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.
-
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
-
Barba Plugin and SEO
Hello, community! My client wants to use the barba.js plugin for their new site. What are the implications for SEO?
Technical SEO | | SimpleSearch0 -
Breadcrumbs on Mobile How important are they for SEO?
Due to Poor unsightly look of breadcrumbs and the space it takes up above the fold we only employ breadcrumbs on our desktop version. Breadcrumbs are hidden from view on mobile version. However as mobile first indexing is now in play what technical SEO impacts will this have? one thing that comes to mind is crawling deeper pages where breadcrumbs made them accessible in less than 3 link clicks? But i am unsure now of the impacts of not having breadcrumbs visible for mobile version of our site.
Technical SEO | | oceanstorm0 -
Express js and SEO?
Hi fellow Mozzers, I have been tasked with providing some SEO recommendations for a website that is to be built using express.js and Angular. I wondered whether anyone has had any experience in such a framework? On checking a website built in this and viewing as a GoogleBot etc using the following tools it appears as though most of the content is invisible: http://www.webconfs.com/search-engine-spider-simulator.php http://www.browseo.net/ Obviously this is a huge issue and wonder if there are any workarounds, or reccomendations to assist (even if means moving away from this - would love to hear about it)
Technical SEO | | musthavemarketing2 -
Word mentioned twice in URL? Bad for SEO?
Is a URL like the one below going to hurt SEO for this page? /healthcare-solutions/healthcare-identity-solutions/laboratory-management.html I like the match the URL and H1s as close as possible but in this case it looks a bit funky. /healthcare-solutions/healthcare-identity-solutions/laboratory-management.html
Technical SEO | | jsilapas0 -
Do rss feeds help seo?
If we put relevant RSS feeds on a site, will it help the SEO value? Years ago, I shied away from RSS feeds because they slowed the site down and I didn't like relying on them. However, the past couple years, the Internet has become better, especially in Alaska.
Technical SEO | | manintights280 -
Does posting an article on multiple sites hurt seo?
A client of mine creates thought leadership articles and pitches multiple sites to host the article on their site to reach different audiences. The sites that pick it up are places such as AdAge and MarketingProfs and we do get link juice from these sources most of the time. Does having the same article on these sites as well as your own hurt your SEO efforts in any way? Could it be recognized as duplicate content? I know the links are great just wondering if there is any other side effects especially when there are no links provided! Thank you!
Technical SEO | | Scratch_MM0 -
What's the SEO impact of url suffixes?
Is there an advantage/disadvantage to adding an .html suffix to urls in a CMS like WordPress. Plugins exist to do it, but it seems better for the user to leave it off. What do search engines prefer?
Technical SEO | | Cornucopia0 -
Image Size for SEO
Hi there I have a website which has some png images on pages, around 300kb - is this too much? How many kbs a page, to what extent do you know does Google care about page load speed? is every kb important, is there a limit? Any advice much appreciated.
Technical SEO | | pauledwards0