Optimize Different Pages for similar phrases, same meaning?

[moopy]

Hi,

I ws wondering...

Let's say I would like to optimize my site for the keywords:
rent a widget in widgetland
widgetland widget rental
widget rental widgetland

Would it make sense to create 3 landing pages, each one optimized for a different phrase, or is this considered as spam?

Thanks :)

[aristotle]

The three examples you give are basically almost the same. If your real examples are that close, I would recommend one main landing page. You can then strengthen its ranking power by creating other pages with supplementary content, prudently sprinkled the same keywords, and then linking these other pages to the main landing page.

[moopy]

Thanks, yet I want to return to the main question:

Is creating 3 landing pages for identical meaning keywords such as

rent a widget in widgetland
widgetland widget rental
widget rental widgetland

Be considered spam?

[tedster]

In the abstract - absolutely. Those would be pages created for the search engines rather than human visitors. That's a pretty good generic definition of spam.

So would it be spam in the concrete, algorithmic sense? It could be. See, for example, this Google patent:
Detecting spam documents in a phrase based information retrieval system [appft1.uspto.gov]

I could also see you tripping the infamous -950 penalty [webmasterworld.com] with such an approach. And then there's this:

Doorway pages are typically large sets of poor-quality pages where each page is optimized for a specific keyword or phrase. In many cases, doorway pages are written to rank for a particular phrase and then funnel users to a single destination.

Whether deployed across many domains or established within one domain, doorway pages tend to frustrate users, and are in violation of our webmaster guidelines.

[google.com...]

[moopy]

That's a very good answer Tedster, I appreciate it!