimes, presumably when someone splits the links by accident in a WYSIWYG tool. I rarely use a mouse; in keyboard navigation it's quite obvious.

> will Google recognize this as two separate words

I think this needs testing. Does anyone have an example page that they could check and let us know what happens?