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.
Google and keywords with and without accents. How to approach optimization for both?
-
This is more of a problem for people optimizing for keywords in spanish, french, german and such.
It is well known that SERPs for keywords with and without accents are different. However, I haven't been able to discover how do I make the incorrectly misspelled keywords rank without messing up the site's content.
Another fact to take into account is that more than half the searches made in these languages are done without accents because, let's face it, it's just too much work.
An example of my specific problem: The misspelled keyword "cursos de ingles" is currently ranking higher than the correctly spelled keyword "cursos de inglés". However, the misspelled keyword "clases de ingles" is not ranking at all and the correctly spelled keyword "clases de inglés" is on the first page. How is this possible?
Now, how can I optimize the misspelled keywords to rank higher without misspelling the content on my site?
Thank you!
-
Hi Bibiana,
Actually, I am the competition (own the business)But hey, nothing I am telling you is a secret and there is nothing like some good competition to make me more motivated to work.
If you are interested, send me a Private Message here on SEOmoz and we can talk more. We may be able to help each other out. It we collaborated a bit it could help both of the businesses out.Saludos y que tengas un buen día.
-
Hahaha you work for the competition!
Yes, the complete site is in Spanish, however, most of my users are not searching with accents, which is the real issue here. frustrated
P.S. Saludos desde el DF
-
I also have had to deal with this in my sites. In most cases, I actually go with the norm that the language is based in. By this I mean that if the page is in English, even if I am using a Spanish or French word, I tend not to use the accent. This is primarily because based on my statistics - I have been doing multi-language SEO for my sites for over 5 years - most people do not have their keyboards configured to make accents.
So, if somebody was looking for information on:Mexico
It is much much more likely that they would put that in google instead of:
México
Most non-tech people would struggle to figure out how to put an é, ñ or a ö on U.S. keyboards.
Of course there are some places on your site that you need to put the accents, especially if it is something like language education where they expect it to be with an accent, but otherwise I do not put them. Of course, if you have your entire page translated into Spanish or French, then put the accents in the correct places because there they will be expected and the searchers will probably look using accents. As you probably know, an accent in Spanish, French, etc can change the entire meaning of a word.
I hope this helps.
P.S. Hola desde Querétaro.
-
I once tried putting the mispelled variants in the keyword meta tag but that did nothing. Maybe you should try it? But I wouldn't expect much.
Another way is to put it into your content, but letting the reader know you mispelled it on purpose. Maybe something like "we offer clases de inglés (or clases de ingles if you can't find the accent button!)".
That way they know you mispelled it on purpose, and google still finds the word on the page.
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
-
Google Pagination Changes
What with Google recently coming out and saying they're basically ignoring paginated pages, I'm considering the link structure of our new, sooner to launch ecommerce site (moving from an old site to a new one with identical URL structure less a few 404s). Currently our new site shows 20 products per page but with this change by Google it means that any products on pages 2, 3 and so on will suffer because google treats it like an entirely separate page as opposed to an extension of the first. The way I see it I have one option: Show every product in each category on page 1. I have Lazy Load installed on our new website so it will only load the screen a user can see and as they scroll down it loads more products, but how will google interpret this? Will Google simply see all 50-300 products per category and give the site a bad page load score because it doesn't know the Lazy Load is in place? Or will it know and account for it? Is there anything I'm missing?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | moon-boots0 -
Brand name not ranking in Google
Hi Moz'ers, Could you help me with something I cannot seem to figure out by myself. In June 2017 my company started a rebranding campaign. We've changed our brand name and launched a new website: https://spotler.com. Everything is going fine, but if you Google our brand name "Spotler" our website doesn't show up. How can it be? Our domain authority is 38. It would be wonderful if you could help me. Let me know if you need more information. Best, Simone
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Spotler0 -
Replacing keywords by synonyms. Will it increase risk of google keyword stuffing penalization?
I have a page which is ranking already pretty well for a relative competitive keyword.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lcourse
Google also ranks us on first page for synonym of keyword we optimize the page for (even though synonym does not appear on our page). I am now considering to replace some occurences of the keyword in the page by different synonyms, in the hope that our ranking may further improve for these synonyms.
However I am concerned that google may penalize me for keyword stuffing if I am using a wide range of synonyms of one keyword on our page. My plan is only to replace some occurences of keyword with synonyms. I am a bit nerveous here since page is already ranking quite well in a competitive niche. Any thoughts?0 -
How to measure traffic for a keyword
Sitting in Country A I want to see how much traffic a particular keyword receives in Country B. Whats the best way to do it? Also, will the search results differ if I am analyzing the above sitting in Country A viz-a-viz Country B. In other words, will the IP of the country I am making the search from play a role in the results?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KS__0 -
Crowdsearch.me - Is this a legit approach?
It seems like a less-than-white hat approach, and anyway I don't know whether or not it could work. Does anyone have any advice about it? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | tcolling0 -
Subpage ranking for homepage keyword
Hi all, May seem like a simple scenario and I might be missing something, but my subpage seems to be ranking for my main homepage keyword. The subpage PR is 28 and my domain authority is 17, how can I get my main home page to rank instead of the sub page (product page)? I want to stay away from exact match anchor text links, any suggestions?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SO_UK0 -
How to Target Keyword Permutations
I have a client that wants to rank for a keyword phrase that has many permutations.. ex. "Alaska Hill Country Resort", "Hill Country Resort Alaska", "Hill Country Alaska Resort" But I'm wondering if I should target these all on the same page or not. I'm assuming all of these permutations are actually valid searches because I did my keyword research for 'exact match' keywords and got results like this.. (let me know if I'm missing something here, or if this sounds right) [Alaska Hill Country Resort] - 230 Local Searches [Hill Country Resort Alaska] - 140 Local Searches [Hill Country Alaska Resort] - 30 Local Searches The phrase we're targeting is their main keyword phrase, so I've chosen their home-page as the page to rank for this phrase. My thought is to optimize for the most popular phrase (ex. "Alaska Hill Country Resort"), and sprinkle in the other phrases throughout the copy. Next I would run a link-building campaign targeting the main phrase first.. then the next phrase, and so on, so that my anchor text is more heavily focused on the more popular terms, but I would also make sure to include the less popular terms. Do you think this is the best way to go about this? Do I really need to make individual pages for each of the permutations, or is it okay to target them all on one page since they are essentially the same keyword?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ATMOSMarketing560 -
Wordtracker vs Google Keyword Tool
When I find keyword opportunities in Wordtracker, I'll sometimes run them through Adwords Keyword tool only to find that Google says these keywords have 0 search volume. Would you use these keywords even though Google says users aren't searching for them?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nicole.healthline0