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.
How Much Does Punctuation of a Word Effect SEO?
-
I have a page on a site that is targeted for "mens hair cut" and I have received a F for the grade.
The content on the page uses "men's" throughout the content. (proper punctuation) When I re-graded the page with "men's hair cut" the page received a B grade.
My question is, does mens v.s men's make a different for on-page SEO? Should my targeted keywords include "men's" rather than "mens"?
-
Poor grammar can be a spam signal to search engines. A typo here and there will not hurt you -- but major mistakes with spelling and grammar in every word and every sentence will likely hurt you. There's a middle ground somewhere, but only the search engines know what that is.
Of course, I would copyedit and proofread so that all text is perfect. Not for search engines -- but so that users do not see poor spelling and grammar and then judge your website to be less quality and authoritative. In the end, it's all about usability for humans. Search engines generally aim to show what websites users think are the best.
-
Hi,
"My question is, does mens v.s men's make a different for on-page SEO?"
Google are always going to look for the grammatically correct wording, so it is important to always ensure this is what you give them. As Andrew said, MOZ & Google are going to have pretty major differences in what they look for and how they grade it.
You also have to think about visitors that land on your page and find the lack of punctuation, and yes, people will do this. I'm not saying that it would lose you business, but I would never give anyone the chance to question any aspect of credibility.
Would wording this incorrectly leave you with a penalty? Nope! Would getting this right form part of a score on one of the Google algorithms? More than likely - but to what degree is anyone's guess.
-Andy
-
Hey Primocards,
There are a couple of factors here:
- The "on-page grade" you got was from Moz's crawler, and they're very specific about exact matches. On the other hand, Google's crawler tends to be more loose. Moz doesn't futz around w/ variations with punctuation, plurals, etc. And yet Google will know that "men's" and "mens" are fairly similar.
- I have noticed that Google does have different rankings for slightly different permutations, e.g. "printing company" vs "printing companies" can lead to a local (with local packs) versus a national search (no local packs)
- Then there's the grammar. I'd say that "men's" is the more accurate, and that may have a small (IMO, the effect is probably very small) impact
tl;dr; change it if you can, otherwise, don't worry about it. If you just want to improve the usability your Moz reports, just change the keyword you're grading from "men's" to "mens".
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
-
Homepage SEO optimization
Hello, I’m almost ready to lunch my new website https://thetravelhoop.com , I just need to create the content of the product page and put all the images. I would like to know what you think in terms of SEO of the home page (is the content that I want to rank the most). My doubt is that since it is a landing page, there is not a lot of text but mostly <h>. It’s not a styling decision of course (I know is bad practice) but mostly because they are supposed to be title/headings.</h> Do you think I’m doing something wrong, or do you have any suggestions? Thank you, Daniele
On-Page Optimization | | danielecelsa0 -
Is using a H1 tag in a logo image bad for SEO?
We have brand logos on certain pages that have H1 tags in them - the H1 text being the brand's name, as this is what we'd want the title of the page to be. The logos are at the top of the page instead of a written title. But is this the best option for SEO? Do search engines value H1 tags in images as highly as a standard H1 tag?Would it be better for SEO to add an alt tag to the logo and add a separate H1 tag on the page that's also the name of the brand?
On-Page Optimization | | DVLighting0 -
Do Blog Tags affect SEO at all anymore?
We're trying to standardize the use of tags on our site amongst writers/editors, and I'm trying to come up a list of tags they can choose from to tag posts with - and telling them to use no more than 10 (absolute maximum) per post. We are also in the process of migrating to a new CMS, and have 8 defined categories that will all have their own landing page within our "News" section. TLDR: Do blog tags have any impact on SEO anymore? Are they solely meant to help users find articles related on popular topics, or does creating a tag for a popular topic help to improve organic visibility? Full Question: With the tag standardization, I want to make sure we're creating the most useful and effective tags; and the UX/SEO sides of my brain are conflicted. To my understanding, creating a tag about a high volume topic in an industry helps establish the website's relevance to Google/other search engines about that topic and improves overall relevance; but the tag feed page (ex: http://freshome.com/tag/home-protection/) isn't really meant for organic search visibility. So my other question is, is it worth it to noindex the tag pages in the robots.txt? Will that affect any benefit to increased relevance for Google (if there is any)? I'm interested to hear others' thoughts and suggestions. Thanks in advance!
On-Page Optimization | | davidkaralisjr0 -
Do quotation marks in content effect SERPs?
Some of my art object products have words and phrases engraved on them. The words relate to the images on the product. In the product descriptions, I have been putting quotes around the entire list. Would I get better long tail results if I didn't use the quotation marks? In other words, do the quotes make everything between them an exact match phrase? For example:
On-Page Optimization | | stephenfishman
Current product description:
The worlds around the edge of the lazy susan read, "Explore nature. Dream big. Take time to smell the flowers. Enjoy the changing seasons. Seize the day. Relish the night. Live life to the fullest." Thank you for helping with this, all comments on how to present this kind of content are welcomed- Stephen kSOjt5a0 -
How will it effect SEO to have multiple h1 tags on a page?
I have a client who recieved this advice from his marketing consultant: "If there are multiple h1 tags on a page, this can confuse Google and it may have a negative impact on the keyword rankings. If you could ask your web developer to go in and remove the h1 tags on the header images that would be helpful. This way it will be easier for Google to index your site and will help your keyword rankings." How will it effect SEO to have multiple h1 tags on a page?
On-Page Optimization | | GRIP-SEO0 -
Best SEO Extension/Plugin for NOPCommerce Site?
Hi I am working for a client who is using NOPCommerce. It doesn't look like they have a SEO Plugin in - although you can add meta descriptions to Products - which works fine, the Product categories have SEO components too but do not seem to work and all 'other' content /CMS pages have no SEO components whatsoever. Does anyone know of a plugin which would resolve this? (PS never used NOPCommerce before!)
On-Page Optimization | | AllieMc0 -
Do Parent Categories Hurt SEO?
I have parent categories and subcategories. Will it be harder for the subcategories to rank well because they have a parent category? The URL is longer, for one. I am just wondering if I should not have parent categories. I have one category page doing really well and I am trying to boost the others (most of which are subcategories) and this is a concern for me. Thanks! Edit: I also have a category that has 2 parent categories. I want it automatically in those 2 categories and one of its own. By itself it is very important keyword. Is this ok or should I have it be a parent category?
On-Page Optimization | | 2bloggers0 -
Is content aggregation good SEO?
I didn't see this topic specifically addressed here: what's the current thinking on using content aggregation for SEO purposes? I'll use flavors.me as an example. Flavors.me lets you set up a domain that pulls in content from a variety of services (Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, RSS, etc.). There's also a limited ability to publish unique content as well. So let's say that we've got MyDomain.com set up, and most of the content is being drawn in from other services. So there's blog posts from WordPress.com, videos from YouTube, a photo gallery from Flickr, etc. How would Google look at this scenario? Is MyDomain.com simply scraped content from the other (more authoritative) sources? Is the aggregated content perceived to "belong" to MyDomain.com or not? And most importantly, if you're aggregating a lot of content related to Topic X, will this content aggregation help MyDomain.com rank for Topic X? Looking forward to the community's thoughts. Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | GOODSIR0