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.
Ranking issues for UK vs US spelling - advice please
-
Hi guys,
I'm reaching out here for what may seem to be a very simple and obvious issue, but not something I can find a good answer for.
We have a .com site hosted in Germany that serves our worldwide audience. The site is in English, but our business language is British (UK) English.
This means that we rank very well for (e.g.) optimisation software but optimization software is nowhere to be found.
The cause of this to me seems obvious; a robot reading those two phrases sees two distinct words. Nonetheless, having seen discussions of a similar nature around the use of plurals in keywords, it would seem to me that Google should have this sort of thing covered.
Am I right or wrong here?
If I'm wrong, then what are my options? I really don't want to have to make a copy of the entire site; apart from the additional effort involved in content upkeep I see this path fraught with duplicate content issues.
Any help is very much appreciated, thanks.
-
Hi Steven,
I'd have to agree with EGOL here - it is something that Google should have figured out - however, to some extent I think they have. For example, if I search for optimisation software here in the UK I get results for pages which are targeted to 'optimization' as well as 'optimisation'.
Whilst I'd guess that the UK spelling might not be helping you in this instance, I wonder if there might also be issues in terms of your site's authority or strength which are also causing you issues.
You've not said which site you're working on, but how does it stack up in terms of domain authority and page authority versus your SERP competition? It might be worth looking into that in the first instance.
The other alternative would be as EGOL highlighted - target 'optimization' instead.
It occurs to me that this might be worth testing - take your page as it is right now but switch out UK for US English and see if your rankings improve.
As you say you could create a US targeted subfolder on your site (I'd recommend implementing hreflang to avoid duplicate content issues) and try to tackle the issue that way - however if you're site isn't authoritative enough it likely still won't rank.
Hope this helps,
Hannah
-
Am I right or wrong here?
I agree. I think that Google has lots of problems here.
sulfur and sulphur have lots of problems
gray and grey have enormous problems
From what I see proper nouns for names of people, places and things cause a lot of the problems - but there are lots of webpages that seem to be overlooked or unreasonably ranked.
Any help.....
I don't have any help. I can only say that I am gunning for American English usage as that is where I think I will get the most traffic - and that is where my website is hosted.
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
-
How do hreflang attributes affect ranking?
We have a site in English. We are considering translating the site into Dutch. If we use a hreflang attribute does that mean we have to create a duplicate page in Dutch for each English page, or does Google auto-translate? How would duplicate pages, even if they are in a different language, affect ranking?
International SEO | | Substance-create0 -
International SEO - Targeting US and UK markets
Hi folks, i have a client who is based in italy and they set up a site that sells travel experiences in the sout of Italy (the site currently sit on a server in Italy). The site has been set up as gTLDs: www.example.com They only want to target the US and the UK market to promote their travel experiences and the site has only the english version (the site does not currently offer an italian version). If they decide to go for the gTLDs and not actually change to a ccTLDs (which would be ideal from my point of view) how are the steps to be taken to set this up correctly on GSC? They currently only have one property registered on GSC: www.exapmple.com therefore i guess the next steps are: Add new property - www.example.com/uk and and set up geo targeting for UK Existing property - www.example.com/ set up geo targeting for US In case the client does not have the budget to optimise the content for american and british languages, would still make sense to have 2 separate property in GSC (example.com for US market and example.com/uk for UK market)? Few considerations: Add canonical tag to avoid duplicate content across the two versions of the site (in the event there is no budget to optimise the content for US and UK market)? Thank you all in advance for looking into this David
International SEO | | Davide19840 -
Hreflang tags and canonical tags - might be causing indexing and duplicate content issues
Hi, Let's say I have a site located at https://www.example.com, and also have subdirectories setup for different languages. For example: https://www.example.com/es_ES/ https://www.example.com/fr_FR/ https://www.example.com/it_IT/ My Spanish version currently has the following hreflang tags and canonical tag implemented: My robots.txt file is blocking all of my language subdirectories. For example: User-agent:* Disallow: /es_ES/ Disallow: /fr_FR/ Disallow: /it_IT/ This setup doesn't seem right. I don't think I should be blocking the language-specific subdirectories via robots.txt What are your thoughts? Does my hreflang tag and canonical tag implementation look correct to you? Should I be doing this differently? I would greatly appreciate your feedback and/or suggestions.
International SEO | | Avid_Demand0 -
Google.ie returning more and more UK based results, why?
I have discovered the most infuriating issue with Google Search for Irish users and it seems to be getting increasingly worse in the last 2 years or so. This is not only frustrating as a business owner (in fact it could bring a business to its knees) but it is rage inducing as a consumer.
International SEO | | Secrets
Google knows the location where I am searching from and I'm using google.ie yet I still get just a small number of Irish websites usually followed by eBay and Amazon results then a never ending list of websites that are based in the United Kingdom. Now, I know the one thing that we all have in common is the use of the English language, however what we don't have in common is shipping costs. In order to slightly increase the number of Irish based companies I need to add in the phrase 'Ireland' to my search (on google.ie in Ireland) and this makes only a small difference. In fact, oftentimes Google seems to throw in the odd American or Australian site just to really wind me up.
It's completely absurd that Google rarely returns results for .ie websites or irish based websites when searching in Ireland. Many UK companies don't ship to Ireland (including many of the eBay and Amazon results). This is killing Irish businesses who have the products and cheaper or free shipping and many how are working damn hard on their SEO are still being passed up for companies that have nothing to do with our economy.... Why oh why is this happening.0 -
How To Rank A UK Website On Google.com (US)
Hi, I've done some research on this but couldn't find any definitive answer I can trust! We have a client who resides in the UK. They have '.com' domain, hosted on a UK server, using UK spelling. Their business objective for this year is to expand in the USA, including the opening of a warehouse over there. They are wanting us to rank their website on both Google.co.uk and Google.com (North America); besides changing the geolocation settings in GWT's, and building links from .com websites is there anything else we can do to increase their visibility on Google.com? Many thanks in advance, appreciated!
International SEO | | Webpresence
Lee.0 -
Google US vs Google UK
I could have posted this somewhere else, but I cannot find it. So, I have keywords that rank well in Google US and many that do well in Google UK too. I thought all of my keywords ranking well in the US would also rank well the UK. I have figured out today that it is not the case. Why would I rank in the top 3 in the US and not even show up in the top 50 in the UK? It is very strange. Thanks for your help! I am not super new to SEO or web business. I have had a very good company that has been ranking well since 2004.
International SEO | | journeybeyondtravel0 -
Subdomain vs folder vs TLD
We are launching in a number of international markets and I am trying to figure out if I should be launching them as folders, e.g.: /es (spanish), /br (brazil), /in (india) or whether they should be subdomains, e.g. es.mysite.com, br.mysite.com, etc. In brazil we managed to secure the tld (.com.br) but not in other regions. Whats the best strategy for us? I was thinking of doing folders as I understand that this strengthens the main domain, while subdomains are considered as separate sites. For Brazil, should we also use a folder, or launch on the .com.br? I assume that using the .com.br means we will have to build up authority from scratch, and in addition, the authority we build up on the .com.br will not help to grow the .com In addition, is there value in interlinking between verions (the versions will have the same content but in different languages)? Thanks!
International SEO | | medico0 -
Google Webmaster Tools - International SEO Geo-Targeting site with Worldwide rankings
I have a client who already has rankings in the US & internationally. The site is broken down like this: url.com (main site with USA & International Rankings) url.com/de url.com/de-english url.com/ng url.com/au url.com/ch url.com/ch-french url.com/etc Each folder has it's own sitmap & relative content for it's respective country. I am reading in google webmaster tools > site config > settings, the option under 'Learn More': "If you don't want your site associated with any location, select Unlisted." If I want to keep my client's international rankings the way it currently is on url.com, do NOT geo target to United States? So I select unlisted, right? Would I use geo targeting on the url.com/de, url.com/de-english, url.com/ng, url.com/au and so on?
International SEO | | Francisco_Meza0