undefined
Skip to content
Moz logo Menu open Menu close
  • Products
    • Moz Pro
    • Moz Pro Home
    • Moz Local
    • Moz Local Home
    • STAT
    • Moz API
    • Moz API Home
    • Compare SEO Products
    • Moz Data
  • Free SEO Tools
    • Domain Analysis
    • Keyword Explorer
    • Link Explorer
    • Competitive Research
    • MozBar
    • More Free SEO Tools
  • Learn SEO
    • Beginner's Guide to SEO
    • SEO Learning Center
    • Moz Academy
    • SEO Q&A
    • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
  • Blog
  • Why Moz
    • Agency Solutions
    • Enterprise Solutions
    • Small Business Solutions
    • Case Studies
    • The Moz Story
    • New Releases
  • Log in
  • Log out
  • Products
    • Moz Pro

      Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

    • Moz Local

      Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

    • STAT

      SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

    • Moz API

      Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

    • Compare SEO Products

      See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

    • Moz Data

      Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
    Moz Pro

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

    Learn more
  • Free SEO Tools
    • Domain Analysis

      Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

    • Keyword Explorer

      Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

    • Link Explorer

      Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

    • Competitive Research

      Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

    • MozBar

      See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

    • More Free SEO Tools

      Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
    Moz Pro

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

    Learn more
  • Learn SEO
    • Beginner's Guide to SEO

      The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

    • SEO Learning Center

      Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

    • On-Demand Webinars

      Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

    • How-To Guides

      Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

    • Moz Academy

      Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

    • MozCon

      Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

    Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
    Moz API

    Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

    Find your plan
  • Blog
  • Why Moz
    • Small Business Solutions

      Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

    • Agency Solutions

      Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

    • Enterprise Solutions

      Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

    • The Moz Story

      Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

    • Case Studies

      Explore how Moz drives ROI with a proven track record of success.

    • New Releases

      Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

    Surface actionable competitive intel
    New Feature

    Surface actionable competitive intel

    Learn More
  • Log in
    • Moz Pro
    • Moz Local
    • Moz Local Dashboard
    • Moz API
    • Moz API Dashboard
    • Moz Academy
  • Avatar
    • Moz Home
    • Notifications
    • Account & Billing
    • Manage Users
    • Community Profile
    • My Q&A
    • My Videos
    • Log Out

The Moz Q&A Forum

  • Forum
  • Questions
  • Users
  • Ask the Community

Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

  1. Home
  2. SEO Tactics
  3. Technical SEO
  4. Umlaut in domain

Moz Q&A is closed.

After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

Umlaut in domain

Technical SEO
3
7
2.4k
Loading More Posts
  • Oldest to Newest
  • Newest to Oldest
  • Most Votes
Reply
  • Reply as question
Log in to reply
This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
  • media-surfer
    media-surfer last edited by Sep 6, 2012, 1:07 PM

    Hi,

    My client wants to expand it's business to Germany and logically we need a domain name to match. We've found a great one and regsiterd several variants to it.

    However I just found out that in Germany it is possible (while here it's not) to register a domain with an umlaut. My question is: will google assign more value to:

    schädlinge.de than schadlinge.de when users search for schädlinge?

    If yes, how large will the difference be? (I will use an umlaut in the title etc)

    Kind regards,
    Jason.

    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
    • media-surfer
      media-surfer @irvingw last edited by Sep 6, 2012, 2:52 PM Sep 6, 2012, 2:52 PM

      Thanks for your response,

      the new domain name will be purchased and used exclusively for the German store. I will try to obtain both with and without the umlaut, but the first only if responsibly priced. 
      (since the domain is just for ranking purposes)

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • irvingw
        irvingw last edited by Sep 6, 2012, 2:59 PM Sep 6, 2012, 2:45 PM

        If you are mostly targeting Netherlands than buy a .NL extension not DE. Secure both if expanding.

        I would prefer with the amlaut if it is a German site being targeted in Germany, so it is better because people typing into google.de will be using the amlaut and this is the proper spelling for this word. That is assuming you can get a domain name with amlaut characters registered.

        Will it make a big difference in rankings, probably not much so if it's a matter of getting a available domain name for cheap or paying a lot of money to purchase it off of a seller I would go with the cheaper route.

        You can also look for a alternative domain name that has schädlinge with the amlaut in it and is available.

        You will of course be using the amlaut in the site content and can use it in directory and filenames as well so you're still showing Google and the user what they want to see.

        Use the word with the amlaut in the title tag and the meta description.

        media-surfer 1 Reply Last reply Sep 6, 2012, 2:52 PM Reply Quote 1
        • media-surfer
          media-surfer @media-surfer last edited by Sep 6, 2012, 2:31 PM Sep 6, 2012, 2:31 PM

          I'm currently targeting Google Netherlands. Germany would be the expansion territory. It's a webshop that is going to offer it's products trough a separate German version of the dutch store.

          could you please explain why it makes sense to purchase the schädlinge.de domain? (because it's registered by a domain farm and will probably be expensive)

          I did find when searching for German terms with the umlaut, domains without them included score excellent (usually top 3.) This to me, would make sense since it was not always possible (even in Germany) to register domains with the umlaut included.

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • NakulGoyal
            NakulGoyal @media-surfer last edited by Sep 6, 2012, 2:07 PM Sep 6, 2012, 2:07 PM

            Jason

            Yes, that changes. If you are targeting / going to target google.de eventually, it makes complete sense to acquire schädlinge.de.

            I checked ranking data on Google.de for both schädlinge and schadlinge and what's interesting is that "schadlinge" is actually considered a mis-spell of schädlinge.

            Are you currently only targeting Google US or other countries other then Germany?

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • media-surfer
              media-surfer @NakulGoyal last edited by Sep 6, 2012, 2:02 PM Sep 6, 2012, 2:02 PM

              Hi Nakul,

              thanks for your swift reply. I don't quite understand your reasoning. Let me first clairfy that since the buisiness expands to Germany, we are looking to target google.de

              I did find google understands my intent but searching for schädlinge or schadlinge yield in different results. The domain name is supposed to give a boost in rankings for en exact match with the searched keyword.

              Could you please further clarify?

              Thanks 🙂

              NakulGoyal media-surfer 2 Replies Last reply Sep 6, 2012, 2:31 PM Reply Quote 0
              • NakulGoyal
                NakulGoyal last edited by Sep 6, 2012, 1:27 PM Sep 6, 2012, 1:27 PM

                Based on the SERPS in Google US for your keyword, it looks like you don't need it. Just using it in the page title should be enough. Further, if you do need it at a later date, you could technically have an inner page like schadlinge.de/red-schädlinge if needed and so on.

                https://www.google.com/search?q=schadlinge

                I hope this helps.

                media-surfer 1 Reply Last reply Sep 6, 2012, 2:02 PM Reply Quote -1
                • 1 / 1
                1 out of 7
                • First post
                  1/7
                  Last post

                Got a burning SEO question?

                Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


                Start my free trial


                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.

                • See all categories

                Related Questions

                • mollykathariner_ms

                  Forwarding a .org domain to a .com domain: any negative impact to consider?

                  Hello! I have a question I've been unable to find a clear answer to. My client's primary domain is a .com with a satisfactorily high DA. My client owns the .org version of its domain (which has a very low DA, I suppose due to inactivity) but has never forwarded it on. For branding/visibility/traffic reasons, I'd like to recommend they set up the .org domain to forward to the .com domain, but I wanted to ask a few questions first: 1. Does forwarding low-value DA domains to high-value DA domains have any negative authority/SEO impact? 2. If the .org domain was to be forwarded, am I correct that an SSL cert is not necessary for it if the .com domain has an SSL cert? Thanks in advance!

                  Technical SEO | Aug 8, 2018, 6:39 AM | mollykathariner_ms
                  1
                • coolhandluc

                  English and French under the same domain

                  A friend of mine runs a B&B and asked me to check his freshly built website to see if it was <acronym title="Search Engine Optimization">SEO</acronym> compliant. 
                  The B&B is based in France and he's targeting a UK and French audience. To do so, he built content in english and french under the same domain:
                  https://www.la-besace.fr/ When I run a crawl through screamingfrog only the French content based URLs seem to come up and I am not sure why. Can anyone enlighten me please? To maximise his business local visibility my recommendation would be to build two different websites (1 FR and 1 .co.uk) , build content in the respective language version sites and do all the link building work in respective country sites. Do you think this is the best approach or should he stick with his current solution? Many thanks

                  Technical SEO | Apr 27, 2017, 3:37 PM | coolhandluc
                  1
                • usDragons

                  Spammers created bad links to old hacked domain, now redirected to our new domain. Advice?

                  My client had an old site hacked (let's call it "myolddomain.com") and the hackers created many links in other hacked sites with links such as http://myolddomain.com/styless.asp?jordan-12-taxi-kids-cheap-T8927.html The old myolddomain.com site was redirected to a different new site since then, but we still see over a thousand spam links showing up in the new site's Search Console 404 crawl errors report. Also, using the links: operator in google search, we see many results of spam links. Should we be worried about these bad links pointing to our old site and redirecting to 404s on the new site? What is the best recommendation to clean them up? Ignore? 410s? Other? I'm seeing conflicting advice out there. The old site is hosted by the client's previous web developer who doesn't want to clean anything up on their end without an ongoing hosting contract. So beyond turning redirects on or off, the client doesn't want to pay for any additional hosting. So we don't have much control over anything related to "myolddomain.com". 😞 Thanks in advance for any assistance!

                  Technical SEO | May 13, 2016, 3:30 PM | usDragons
                  0
                • RG_SEO

                  Does a subdomain benefit from being on a high authority domain?

                  I think the title sums up the question, but does a new subdomain get any ranking benefits from being on a pre-existing high authority domain. Or does the new subdomain have to fend for itself in the SERPs?

                  Technical SEO | Feb 12, 2015, 8:19 AM | RG_SEO
                  0
                • Prospector-Plastics

                  Subdomain vs Main Domain Penalties

                  We have a client who's main root.com domain is currently penalized by Google, but the subdomain.root.com is appearing very well. We're stumped - any ideas why?

                  Technical SEO | Mar 28, 2013, 12:46 PM | Prospector-Plastics
                  0
                • Grumpy_Carl

                  Domain authority and keyword difficulty

                  I know there are too many variables for a certain answer, however do people take their domain authority into account when using keyword difficulty tool? I have a new domain which only has a score of seven at the moment.  When using the keyword searching tool what is the maximum difficulty level keywords people would target initially? Obviously I would seek to increase the difficulty of the words over time but to start off its a hard choice between keywords which can be ranked for in a reasonable period of time and the keywords which are getting enough traffic to make the effort worthwhile.

                  Technical SEO | Apr 4, 2012, 7:37 AM | Grumpy_Carl
                  0
                • bThere

                  Subdomain and Domain Rankings

                  I have read here that domain names with keywords might add a boost to your search rank For instance using a completely inane example monkey-fights.com might get a boost compared to mfl.com (monkey fighting league)  when searching for "monkey fights" There seems to be a hot debate as to how much bonus the first domain might get over the second, but leaving that aside for the moment. Question 1. Would monkey-fights.mfl.com get the same kind of bonus as a root domain bonus? Question 2. If the answer to 1 above was yes would a 301 redirect from the suddomain URL to root domain URL retain that bonus I was just thinking on how hard it is to get root domains these days that are not either being squatted on etc. and if this might be a way to get the same bonus, or maybe subdomains are less bonus prone and so it would be a waste of time Thanks

                  Technical SEO | Oct 18, 2011, 8:56 AM | bThere
                  0
                • briankb

                  301 Redirect vs Domain Alias

                  We have hundreds of domains which are either alternate spelling of our primary domain or close keyword names we didn't want our competitor to get before us. The primary domain is running on a dedicated Windows server running IIS6 and set to a static IP. Since it is a static IP and not using host headers any domain pointed to the static IP will immediately show the contents of the site, however the domain will be whatever was typed. Which could be the primary domain or an alias. Two concerns. First, is it possible that Google would penalize us for the alias domains or dilute our primary domain "juice"? Second, we need to properly track traffic from the alias domains. We could make unique content for those performing well and sell or let expire those that are sending no traffic. It's not my goal to use the alias domains to artificially pump up our primary domain. We have them for spelling errors and direct traffic. What is the best practice for handling one or both of these issues?

                  Technical SEO | Mar 22, 2011, 4:14 PM | briankb
                  0

                Get started with Moz Pro!

                Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                Start my free trial
                Products
                • Moz Pro
                • Moz Local
                • Moz API
                • Moz Data
                • STAT
                • Product Updates
                Moz Solutions
                • SMB Solutions
                • Agency Solutions
                • Enterprise Solutions
                Free SEO Tools
                • Domain Authority Checker
                • Link Explorer
                • Keyword Explorer
                • Competitive Research
                • Brand Authority Checker
                • Local Citation Checker
                • MozBar Extension
                • MozCast
                Resources
                • Blog
                • SEO Learning Center
                • Help Hub
                • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                • How-to Guides
                • Moz Academy
                • API Docs
                About Moz
                • About
                • Team
                • Careers
                • Contact
                Why Moz
                • Case Studies
                • Testimonials
                Get Involved
                • Become an Affiliate
                • MozCon
                • Webinars
                • Practical Marketer Series
                • MozPod
                Connect with us

                Contact the Help team

                Join our newsletter
                Moz logo
                © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                • Accessibility
                • Terms of Use
                • Privacy

                Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.