If you're targeting US and UK...

... Then how do you deal with differently spelled words? Is there a way to automatically change spelling based on location? Words like :

Colour / color
Criticise / criticize
Grey / gray

Cheers.

Better you cover all such keywords in your SEO activity.

Parker2010 said:

Better you cover all such keywords in your SEO activity.

Click to expand...

Are you saying to include both spellings throughout the content?

You should localize the content, then serve up the localized version where necessary. Generally speaking, Google understands the regional differences in spellings.

Edit: sorry, I see that you also asked how to do that. If you use WordPress, plugins like WPML will do this.

I did some testing for colour in my niche and saw a large google preference for UK, CA, AU, EU sites.

If you wanted to rank well for keyphrases that are competitive 2 and 3 word Ngrams you would need to setup a completely new site targeted specifically for the UK.

Just Google, "Color Ink" and "Colour Ink"

PulpF said:

Are you saying to include both spellings throughout the content?

Click to expand...

In your keywords:

Buy grey color shirts online
Buy gray color shirts online
Buy grey colour shirts online
Buy gray colour shirts online

Hope, that helps.

Doing both kinds of spelling throughout the content is absolutely awful from styling point of view. Pick one and stick with it, it absolutely does not matter from SEO perspective.

SEO said:

You should localize the content, then serve up the localized version where necessary. Generally speaking, Google understands the regional differences in spellings.

Edit: sorry, I see that you also asked how to do that. If you use WordPress, plugins like WPML will do this.

Click to expand...

Cheers for your help. Would this approach with WPML not just create extra webpages for the different spellings? So I'd end up with:

www.website.com/UK/colour
www.website.com/US/color
etc?

I do that Google recognises it as the same word though, thanks.

NoDice said:

I did some testing for colour in my niche and saw a large google preference for UK, CA, AU, EU sites.

If you wanted to rank well for keyphrases that are competitive 2 and 3 word Ngrams you would need to setup a completely new site targeted specifically for the UK.

Just Google, "Color Ink" and "Colour Ink"

Click to expand...

Thanks for sharing your results. I am not actually trying to rank for a word that is spelled differently, I have just been writing content for a launch where I am targeting all English speakers (hoping to rank in google.com/.co.uk) and then different spelling occurred to me.

Putting myself in a users perspective (I'm from the UK), if I was reading an article it spelled it as "color", I would probably notice and possibly assume the information isn't as relevant to the UK as it is to the US. Or perhaps I am too finicky.

Parker2010 said:

In your keywords:

Buy grey color shirts online
Buy gray color shirts online
Buy grey colour shirts online
Buy gray colour shirts online

Hope, that helps.

Click to expand...

This makes sense, I will bear this in mind for the future.

Nargil said:

Doing both kinds of spelling throughout the content is absolutely awful from styling point of view. Pick one and stick with it, it absolutely does not matter from SEO perspective.

Click to expand...

I agree. I wanted to stick to one spelling and I will if there's no alternative, but basically what I was looking for is a way for my website to register the user's geo position, and change spellings of just the individual words without having to create extra pages.

PulpF said:

Cheers for your help. Would this approach with WPML not just create extra webpages for the different spellings? So I'd end up with:

www.website.com/UK/colour
www.website.com/US/color
etc?

I do that Google recognises it as the same word though, thanks.

Click to expand...

Yes, but the plugin puts in the code necessary so Google doesn't see the pages as duplicate content, and it tells Google which pages are for which languages and dialects. Then Google decides which page to serve up in the search results. At google.co.uk Google would use your /uk/ url., Etc.

SEO said:

Yes, but the plugin puts in the code necessary so Google doesn't see the pages as duplicate content, and it tells Google which pages are for which languages and dialects. Then Google decides which page to serve up in the search results. At google.co.uk Google would use your /uk/ url., Etc.

Click to expand...

Ahh that's good to know although I don't think I need to take it this far as I am not trying to rank for such words, just wondering what to do within my content. But out of interest does that mean you'd have to individually build backlinks for each version?

PulpF said:

Ahh that's good to know although I don't think I need to take it this far as I am not trying to rank for such words, just wondering what to do within my content. But out of interest does that mean you'd have to individually build backlinks for each version?

Click to expand...

No, this is where canonicals and hreflangs come in. Here's a read-up should you want to go this path in the future. If you don't want to manage translations, then go for the spelling that makes most sense to your company. Google can figure out the rest

https://www.rebelytics.com/hreflang-canonical/

SEO said:

No, this is where canonicals and hreflangs come in. Here's a read-up should you want to go this path in the future. If you don't want to manage translations, then go for the spelling that makes most sense to your company. Google can figure out the rest

https://www.rebelytics.com/hreflang-canonical/

Click to expand...

Thanks, you've been really helpful! Been a while for me.

@Nargil statement is absolutely correct I don't think it will cause any problem in term of SEO perspective. Stick with any one keyword which you are targeting and go for it.

You can specify your geographical target(s) in Goog Search Console. G has confirmed they use this setting plus tld (.co.uk, etc) as the primary factors for ranking in given regions. And/or serve up tailored content depending on IP location of visitors as mentioned.