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.
Do Letters With Accents Affect SEO?
-
Hi Guys,
My company has a franchise of a foreign company that uses an accent/foreign letter in its brand name. We have to refer to this franchise with this symbol on our website to meet their standards.
I've done some research on this but its not conclusive, so i was wondering whether anyone here can confirm this for me;
Will using the letter with this symbol impair our rankings for this franchise name? Obviously as a UK business people search for this franchise with a regular letter and not the accented one. I would have thought that Google is clever enough to recognise the meaning of the accented letter by now and therefore it wouldn't affect rankings (much). Furthermore, do you think that it would make any difference to use the HTML element to represent the accent rather than copy and pasting the symbol onto our website? I would've thought this would help Google pick it up, but it might not make a difference anyway!
Any help is appreciated.
Thanks
Sam
-
Hi Dirk,
perfect, thanks a lot for clarifying.
All the best.
Sam
-
Hi Sam,
To clarify - for me the correct spelling is the spelling using the accents. For the foreign characters I meant to encode them. In the example above: not use référencement in the HTML but rather référencement
rgds
Dirk
-
That was a helpful post - thanks for helping out.
Sam
-
Thanks a lot for your response here, Dirk.
Just to clarify - when you state to use the **correct **spelling on the page, am i correct in assuming you are meaning the spelling with the accent?
and with the foreign characters in HTML, by this are you meaning to use the proper HTML elements in every case rather than copy and pasting symbols in?
Apologies for asking these simple questions, but just wanted to make sure.
Kind Regards
Sam
-
Hi there,
thanks a lot for your response!
The franchise is a brand name, one that we look after but it is not anywhere in our own brand name. So if you think of a PC shop that sells Apple products, the brand name is Apple but the shop itself has nothing to do with apple and just sells their products - this is the case for us. Would this change your opinion on how to deal with it?
Thanks
Sam
-
The franchise name is a brand name i presume. In that case is does not make any SEO difference. You will rank for your brandname anyway. Choose the most correct version and just run with it. The authority is going to be there!
If the franchise name is something like carinsurance.nl.. THEN you have an interresting case.
In the dutch language the word:
"jaloezieën" is the correct way of writing. In google everyone uses "jaloezieen". The results on the google page are different. Based on my research the main difference is due to the incomming links beeing spelled in the correct and the incorrect way.
Wouter - Online Marketing Bureau Stramark.nl
-
Just to add to the answer of Luis - in most cases Google is quite capable of guessing the intention of the searcher.
Even in countries that traditionally have a lot of accents, a lot of people are searching for the words without the accents. This is probably partially due to the fact that on mobile it's not always easy to get the accents right, but also due to laziness (it's generally faster to just type the word without the accents).
If you search on google.fr for référencement (correct spelling) or referencement - the results are identical. All the results however use the correct spelling in the meta description & title.(if you check Google trends for this keyword you'll notice that the wrong spelling is even slightly more popular than the correct version)
If you take the example given in the question Luis is referencing - the results for Google.es for cursos de inglés & cursos de ingles are now identical as wellSo my advice would be to use the correct spelling on your page - Google should normally be able to figure it out.
Just make sure that you escape the foreign characters in your HTML.rgds,
Dirk
-
Hello Sam,
I was about to answer you but I found a similar question in Moz some years ago. Please, take a look: http://moz.com/community/q/google-and-keywords-with-and-without-accents-how-to-approach-optimization-for-both
Hope this helps and clarify things to you!
Luis
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
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.
Related Questions
-
Shopify SEO - Double Filter Pages
Hi Experts, Single filter page: /collections/dining-chairs/black
Technical SEO | | williamhuynh
-- currently, canonical the same: /collections/dining-chairs/black
-- currently, index, follow Double filter page: /collections/dining-chairs/black+fabric
-- currently, canonical the same: /collections/dining-chairs/black+fabric
-- currently, noindex, follow My question is about double filter page above:
if noindexing is the better option OR should I change the canonical to /collections/dining-chairs/black Thank you0 -
SEO + Structured Data for Metered Paywall
I have a site that will have 90% of the content behind a metered paywall. So all content is accessible in a metered way. All users who aren't logged in will have access to 3 articles (of any kind) in a 30 day period. If they try to access more in a 30 day period they will hit a paywall. I was reading this article here on how to handle structured data with Google for content behind a paywall: https://www.searchenginejournal.com/paywalls-seo-strategy/311359/However, the content is not ALWAYS behind a paywall, since it is metered. So if a new user comes to the site, they can see the article (regardless of what it is). Is there a different way to handle content that will be SOMETIMES behind a paywall bc of a metered strategy? Theoretically I want 100% of the content indexed and accessible in SERPs, it will just be accessible depending on the user's history (cookies) with the site. I hope that makes sense.
Technical SEO | | triveraseo0 -
Are Expires Headers Detrimental to SEO Health?
My dev was looking into Expires Headers to increase speed, but she don't know the ramifications behind them for SEO. What I found online is really old: https://moz.com/blog/expires-headers-for-seo-why-you-should-think-twice-before-using-them What do SEOs think? Thanks in advance! ~Dana
Technical SEO | | dklarse0 -
When should a variant be a variant and when should it be a separate product from an SEO POV?
Hi all, We are looking at changing our current e-commerce store to a new platform and in doing so thinking of making some changes to how we list products in sub-categories. We have seen related questions asking about splitting a single product into multiple products to rank for different terms, but we are wondering about combining multiple products into a single product page? The examples we have seen have been about fashion items with variants of colour and size. However, the products we sell have variances that change the appearance, dimensions and technical specification, so we would like to ask the MOZ community if combining products with these variances would still be deemed good practice? We sell wood burning stoves and a good example of a product that we are considering combining is the Scan 85 stove, which is available in eight different configurations: 85-1, 85-2, 85-3 etc. Scan themselves refer to each version as a separate product and they are bought, stocked and sold as separate products. Wood burning stoves like this typically have a firebox in the centre and then design options that can change the top, side, base, door, colour and fuel. In this example, the firebox is the Scan 85 and the variation is the last number, each of which corresponds to a different design option changing both the appearance and dimensions (see attached image). We have them listed as eight different products on our current site, one for each version. Primarily because each option has its own name (albeit 1-digit difference) which when we created the pages we thought that more pages would present us with more ranking opportunity. However, we have since learnt that because these eight pages are all so similar and it is difficult to write unique content about each product (with the 85-1 and 85-2 the only difference between the models are the black trim on the 85-1 and the silver trim on 85-2). Especially as when talking about the firebox itself, how well the fire burns, how controllable it is etc, will be the same for all versions. Likewise, earning backlinks to eight separate pages is also very difficult. Exploring this lead, us to the question, when is a variant a variant and when is it a separate product? Are there hard and fast rules for what defines variants and products? Or does it simply vary from industry to industry product to product, and if so should we be looking at it from a UX or SEO POV, when making that decision? Our hope is that if we combine these eight products into a single high-quality page, it will present us with a greater ranking opportunity for that one page over eight individual pages. We also hope that in doing so will allow us to create a more intuitive UX on a single page with a unique description, more reviews focused on one page and an explanation of the options available, all of which should lead to more conversions. Finally, by creating a better UX and unique detailed description we hope that there is a higher chance of us earning product level backlinks then we do with eight lower quality pages. One of the issues in creating a single product page for all the variants is the sub-category/results pages, as we would be removing eight simple products and replacing them with one complex product. We have questions over how this would work from a filter/facet level whereby when you apply a filter there is an expectation that the image shown will match the criteria, so if we filter for stoves with a silver trim for example, there is an expectation to only see stoves that have a silver trim in the results. When you have separate product pages you have separate listings which makes this easier to only bring back the models matching the criteria. However, when you have a single page this is more complex as you will need a default image for non-filtered results and then the ability to assign an image to lots of different attributes so that the correct image is always shown that matches the criteria selected. All of which we have been assured is do-able but adds an extra level of complexity to the process from an admin side. The alternative to doing this would be to create eight simple/child products and link them to one configurable/parent product. We could them list the simple products into the results pages and have them all linking back to the main configurable product which could load with the options of the simple product that was selected. From an SEO POV this brings in some more work, redirecting each page to the parent, but ultimately this could provide a better UX and might be the better solution. Has anyone got any experience in doing either of these options before? Both options above with affect the number of products we have available, so does the number of products in a sub-category effect the ability for that category page to rank? We currently have around 500 products in our wood burning stoves category, with perhaps an additional 300 to add. If we go down the combining into a single product page route this will reduce the number of products by around a third. If we keep all the simple/child products, then this will stay around the same. So, have we missed something obvious? Is there a glaring issue that we have overlooked from an SEO point of view as well as from the customer experience? We would appreciate your thoughts on this. Thanks, Reece scan85-1.jpg
Technical SEO | | fireproductsuk0 -
New theme adds ?v=1d20b5ff1ee9 to all URL's as part of cache. How does this affect SEO
New theme I am working in ads ?v=1d20b5ff1ee9 to every URL. Theme developer says its a server setting issue. GoDaddy support says its part of cache an becoming prevalent in new themes. How does this impact SEO?
Technical SEO | | DML-Tampa0 -
Coming soon SEO
Hi, I was wondering what is the best practice to redirect all the links juice by redirecting all the pages of your website to a coming soon page. The coming soon page will point to the domain.com, not to a subfolder. Should I move the entire website to a subfolder and redirect this folder to the coming soon page? Thanks
Technical SEO | | bigrat950 -
Seo For Forum Sites
I have forum site.I've opened it 2 months ago.But there is a problem.Therefore my content is unique , my site's keyword ranking constantly changing..Sometimes my site's ranking drops from first 500.After came to 70s. I didn't make any off page seo to my site.What is the problem ?
Technical SEO | | tutarmi0 -
Can a CMS affect SEO?
As the title really, I run www.specialistpaintsonline.co.uk and 6 months ago when I first got it it had bad links which google had put a penalty against it so losts it value. However the penalty was lift in Sept, the site corresponds to all guidelines and seo work has been done and constantly monitored. the issue I have is sales and visits have not gone up, we are failing fast and running on 2 or 3 sales a month isn't enough to cover any sort of cost let alone wages. hence my question can the cms have anything to do with it? Im at a loss and go grey any help or advice would be great. thanks in advance.
Technical SEO | | TeamacPaints0
