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How to work with dual spellings of same word

by WarrenHT
12 replies
  • SEO
    • |
Hi all,

My niche has two main markets, US and Canada. The subject in the US is 'Home Theater' and in Canada the 'er' is flipped to 're' so there it would be 'Home Theatre'.

I'm looking for some suggestions on how to deal with this. I don't really want to make dual pages of everything, and I'm guessing Google wouldn't like that anyway....

Suggestions? If I need to clarify, please let me know and I will try to rephrase...
#dual #spellings #word #work
  • Profile picture of the author Joel Young
    From The Grammarist:

    Theater vs. theatre

    There is no difference in meaning between theater and theatre. Neither has any special definitions. Theater is the preferred spelling in American English, and theatre is preferred virtually everywhere else.

    Some American writers do make distinctions—for instance, that theater is a venue while theatre is an art form, or that theater is a movie theater while theatre is a drama venue—but these are preferences, not rules, and they are not consistently borne out in real-world usage.
    So I guess you should spell it whatever way is relevant to your market.
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    • Profile picture of the author WarrenHT
      Originally Posted by Joel Young View Post

      So I guess you should spell it whatever way is relevant to your market.
      I have two markets, in the US it is spelled one way, in Canada the other. Yes it is the same meaning; I am curious from a keyword and SEO point of view how to manage this.

      US readers will be Googling one spelling and Canadian readers the other...

      It doesn't make any sense to create dual content, but that's my only idea so far...
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  • Profile picture of the author Joel Young
    Duh, I wasn't paying attention. *slaps self*

    Don't worry too much about Canada. We aren't as strict as the U.K. when it comes to things like that. There are those who use British spelling and those who don't. I'm not even sure if anyone uses the -re variant of theater here. Older ones maybe; younger ones not so much.

    Actually, I just Googled the -er version, being that I use Google.ca, and it showed results for -re. Then I searched "home theater" and the results came up with that spelling. So I'd say you're good to go with just -er.
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  • Profile picture of the author laurencewins
    Just make sure your site has both versions spelt within it in some context and you'll be found either way.
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    Cheers, Laurence.
    Writer/Editor/Proofreader.

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    • Profile picture of the author Elle Holder
      Just stick to the US spelling and don't worry about it.

      For all that we're taught Canadian spelling in school, all of our books and magazines come across the border. They're printed - for the most part - for the North American market, and I guess since there is way more of you guys, you win the spelling battle. If you notice when you buy a mag or book there, it likely has both your pricing and our pricing on the front.

      All the big publishing houses are in NYC, so if we're readers, we are reading American spelling all the time. I rarely even notice it anymore.

      I recently read a book that was published in the UK and found it terribly distracting to read. Canadian spelling is a lot closer to US spelling than it is to the UK version. Which is weird, since we are part of the commonwealth.

      I'm sure the UK warriors cringe and sigh when reading stuff written in NA, be it American or Canadian.
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  • Profile picture of the author WarrenHT
    Thanks for your thoughts so far. A followup question...

    I'm not a keyword expert by any stretch, so I can't tell from looking at the Google Keyword Tool if Google is making a difference between the two phrases.

    From what I see, it looks like Google is returning different results.

    In other words, I can't figure out if the results that Google provides for "home theater" and "home theatre" are the same or different. The same would then apply when you get down into my niche, "diy home theater" and "diy home theatre" would be a different search term.

    I've done ok so far, with no keyword analysis, with no intention of going after any specific phrase, so now that I'm doing that, I want to do it right.

    I'm ok with, 'you're overanalyzing' if that's the case. :-)
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  • Profile picture of the author Joel Young
    From what I found, per my earlier post, -er seems to be more universal than -re, so you're more likely to get better results with it. I think Google can handle it.
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  • Profile picture of the author samual james
    According to me you can go with right version, create few links for re version also and you can can get ranking in both search engines.
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    • Profile picture of the author Elle Holder
      I actually did some research on this a few years back because I was in the same spot as you. A keyword with both US and Canadian spelling and I wanted to rank for both.

      Now granted, I didn't spend a whole lot of time on it, and for other reasons never carried on with the project, but my findings were that it really didn't matter. Google is smart enough to see past the spelling differences. Ever typed in the completely wrong spelling of something? Google says hey, I think you meant THIS and still provides you with the right results. If they can do that when you completely butcher the spelling of something, they can handle a variation like -er or -re.

      I just did a quick test on your keyword. In google.ca for keyword home theatre:
      1 - hometheater.com
      2 - gooole local for home theatre
      3 - wiki - home theater
      4 - home theatre systems Canada

      Same keyword in google.com
      1 - hometheater.com
      2- wiki - home theater
      3- home theater systems
      4- home theatre systems

      Even when you put the search in quote for "exact match" you get a combination of the two spellings in the SERPs.

      So move on. it really makes no difference. Google will rank you were they figure your site deserves regardless of the spelling variation.
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  • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
    Everyone is missing a few obvious points. First, 'home theater' gets far more traffic than 'home theatre' (about 5 times as much traffic).

    Your primary focus should be 'home theater'.

    Second if you Google 'home theatre' you will notice at the top of the screen it says "including results for home theater". Google is aware of both spellings. The SERPs are pretty close to the same. There is some variation, but not much. What that tells me (and this is far from the only keyword I have checked this on in the past) is that if you rank well for 'home theater', you will also probably rank well for 'home theatre'.

    Throw some links in there for 'home theatre' as well just to be sure, and you are good to go.

    I would NOT optimize your onpage SEO for both though. That just looks like you cannot make up your mind how to spell the word.
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  • Profile picture of the author prismkuet
    The problem you arose is really an interesting one and actually you have nothing in our hand when we fall in such situation. There are some other key words like centre and center. AS it will not be possible to make two different page with same contents 9will be treated as duplicate content), you have to identify your main target market whether it is US or Canada. If it is US, for example, develop your content depending on US spelling. It will also come in the Canada SERP. To get a better position in Canada, you can work for collecting back links from different site based on Canada.
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    • Profile picture of the author WarrenHT
      Thanks for your thoughts all, that is helpful and gives me plenty to consider.
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