Is this spam?

[apsadmin]

I am in the printing business, and there are simply too many keywords and search phrases that are used by surfers to find my profession, or products, to effectively list them all on their pertinent pages. I know the rule of thumb is to limit the amount of keyword, search phrases, the page competes for and have done so. But greed being what it is, I also notice that some of my competitors respect no such limitations, and have come up with a scheme, method, to compete for all the search phrases without any limitations. How? I have noticed that some of my competitors have solved (?) this by creating a seperate page for every keyword, search phrase, they are competing for and only listing the one keyword, search phrase on the page. Unfortunatly this results in massive duplication and I am concerned that google will consider this spamming, or worse. Before I consider this further, I'd appreciate this forums opinion, and advise.

Example: There are dozens of keywords, search phrases, that people use when trying to locate a printer on the web. So the competition has created a seperate home page for each of these terms, resulting in dozens of home pages whose only difference is the keyword, search phrase that the page is optimized for, and then submitting it to the engines.

This works judging by the search results, not all the time, but then again nothing seems to work all the time on google, so I am curious. Is this a legitimate way of marketing, or is there grief at the end of this road?
I would appreciate any feedback you can give me.

[Mel]

While I'm not sure of what you mean when you say he has created dozens of home pages, (since there is only one "home page" on a site).

While there may be many phrases in use (this is not uncommon - I often turn up as many as 300 phrases per website) there are almost always a few of those phrases which are more valuable traffic wise than others. There are several sources for this information, but I prefer to use Wordtracker to verify the relative traffic.

You can and should target these phrases first and then work on other terms, but IMO if you are going to publish a page it should be a page containing information valuabel to both the viewers and search engines.

It is possible to get rankings for nearly blank pages just by putting a few keyphrases on it and then getting lots of inbound anchor text links pointing to that page, but this may be a short lived strategy as the Florida update demonstrated. It does work today (for rankings but not for traffic) but you will be safer and generate more traffic if you provide useful pages for your viewers.

[apsadmin]

Thanks Mell,

Well, it is all about rankings, and who is on page 1 isn't it? I don't think I explained this scheme very well on my first attempt, so I will try again so everyone will understand what I am trying to convey.
You are right of course, there is only one home page per site so this was probably a bad example since so much of your engine score is dependant on what is happening on home/index, and any duping i.e. home/index2, home/index3, etc., would probably be considered cloaking or worse, so I will use a product page instead to get this idea across.
What if I were to create dozens of duplicate product pages, all identical, with the exception of the single keyword phrase the page competes for and optimizing each one for its individual search phrase, and submitting them all to, say, google.
Now, within the site I have only one page selected as the default product page, product/index.htm. But, out on the google engine I have dozens, each competing for different search phrases used to find the same product. Lets say I am selling letterheads so I create lettehead/index(default), and then letterhead/index2, letterhead/index3, letterhead/index4, etc., all identical pages selling the same product with the only difference being the search terms they are competing, and optimized for, i.e. single color letterhead, 2 color letterhead, full color letterhead, etc. Its not a problem for me navigation wise within the site because I have the letterhead/index(default) which all users will default back too after coming on site and checking out any other page. Lets say, Letterhead/index3 has been optimized for "full color letterhead" and attracts a searcher to my web looking for "full color letterhead" on google. Lets also assume they are looking for a full color business card, and go to that section once on my web after checking out the letterhead page. When they click the "letterhead" link in the navigation after they are through and want to go back, they are taken of course to the letterhead/index(default), not letterhead/index3 which is only a dupe created to attract them onsite. They will never see letterhead/index3 again unless they go back to the engine and repeat the search for "full color letterhead", but since the only difference between all the letterhead pages is their search phrases, how many will actually notice, or care? After all the content of the letterhead page already takes care of all the variations of "one color letterhead", "two color letterhead", etc. Of course this could make a normal 20 page web into a web with many hundreds of pages, but I suspect that right now the (constantly updating and mysterious) google algorithm is favoring the pages that have been optimized for a single search phrase, as opposed to pages that have been optimized for a dozen, applying the same fuzzy logic used for links to determine if the site is "scattered", or "confused", when determining its relevancy within its profession. I am asking here if there is a possibility the new algorithm gives your page a favoring score for only using one search phrase, as opposed to a dozen?
This is why I was concerned that the engine might consider this spamming, and why I wanted to check the experts here. Obviously, using this scheme a business could compete for "all" the keywords for thier products without limitation. It just seemed to good to be true, so my suspicious nature tells me there has to be something wrong with it (lol), yet I see this being done on competing sites, and so far no one has been banned that uses it, far as I can tell. I am here for the long haul and do not want to subject my web to anything that might get it into trouble, but at the same time I do not want to miss the boat if this is a perfectly legitimate method of promoting yourself on the engines. Using the home page probably was a bad example to convey this idea, but it seems solid when only applied to the product pages, and perhaps it is working (or seems to be) because it does in fact better suit the "unknowable and mysterious" updated google algorithm that everyone is going crazy trying to nail down. Personally, my site went from hero, to zero on google lately like so many others, so I am looking at what has replaced us, and trying to determine the logic behind it all based on that. In some cases (not all, but some) I see these single search phrase pages, where I did not notice them before. Hmmmmm, eh? What do you people think?

[bogdan_i]

Maybe my post is a little out of topic, but I think your latest message is the perfect example to illustrate what Mel said. Your reply is so long and linear, that most people will not bother reading it, so you will get less replies to your question.

If your message would be posted as a web page on your site - probably it contains several keywords which might be good for your traffic - but who would really bother to read a very long, non-expressive page? Viewers do not enjoy reading an endless page, although it may contain clean information and it may be heavily optimized for search engines.

The same criteria applies on optimizing web pages and it may easily apply to your competition.

[Mel]

Originally Posted by apsadmin

...What if I were to create dozens of duplicate product pages, all identical, with the exception of the single keyword phrase the page competes for and optimizing each one for its individual search phrase, and submitting them all to, say, google.

There are IMO two basic situations:

Mildly competitive search terms
and
Very competitive search terms

For mildly competitive terms you can often get a ranking by onpage content only, but if you are targeting competitive search terms, you will have to have good links and anchor text links to get the rankings.

In the case of mildly competitive terms, you still have to optimize the page for the search term(s) and that IMO means title, description, header alt tags and frequently in the page text if you are to rank well. I would think this would be difficult to get rankings on "cookie cutter" pages, which search engines dislike. Google has in fact recently obtained a patent to detect similar pages with a view to weeding them out.

The way you describe your one way linking system (searchers can find the pages from the search engines only) they will likely be penalized as doorway pages.

... I am asking here if there is a possibility the new algorithm gives your page a favoring score for only using one search phrase, as opposed to a dozen?

IMO there is no penalty if you use one or ten phrases on a page, but my experience has been that it is difficult to write pages which humans can read intelligently, and use more than three closely related phrases on a page. If your pages are not going to be read by humans then they are not likely to sell much IMO.

I am here for the long haul and do not want to subject my web to anything that might get it into trouble, but at the same time I do not want to miss the boat if this is a perfectly legitimate method of promoting yourself on the engines. Using the home page probably was a bad example to convey this idea, but it seems solid when only applied to the product pages, and perhaps it is working (or seems to be) because it does in fact better suit the "unknowable and mysterious" updated google algorithm that everyone is going crazy trying to nail down. Personally, my site went from hero, to zero on google lately like so many others, so I am looking at what has replaced us, and trying to determine the logic behind it all based on that. In some cases (not all, but some) I see these single search phrase pages, where I did not notice them before. Hmmmmm, eh? What do you people think?

The only way I know of to successfully target thousands of keywords is to have hundreds or thousands of pages on which to do the targeting.

This approach has been perfected by companies who use database driven systems to generate tens of thousands of pages, all interlinked, from a single template and a database of keywords. This is an approach that works today, but IMO serves no real purpose for the searcher, and it is what the searcher percieves that ultimately drives what the search engines do.

Bottom line is to try to create pages that both rank well and do the job of selling your visitor on whatever it is you want them sold on.

IMO this means pages with solid and more or less unique content.

[apsadmin]

Thanks Mell,

Again, I am most gratefull for your taking the time to try to help me, and have taken what you have said to heart.

To bogdan_i. Thank you for replying also, and I regret that my explanation was so long. I agree that long pages are a detriment, but sometimes the subject is involved. I did make it as short as I could, while trying to maintain a clarity I felt I did not convey on the first attempt.

If I am understanding the gist of this, database driven sites have a clear competition advantage with respect to keywords, search phrases, and might explain the single search phrase pages I have turned up in my more recent google searches. Sites that try to level the playing field using a similar technique without the aid of a database run the risk of being considered doorway pages and being "weeded out". I am gratefull for that clarity, Mell. You HAVE shined a light for me and kept me out of a trouble I might have otherwise blundered into. I can see now that with my "letterhead" example, it would be best to have seperate pages for their differences (1 color, 2 color) rather than grouping all the variations onto one page as I am doing currently. Perhaps that way I can cut down on the search phrases, and therefore the "endless text" that support them and make them more people friendly, and effective with respect to sales. I do feel "helped", and that I come away from this with a better understanding of how to be a more effective marketer, engine wise. Thank God for this forum, and the help available here.