Can spelling variants cause trouble for keyword stuffing?

[HRoth]

I want to build some pages using keywords that although they are spelled differently, refer to the same thing--they are the result of different transliteration methods of a non-Roman alphabet (for example, "klippot" and "qliphoth"). I guess I'd like to know if I would be liable for keyword stuffing if I put something like "Klippot / Qliphoth" in my page titles. I know probably other people aren't dealing with these particular keywords, but I'll bet other folks are having to deal with varying transliterations of words from non-Roman alphabets. How do you deal with that? It seems from my own searches that sticking with one does not get you results from another, so it is worth using other transliterations of the same foreign word, but IME, Google can change its mind about keyword spelling (this has happened to me with "magic" and "magick," for instance).

[goodroi]

this can fall into a gray area or a grey area :)

google tries to deal with misspelled searches. they often redirect a user who submits a typo to the spelling that google thinks is correct. this diminished the reason to build out pages with typos. i still like to use typos and similar words on my pages because i feel it helps google to properly pick up the theme of the page.

as you mention google can change its mind on what is the proper spelling. this is generally in response to user behavior on google. when the consumer audience changes their spelling preference google does try to keep up with it.

ps you may also want to read up on the concept of lsi (latent semantic indexing).

[tedster]

When done in moderation (major moderation) I have seen this approach work out quite well. There are certain transliterated words such as you mention that are problematic and they do work quite well in a title. Titles like the example you gave are helpful for the user, not just for ranking.

But definitely stay out of the gray areas, as goodroi cautions. What I see happening is a little early success tempts webmasters into more and more keyword stuffing - and then they get penalized and say they don't understand. I think the line is pretty simple - do it for your users, and not for Google alone.

[HuskyPup]

although they are spelled differently, refer to the same thing

I get quite a lot of referrals through these listing them as synonyms under meta keywords and on-page as synonyms. This is quite common in my industry NOT that G would know but seemingly accepts!

[HRoth]

Thanks, guys. I will give it a try with a page I have already put up and that went from page four to two in a couple weeks with just one spelling of the main keyword. I'll see what happens by adding the alternative spelling.

[Robert Charlton]

something like "Klippot / Qliphoth" in my page titles

I've successfully used this approach (or the alternative spelling in parentheses) on sites where a misspelling (eg, of the brand name) was more common than the correct spelling. In cases where you need to do this, Google Autocomplete usually suggests both versions.

Where the misspelling is a personal name that is part of a brand name of a product, the official site of course would not encourage the misspelling by using it, and in general wouldn't need to. Over time, the official site generally gets enough inbound links to both correct and incorrect spellings to rank for both. But if you're just trying to break into the market with such a term, you will probably need to get the misspelling into the title.

On the page, I'd be sparing about using alternate spellings grouped together with the slash separators, parentheses, "aka", etc... and in general I suggest being very restrained in suggesting alternatives at all. You want to use them for very main keywords only, not for every possible keyword that might have an alternative.

Inbound linking, as suggested by the above comments, is another way to get Google to consider alternative spellings.

[netmeg]

I used it to good effect in at least one case where there were two common spellings of a client's name (and he further confused the issue by changing it legally from one to the other about midway in his career) It's been working okay for the past six or seven years.

But Google will do what Google will do regardless of what you do. They still think I'm a typo.