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CorrectSpelling/Misspelling Widgets and Gizmos from Widget-World
But while this works in the title, it doesn't look good on the page. I think on the page I'm simply going to try to target both spellings... sprinkling them into the page.
I don't think you could do this, though, with a misspelling that isn't commonly accepted... People would think you're illiterate. My guess is, in this case, that anyone who does notice the inconsistent spelling will also have noticed the two spellings in the title.
>how different should each page be from the others to avoid risking being seen as spam?
Very different – don’t risk it!
If there are more searches for the misspelling that the correct word then I can see the value, otherwise perhaps have these words on your pages in places which are of little importance to the visitor (but still visible).
i haven't done this. unlike the vast majority of pages addressing misspellings, most seem to be text-book examples of sleaze, i've tried to be meticulous, avoiding anything resembling spam. no hidden text, no redirects, etc. if a word is commonly misspelled in several ways (often) i have a page for the most common ones and have put different content on each one. the misspell pages link to more in-depth topical pages with the word in question spelled correctly (i think!). this way i can't see they risk causing anything to be filtered out.
in addition, i state clearly that the misspellings on the page are intentional, and there to aid 'typo-surfers' in their searches. this way i don't look illiterate (fooled 'em) and people aren't made to feel dumb being on the page.
the method has worked well, the pages get indexed and rank high for words that otherwise i'd never get close to the radar screen.
i've had a lot of benefit from a number of misspellings-optimized pages. when done right and fairly, it seems to me, misspell pages really serve as a legitimate symbiosis by helping searchers and me.
i'm just not in most WWW-ers league concerning SEO. my question is actually meant to make sure my method isn't spammy, not 'what works?'
...if one had three pages where the only difference were that 'widgets' was spelled 'whidgets' on one, 'widjets' on another, and 'wijets' on the third, would these spell 'trouble,' be considered spam?
Yes, probably. Even close-to-duplicate pages with only very small variations might get you in trouble. The hard part with more or less duplicate pages also would be integrating them into your site.
That's why I'm trying to piggy-back a popular misspelling on the page that's going after the phrase spelled properly. But with this approach, there may be the danger of repeating "widgets" too many times on the same page. Chances are, on this page, one spelling is going to get slightly better treatment than another.
Nice. A doorway page for misspellings.
For less competitive misspellings, this makes a lot of sense. I only added my suggestion because some misspellings are more competitive than the correct spellings. However you do it, you don't want to get into repetitive text on multiple pages.
Somewhere in the Google forum, by the way, there's a thread on Jacob/ Jakob/ Jake/ Jack Neilsen/ Neilson/ Kneelson and how he handles misspellings of his name... very funny.
you stress "only" which makes me curious as to your opinion to what degree should 2 or more pages be different to avoid trouble? if one page has an article X (representing most of the text on the page) and the other has article X also, but contains article Y as well (each several paragraphs, say) is it cool? how about if one page has 3 or 4 small illustrations accompanying article X and the other has same article w/out pics?
and i'm surprised to hear the advocating of 'doorway pages.' isn't doorway pages a criterion on the google spam-reporting form? seems they take a dim view, no?
I know what you mean! Is his site still in Google?
you stress "only" which makes me curious as to your opinion to what degree should 2 or more pages be different to avoid trouble?
Sorry... I didn't mean for the stress on "only" to throw you. It was your word... not mine. ;)
I like to keep my pages substantially different, both for site visitors and the engines. There have been lots of discussions on the board about "duplicate pages" or "duplicate content." Use site search, in the upper left hand corner of this page, or Google search on the WebmasterWorld domain, to find these threads.
I vaguely remember opinions that you can get away with pages that are 70% the same... however you measure this. I don't even like to duplicate long text strings, except for obviously global elements, but there are times when it's necessary. I don't think this should be one of them.
As for "doorway pages," we're getting into a semantic problem here. Machine-generated doorway pages, or pages that aren't integrated into a site, have historically created all sorts of problems. Usually, these are "orphan" pages... ie, they link into a site, but the site doesn't link back... and they're obviously there only for search purposes, in that the user doesn't have links to navigate to them. Sometimes they're cloaked or redirect pages.
You can also think of a "doorway page" as any optimized page. I think that any page on a site can be a doorway page. In this case, when you're talking about a page designed to target misspellings, one of your problems is integrating it into the site. The site has to visibly link back to it, enough that it receives PageRank from the site, provides a path for spiders, and the engines don't see it as an orphan page. It's therefore also got to work for viewers who might follow a link to the page.
As for the question of duplicate content, I think it's safest to write some new stuff for it.
Disclaimer: My thumbs up for a misspelling "error" page is limited to the product name. I myself am not sure I want to get into making myriads of doorways for misspellings.
However, if the queries per month are in the thousands, that can be a real temptation, especially if it's low hanging fruit. I like to do most things in moderation. Don't go getting yourself in trouble, now.
:) Y
