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 Letters With Accents Affect SEO?
-
Hi Guys,
My company has a franchise of a foreign company that uses an accent/foreign letter in its brand name. We have to refer to this franchise with this symbol on our website to meet their standards.
I've done some research on this but its not conclusive, so i was wondering whether anyone here can confirm this for me;
Will using the letter with this symbol impair our rankings for this franchise name? Obviously as a UK business people search for this franchise with a regular letter and not the accented one. I would have thought that Google is clever enough to recognise the meaning of the accented letter by now and therefore it wouldn't affect rankings (much). Furthermore, do you think that it would make any difference to use the HTML element to represent the accent rather than copy and pasting the symbol onto our website? I would've thought this would help Google pick it up, but it might not make a difference anyway!
Any help is appreciated.
Thanks
Sam
-
Hi Dirk,
perfect, thanks a lot for clarifying.
All the best.
Sam
-
Hi Sam,
To clarify - for me the correct spelling is the spelling using the accents. For the foreign characters I meant to encode them. In the example above: not use référencement in the HTML but rather référencement
rgds
Dirk
-
That was a helpful post - thanks for helping out.
Sam
-
Thanks a lot for your response here, Dirk.
Just to clarify - when you state to use the **correct **spelling on the page, am i correct in assuming you are meaning the spelling with the accent?
and with the foreign characters in HTML, by this are you meaning to use the proper HTML elements in every case rather than copy and pasting symbols in?
Apologies for asking these simple questions, but just wanted to make sure.
Kind Regards
Sam
-
Hi there,
thanks a lot for your response!
The franchise is a brand name, one that we look after but it is not anywhere in our own brand name. So if you think of a PC shop that sells Apple products, the brand name is Apple but the shop itself has nothing to do with apple and just sells their products - this is the case for us. Would this change your opinion on how to deal with it?
Thanks
Sam
-
The franchise name is a brand name i presume. In that case is does not make any SEO difference. You will rank for your brandname anyway. Choose the most correct version and just run with it. The authority is going to be there!
If the franchise name is something like carinsurance.nl.. THEN you have an interresting case.
In the dutch language the word:
"jaloezieën" is the correct way of writing. In google everyone uses "jaloezieen". The results on the google page are different. Based on my research the main difference is due to the incomming links beeing spelled in the correct and the incorrect way.
-
Just to add to the answer of Luis - in most cases Google is quite capable of guessing the intention of the searcher.
Even in countries that traditionally have a lot of accents, a lot of people are searching for the words without the accents. This is probably partially due to the fact that on mobile it's not always easy to get the accents right, but also due to laziness (it's generally faster to just type the word without the accents).
If you search on google.fr for référencement (correct spelling) or referencement - the results are identical. All the results however use the correct spelling in the meta description & title.(if you check Google trends for this keyword you'll notice that the wrong spelling is even slightly more popular than the correct version)
If you take the example given in the question Luis is referencing - the results for Google.es for cursos de inglés & cursos de ingles are now identical as wellSo my advice would be to use the correct spelling on your page - Google should normally be able to figure it out.
Just make sure that you escape the foreign characters in your HTML.rgds,
Dirk
-
Hello Sam,
I was about to answer you but I found a similar question in Moz some years ago. Please, take a look: http://moz.com/community/q/google-and-keywords-with-and-without-accents-how-to-approach-optimization-for-both
Hope this helps and clarify things to you!
Luis
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
-
Will skipping <H> tags affect your SEO?
Will skipping <H> tags on a page have any impact on your SEO, e.g. skipping a <H2> so your page has a <H1> and then goes to a <H3>? Obviously a page must have a <H1>, but does it matter if you skip other headings?
Technical SEO | | ciehmoz0 -
Are on-site content carousel bad for SEO?
Hi, I didn't find an answer to my question in the Forum. I attached an example of content carousel, this is what I'm talking about. I understand that Google has no problem anymore with tabbed contents and accordeons (collapsible contents). But now I'm wondering about textual carousels. I'm not talking about an image slider, I'm talking about texts. Is text carousel harder to read for Google than plain text or tabs? Of course, i'm not talking about a carousel using Flash. Let's say the code is proper... Thanks for your help. spfra5
Technical SEO | | Alviau0 -
Can an external firewall affect rankings?
For security reasons we are now routing traffic through an external firewall cum CDN. Our server and domain IPs remain the same, but any request is routed through an external IP, which then forwards the traffic. Would our rankings be affected because of IP changes? Thanks Sam
Technical SEO | | samgold0 -
Is Removing Breadcrumbs Detrimental for SEO?
We have full navigational breadcrumbs on our site for the menu and the brand menu. i.e. Home > Clothing > Jackets Brand > Brand Name > Brand Jackets There's been talk of removing this and having it like Chico's does, where on item pages they just have a link at the top to previous category (i.e. you're on a shirt product page and at the top it says "Back to Tops" instead of listing Home > Clothing > Tops) Is doing something like this detrimental to SEO? From what I've read Breadcrumbs are for user experience but I just want to be sure.
Technical SEO | | AliMac260 -
Does using a reverse proxy to make a subdomain appear as a subdirectory affect SEO?
Using a reverse proxy only makes it appear that a subdomain is really a subfolder. However, links in the end remain the same. Does this have any negative (or positive) impact on SEO? Does it make it difficult from the blog's (subdomain's) sitemap or robots.txt file to be properly read by search engines?
Technical SEO | | rodelmo41 -
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 | | Morris770 -
Is it possible to change a sitelink title by off page SEO?
Hi all, I checked a website of my company: sitelinks in SERP are with the correct url, but one of the sitelinks’ title is completely irrelevant. Is it possible that it was changed from "outside"? Or maybe it's a bug? Thank you, Imre
Technical SEO | | DDL0 -
What are your best tips for SEO on a shopping cart?
So, I am working on a shopping cart platform (X-Cart) and so far don't like it. Also, the web designer is not someone I've worked with before and he is understandably conservative about access--which limits what I can and cannot do from the back end. One of the things I like to do is include text for the search engines. However, based on conversion, etc., I think the product images on a landing page (main brand info with specific products that show up) should show up first to move toward conversion first. I am thinking of adding the text below the product images on the brand pages so the viewer sees the products first while still keeping the content seo. My practice is to use between 300-350 words minimum on a page. Just wondering what best practices you have for a shopping cart. Care to share? Any tips or hints? Thoughts on what I might do that would be most effective? As always, thanks in advance for your sage advice!
Technical SEO | | TheARKlady0