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 Abbreviations Hurt SEO Results?
-
We have certain products that we've abbreviated since it's a bit too long. For example, the word Fair Trade Organic is one of our categories and we abbreviate it to FTO.
If I put FTO on our meta tag titles and links instead of the actual word, would that provide a weaker result?
-
If it's a commonly used acronym then both the full keyword phrase and the accronym should be included in the SEO optimization process.
-
Your Uncle Dan would be proud. It is indeed an acronym.
Your suggestions do make a lot of sense. I shall try expanding the word to Fair Trade.... then combine the acronym version of that to cover more ground. I'll do some trial and error.
Thanks!
-
Hello there,
My Uncle Dan would be upset if I did not correct you in stating that FTO for Fair Trade Organic is actually an acronym and not an abbreviation. Uncle Dan also got mad when I used to talk about my GPS system, but that is another story.
There is an acronym HTML tag http://www.w3schools.com/tags/tag_acronym.asp but I am unaware that Google actively uses it. I would answer your question as follows.
- Is there search volume for the acronym and when you search for that acronym, what type of pages does Google show? In other words are people searching for it and does Google know what it means. When I search FTO https://www.google.com/search?q=FTO I get a pages related to the FTO gene http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FTO_gene that is related to obesity and also Fresh Touring Origination a sports coupe from Mitsubishi
I tried "FTO vegetables" but I got instructions on how to make lacto fermented vegetables - I could not find FTO on the page with the instructions though. Results 5 and 6 looked to have to do with fair trade vegetables. I Googled "FTO food" and got sites for "Fresh to Order Food" and "Food Truck Outfitters Atlanta"
My point is, if most people don't use FTO to represent Fair Trade Organic, then Google probably will not, but it still may understand it in the context of use with other words. It may be that FTO is searched a bunch, but it may not be the searches you want.
- Based on my 30 second assessment above, you may want to consider using the acronym in combination with the words Fair Trade Organic and that would work. You need some variety of the words on the page. That goes without saying. I would not though, use it as the primary words in place like your title tag, h1 etc. Makes more sense in the body of the text on the page.
Specifically, "would it provide a weaker result" ? It depends. I would say for FTO searches, you would probably not show up as Google potentially does not associate FTO with Free Trade Organic. For "Free Trade Organic" (full keyword) related searches, I would use it, but not as much as other keywords that are probably searched more often and are more relevant in the results as you need to vary up your keywords anyway.
Hope this helps!
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 -
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 -
Domain Masking SEO Impact
I hope I am explaining this correctly. If I need to provide any clarity please feel free to ask. We currently use a domain mask on an external platform that points back to our site. We are a non-profit and the external site allows users to create peer-to peer fundraisers that benefit our ministry. Currently we get many meta issues related to this site as well as broken links when fundraisers expire etc. We do not have a need to rank for the information from this site. Is there a way to index these pages so that they are not a part of the search engine site crawls as it relates to our site?
Technical SEO | | SamaritansPurse0 -
Static Links in Sidebar Hurting SEO?
Our website currently has a sidebar/widget area that appears on almost all pages throughout of entire site (350 page domain). In that sidebar, we have some static links and some non-static links. Right now there are: 6 Related Post Links - Non-Static
Technical SEO | | DemiGR
1 - Call To Action - Static to a landing page
10 Calculators - Static - These calculators I think are very useful to our users (financial website). So in total 17 total sidebar links, 11 static links, and 6 which change based on the content of the page. Do you think these static links from an SEO perspective can be hurting us? Is there some sort of best practice for sidebar links in regards to quantity as well as static vs non-static? Thanks!0 -
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 -
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 -
How to handle (internal) search result pages?
Hi Mozers, I'm not quite sure what the best way is to handle internal search pages. In this case it's for an ecommerce website with about 8.000+ products and search pages currently look like: example.com/search.php?search=QUERY+HERE. I'm leaning towards making them follow, noindex. Since pages like this can be easily abused for duplicate content and because I'd rather have the category pages ranked. How would you handle this?
Technical SEO | | Qon0 -
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