Overture Keyword Selection Problem - Please Help

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[damlag]

Hi guys.

Ok, I have a problem here.

I would like to include the word "web site" in some of my selected key pheases. When I do a search on Overture, doesn't matter if I type "website" or "web site" it still shows "web site" for any result given, thats two words.

But when I put the phrase "web site" into a google search, it shows: " Did you mean: website?"

I hear people talking that google will use or already use a spell check algorithm. So if I'll use the phrase "web site", can I be banned for that, cause google thinks it's mispelling and suggests using "website".

The final question is whether I should use "web site" or "website"?

Any comments would be greatly appreciated.

[luckychucky]

One tool which may help some:

spellweb (dotcom)

[damlag]

Thanx luckychucky,

That tool said that "web site" is more popular. And they chose this one.

However, google says that "web site" is mispelling and suggests "website". Well, both words "web" and "site" are meaningful and it shouldn't make a difference between "website" and "web site". Both seem to be correct and logical.

I just don't want to target the word "web site" and later find out that google thinks it's mispelling and maybe will penalize me for that.

[luckychucky]

Just to clarify the use of a word, since we're getting into fine semantic distinctions anyway-
:o)

Google's not going to penalize you for using 'web site' vs. 'website'
or
'whole sale' vs. 'wholesale'.

Google will either correct your spelling if it needs correction, or at worst, ignore your site page for the misspelled term. In this sense there is the theoretical danger of being ignored, yes, but 'penalty' is understood in these forums as a way more hairy ordeal: a penalty is a nasty mark upon your site--to be on Google's s. list--from which it can be incredibly difficult, even sometimes impossible, to recover.

If Google actually steps in and penalizes a site, that site is usually engaged in some truly egregious spam activity, such as being part of a linkfarm, among a long list of other known black hat techniques. I feel entirely certain G would never penalize you for some minor confusions over how to spell a keyword. You can sleep easy on that score.

[damlag]

Hey luckychucky,
Thanx for clarifying.

I searched on the net and found others discussing this thing, whether to use "website" or "web site".

Well, there's no word as "website" in older dictionaries as some claim. And two words "web" and "site" are logical and many websites use them.

I'm nuts that I'm worrying about that. Would G start ignoring all websites that use "web site" instead of "website"? No, of course not.

But I'll still try to target the word "web site" as it has only 16 millions pages on G comparing to 23... millions that "website" has. Less competition :)

Anyway, thax and good luck.

[luckychucky]

My advice:
Whether or not it truly makes a diference, if you want to sleep well at night knowing you've covered all bases, create two pages. Optimize one for 'web site', the other for 'website'. However, very important-- don't just clone the text and make both pages identical except for the spaces/no spaces detail.
Each page needs to contain almost entirely different text content. In the worst case scenario you'll occupy two positions in the serps for the same keyword phrase (perhaps one indented beside the first, which is never an unwelcome phenomenon.

[damlag]

Thx for suggestion,

Talking about cloning content. I've heard that it's not good for search engines to have similar content pages on a web site.

But how to determine what is "too similar"? I'm not talking about exatly the same pages, but similar pages.

What if there are 5 pages covering the same topic, like "SEO". And authors, on all pages, discuss pretty much the same things. They talk little about spam, little about link exchanges, little about mirror websites. And the whole structure of a doc looks pretty the same.

So can these pages be ignored or penalized by SE's?

I'm little concerned about that.

[luckychucky]

My guess would be that 'similarity' is measured only in terms of keyword density and proximity. Obviously the text must not be exactly alike, ie: verbatim copy. Once that's out of the way, your only concern, if indeed it should be any concern at all, might be just how often a KW phrase shows up with the same frequency--in the titles, H1 tags, hyperlink text, main text bodies, and maybe even the ALT tags if you're splitting hairs--between the two pages.

Google's algorithms aren't rational minds, they're mechanical ones. So no computerized editor is reading your text and thinking, "hmm...this seems so similar to that other page I read, in its general tone and intent..." It's just crunching data.

There are a bunch of density analyzers out there. Several allow you to compare the content at two different URLs. There's also a cool copyright-violator tool for discovering when people rip off your content:

copyscape (dotcom)

...which might be useful if you're hunting for exact text duplications between sites, I dunno.

[damlag]

Thanx a lot luckychucky.