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
-
JavaScript page loader - SEO impact
Hello all,
Technical SEO | Feb 16, 2016, 9:17 PM | Lvet
I am working on a site that has a bizarre page load system. All pages get loaded trough the same Javascript snippet, for example: Changing the values in the form changes the page that is loaded. The most incredible thing is that, against my expectations, pages do get indexed by Google.
My question is: "Does loading pages dynamically using JavaScript affect the overall SEO performance?" Why are pages getting indexed? Thank you for shedding light on this.
Cheers
Luca0 -
Is Google suppressing a page from results - if so why?
UPDATE: It seems the issue was that pages were accessible via multiple URLs (i.e. with and without trailing slash, with and without .aspx extension). Once this issue was resolved, pages started ranking again. Our website used to rank well for a keyword (top 5), though this was over a year ago now. Since then the page no longer ranks at all, but sub pages of that page rank around 40th-60th. I searched for our site and the term on Google (i.e. 'Keyword site:MySite.com') and increased the number of results to 100, again the page isn't in the results. However when I just search for our site (site:MySite.com) then the page is there, appearing higher up the results than the sub pages. I thought this may be down to keyword stuffing; there were around 20-30 instances of the keyword on the page, however roughly the same quantity of keywords were on each sub pages as well. I've now removed some of the excess keywords from all sections as it was getting in the way of usability as well, but I just wanted some thoughts on whether this is a likely cause or if there is something else I should be worried about.
Technical SEO | Jul 1, 2014, 8:41 AM | Datel1 -
SEO for User Authenticated Content
Hi Everyone - I have a potential client who is seeking SEO for a site that contains about 95% of content only accessible through user authentication . Does anyone have tips for getting this indexed without having to open it up to the public? I was considering adding "snippets" into the robots.txt or creating an additional page with snippets linking to the login page. I'd appreciate any thoughts! Thanks!
Technical SEO | Apr 19, 2013, 3:05 PM | manutx0 -
International Seo - Canada
Our organization is currently only operating in the USA but will soon be entering the Canadian market. We did a lot of research and decided that for our needs it would be best to use a subfolder for Canada. Initially we will be targeting the english speaking community but eventually we will want to expand to the french speaking Canadians as well. The question is - is there a preferred version in setting up the subfolders: www.website.org/ca/ -- default will be english www.website.org/ca/fr/ - french www.website.org/en-ca/ - english www.website.org/fr-ca/ - french www.website.org/ca/en/ -english www.website.org/ca/fr/ - french Thanks
Technical SEO | Mar 8, 2013, 12:15 PM | Morris770 -
Does it hurt to have a dynamic counter in your page title?
Currently we work with page titles which display the number of products we have as a counter. This number is highly volatile and can change every day, so that our page title changes all the time. We did this to improve user experience, meet expectations and improve click through rates. Question is whether this can hurt our rankings and if someone has experimented with this or has experience with this?
Technical SEO | Aug 31, 2012, 8:23 AM | ElmarReizen0 -
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 | May 15, 2012, 11:40 AM | Scratch_MM0 -
Does Bitly hurt your SEO?
I often use bit.ly or Google URL shortener in links when other websites post my articles so I can track clicks. However, I am thinking this may HURT my SEO given that it is taking away a back link to my website. Is that logic correct ? If so, what is a good way to be able to track clicks if a website posts your article without jeopardizing the SEO value?
Technical SEO | Apr 12, 2012, 5:19 AM | StreetwiseReports1 -
Restaurant menu SEO: PDF or HTML?
Is it better to use a PDF or hard code restaurant menus (or any document for that matter) in HTML? I want the content to be indexed and thought PDF was the way to go for several reasons, but I wanted to get confirmation on this before I move forward.
Technical SEO | Aug 23, 2011, 4:30 AM | BostonWright0