Dealing with spelling variations
-
Hi, my site is a directory for restaurants seen on TV. The two most popular shows, Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives and Man v. Food often are searched for by a number of different variations. Diners DriveIns Dives, Diners, Drive Ins Dives, Man v Food, man versus food, etc.
Should my site consistently use a single variation (the official one) or intentionally use multiple variations to cover various keywords? I'm pretty sure the answer is a single variation but figured it was worth asking.
-
We deal with a similar issue. However, what makes it interestingly complex is that our branch and audience is B2B.
Besides being very important to know which variations has more traffic volume, it seems that a single/plural variation can have in the background different queries' needs or origins.
For example between "payment services" and "payment service", there seems to be no difference and of course as the previous mozers comment, Google is intelligent enough to present results regardless of the spelling.
However, "payment service" could be (and tends to be) a B2C query. Usually referring to a specific service, i.e. "jc penney payment service". That is of course not relevant for us.
In conclusion, I would recommend to also have a look at the content's type and context that the different variations trigger.
-
I would err on the side of using the right name. Google and Bing will figure it out. And the grammar police won't arrest you. Trust me, they are annoying. Go for right, please.
-
Although Google is smart enough to figure out synonyms in many cases, it's still good practice to mix up your keywords on your page with different variations. This is a better experience for the user as well, since the content will be less repetitive.
Look at the search volumes for the various keyword variations, and see which variations are being used the most. If there are a couple variations that get used a lot, it may make sense to create pages on your site which each focus on a single variation.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
How to deal with hundreds of externally-generated images with no alt text?
Hi all This is a good one. I work for a webdev company who has clients in the transport industry. Part of our work on their sites involves pulling in transport-related offers from a feed. This includes both text and images, which our site template turns into viewable pages. The problem is that Moz has flagged that these images don't come with alt text, and there are _hundreds and hundreds of them. _I can't add alt text to them all, there just isn't the time or resources. Besides, the list is updated frequently, and new images are pulled in. So... what do? Would it be prudent to noindex them all by default setting? I'm stuck! Many thanks,
On-Page Optimization | | tomcowles
Tom0 -
Should product variations be visible individually?
I can't find any information on this anywhere. We have hundreds of configurable products, all with coloured variations. For example, one of our popular selling chairs comes in 8 different colours. Now, should all these coloured variations be visible individually (and have their own url) or only visible when selected from the dropdown? The problem is, when they have their own url it's going to cause duplicate content issues. It's merely impossible to write a different brief for the same product in 8 different colours. The second issue is, if they are visible individually, one colour is going to be shown TWICE to users, one being the simple product and one being the main configurable. I hope you kind people can help!
On-Page Optimization | | Jseddon920 -
Can horrific grammar and spelling in comments hurt the value of an otherwise great page?
I've got a website whose pages get lots of comments. Tons of activity, which I would think Google would like (and seems to like). However -- I just can't put this nicely -- most commenters are not very bright. Their grammar and spelling is horrific. These are not foreigners who lack English skills, they are just about all primarily English speakers and the site is 99% US traffic. It's a low-income segment of the population. So, I've been wondering recently if Google will mark down the value of the page due to the bad grammar and spelling in the comments, even if the page's content is otherwise very good and lengthy. I have read that they grammar and spelling into consideration when looking at the page, but would that include comments, or would they know they are comments and not judge a page on that? It would be a pain, but maybe I should I run all the comments at least through a spell checker? And manually fix their grammar? Problem is I get about 40 comments a day. And when I say bad grammar and spelling, I mean REALLY bad. Embarrassing.
On-Page Optimization | | bizzer0 -
How to deal with duplicate content when presenting event and sub-events information?
Hi, I'm have a sport event calendar website.
On-Page Optimization | | ahotu
It presents events that may have multiple races.
The event has its own page as well as the races. example :
Event: /event/edinburgh-marathon-festival Races:
/race/emf-half-marathon
/race/emf-10-km
/race/edinburgh-marathon
/race/emf-5-km The pages may have a lot of information in common (location, date, description) and they all link to each other.
What would be the best practices to avoid having the pages considered duplicate content by Google? Thanks0 -
Variations and Rankings
How do search engines view wording variances? I am trying to target Scottish Wedding Photographer but will google/bing etc be intelligent enough to see plurals, see the word Scotland instead of Scottish, photography instead of photographer? Also with rankings, I had a secondary phrase there to which I'm ranking sort of page 2-3 at the moment (the site is circa 3 months old) but finding that I'm nowhere with the Scottish phrase, I checked 30 pages of results and show nowhere, is this due to the competition for my phrase? My site is www.martinwardphotography.com
On-Page Optimization | | MartinWardPhoto0 -
Looking for an e-commerce CMS that can deal properly with facets and filters
Hi! One of my clients has an online shop built on a custom platform. Following my on-page audit, I found multiple issues with the faceted & filtered navigation. After doing some research, I've developed a good site architecture based both on keyword targeting and on user experience. Since the client's platform is custom and he is no longer in contact with the original webmaster, I'm looking to recommend an e-commerce CMS that would fix the issues he has and allow for proper navigation using facets + filters. I'll give you an idea of how I've envisioned the new site architecture (with a random example): The website has 3 main categories: Jackets Shoes Pants These categories are completely separated, no products exist in more than one category. Let's take the Shoes category. It has the following facets (these are like subcategories, in the form of links, indexable by the search engines): By Brand: Brand 1 Brand 2 Brand 3 By Genre Men Women Unisex By Type Running Flip-Flops Boots Each product of the Shoes category will belong to one of each facets (so you can have a product that belongs to Brand 1, for Women, of the "boots" type). Now, each of these facets also display filters depending on the facet itself. These are non-indexable, and preferably done through AJAX. For example, if I select Shoes -> Men I get a list of filters that can also include options from the other facets (so I'll have filters for "Size", but also for "Brand" and "Type"). When I select Shoes -> Boots I won't have the "Type" filter anymore (or I can have it pre-selected I guess), but I will have the "Size" and "Brand" filters. So, what I am looking for is for a CMS that can allow product attributes (like "Type", "Genre" or "Brand") to be used both as facet categories as well as filters. The closest live example I could find is ASOS, where you can search products by Brand (facet) and have the refined afterwards by Type (filter) or you can search products by Type (facet) and refine them by Brand (filter). So, any idea of an e-commerce CMS that would allow me to do the above (bonus points if it also allows entering descriptions for facets, similar to what ASOS does)? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | mihaiaperghis0 -
Dealing with Not Found errors
Hi, I have a problem with Google Webmaster, it reported that I have many errors 404 Not Found.
On-Page Optimization | | JohnHuynh
I have detected and found the links are coming from my site, I have fixed them and submit a new sitemap to google again. Then, I wait a few days, google still report errors 404 Not found same as before. I don't know why? Please help!0 -
Dealing with a 404
Hi there, I have an error on one of my campaigns. It says that it gets a 404on this page: http://www.datasat.com/tetra/white-paper.htmlWEhjdAfgkh However, I cannot replicate the above URL as it doesn't exist on the site. The end of the URL has some spurious characters which I don't know how they got there. Has anyone any ideas about what's happening and how I can sort it? Many thanks
On-Page Optimization | | iain0
