Website or Web Site Spelling

How a Simple Search Turned into a Lesson in SEO

Recently, while building a new website, I was surprised when my spellchecker upchucked over the word "website".  It wanted me to split the word in two and use "web site" instead.  Since I was certain that "website" was a legitimate spelling of the term, this sent me scurrying to the Google search engine to find which was the preferred spelling.

Knowing that "web site" and "website" occur in probably billions of indexed pages, my original search was for "web site or website" - including the quotation marks.  Quotation marks tell Google that you're looking for an exact match phrase.

The first two search results were as follows:

Without thinking too much about it, I clicked on the first search result, which seemed a good match for my question.  The link took me to truebluetitan.com, the personal web page of Rob Schultz, a self-described "Internet entrepreneur".  

Mr. Schultz is not a lexicographer or spelling expert, he's just someone with a web page that is indexed by the Google search engine.  In other words, he's just a guy (note: I have nothing against Rob or other people who are "just a guys" - I'm one myself).

Rob's answer to the hotly debated "web site or website" question was that there's no "correct" spelling for the term - just use whichever version you feel like.  In defense of this answer he sited (and linked to) Merriam Webster, Dictionary.com, and Wikipedia.  This seemed like the right answer, but I wasn't quite satisfied, so I clicked the back button on my browser and visited the #2 Google result for "website or web site", which took me to a site called askoxford.com.

As it turns out, askoxford.com is the online home of the Oxford English Dictionary.  People in the U.S. are probably more familiar with the Merriam Webster, or American Heritage dictionaries, but in most of the English-speaking world the OED is the authority on English usage and etymology.

In short, askoxford.com is the kind of site that should have a lot of authority both in the Google search results and in the real world.  So how is it that Rob Shultz's little website could outrank the OED in Google's eyes as an authority on what is probably a pretty common question of Internet language usage?

Tale of the Tape:

	Truebluetitan	AskOxford
Google PageRank (site)	0	7
Alexa Rank	428,193	15,595
Compete Rank	972,288	16,090
Backlinks to Page	0	243
Backlinks to Domain	605	86,100

According to the off-page SEO, askoxford should outrank truebluetitan quite easily.  The site has a Google PageRank of 7, a huge number of backlinks to the domain, and even 243 backlinks to the page itself vs. zero external links and two internal ones to the truebluetitan page.

Note that the 605 backlinks to thetruebluetitan.com domain is a very healthy number for a personal blog that hasn't been updated since August, 2008.  Closer examination reveals that most of the backlinks came from forum posts by the owner on various message boards as well as a Win a Free Nintendo Wii contest he sponsored.  Those unfocused backlinks helped give trubluetitan.com enough juice in the Google search algorithm to beat out the Oxford English Dictionary on an issue directly related to the latter's authority and area of specialty.

Clearly a lot of real-world people consider the OED to be an authority on the "web site or website" issue, including a Wikipedia article on the debate; yet the Google search algorithm considers Rob Shultz to be the go-to guy.  Why?

If the answer isn't off-page SEO, then it must be on-page SEO.  Since I searched for the phrase "website or web site", let's see how often, and where, the phrase shows up in the source code of the two pages.

Truebluetitan.com:

4 total mentions of phrase "website or web site", including Title, h2, menu link, and alt-tag on an image.

22 total mentions of the word "website".

17 total mentions of the 2-word phrase "web site".

Askoxford.com:

1 total mention of phrase "website or web site".

7 total mentions of the word "website", including Title.

2 total mentions of the 2-word phrase "web site".

Who ever said keyword stuffing doesn't work!  It was good enough to get truebluetitan ranking over the mighty OED.

One question to ask is whether the Google search algorithm actually screwed up here.  Does a longer, keyword-rich (stuffed?) page from a non-authority deserve ranking over a shorter, less weighty page from a big-time authority?

Much like the "web site or website" question, there is no true answer.  These are the kind of issues that search engine designers have to grapple with constantly and they may often fail to find the right balance.

Rob Shultz probably doesn't know any more about "website or web site" than you or me, but his page was relevant and useful, including links to off-page sources of information.  I can't say that Google got it wrong.

So what are the takeaways from this little case study that will help little guy web site makers like you and me?  First, we should take hope in the fact that a small website was able to outrank a big fish in an area of the big fish's realm of authority.

Second, backlinks do matter, even if they're unfocused and unrelated to our target keywords.  A crappy backlink is better than no backlink at all.  Although none of of truebluetitan's backlinks were to the page in question, the weight of those 605 domain-related backlinks provided enough juice to get the site on Google's radar screen and get it to rank #1 for a not t00 obscure search.  The same article on a site with only a few backlinks would probably not have ranked #1.

Third, content can outweigh authority and backlinks in the search rankings.  At 316 words, the Truebluetitan article was long enough and keyword-rich enough beat out the shorter, less keyword-laden article from the authority site.

To sum up the lessons from this case study:

Do write long articles with off-site links to authority sites.

Do lard your articles with keywords and key phrases.

Do build off-site backlinks, even if they're of dubious quality.

Do use your keywords in the page title and h-tags.

Do try to provide quality information to your readers - if you don't have expertise, link to sites that do.

P.S.  The OED suggests that website (no capitals) is the preferred spelling.  As an ironic aside, the source code for the askoxford.com page uses "web site" in the comments.  I guess the page coder didn't read the content of the page.