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.
Umlaut in domain
-
Hi,
My client wants to expand it's business to Germany and logically we need a domain name to match. We've found a great one and regsiterd several variants to it.
However I just found out that in Germany it is possible (while here it's not) to register a domain with an umlaut. My question is: will google assign more value to:
schädlinge.de than schadlinge.de when users search for schädlinge?
If yes, how large will the difference be? (I will use an umlaut in the title etc)
Kind regards,
Jason. -
Thanks for your response,
the new domain name will be purchased and used exclusively for the German store. I will try to obtain both with and without the umlaut, but the first only if responsibly priced.
(since the domain is just for ranking purposes) -
If you are mostly targeting Netherlands than buy a .NL extension not DE. Secure both if expanding.
I would prefer with the amlaut if it is a German site being targeted in Germany, so it is better because people typing into google.de will be using the amlaut and this is the proper spelling for this word. That is assuming you can get a domain name with amlaut characters registered.
Will it make a big difference in rankings, probably not much so if it's a matter of getting a available domain name for cheap or paying a lot of money to purchase it off of a seller I would go with the cheaper route.
You can also look for a alternative domain name that has schädlinge with the amlaut in it and is available.
You will of course be using the amlaut in the site content and can use it in directory and filenames as well so you're still showing Google and the user what they want to see.
Use the word with the amlaut in the title tag and the meta description.
-
I'm currently targeting Google Netherlands. Germany would be the expansion territory. It's a webshop that is going to offer it's products trough a separate German version of the dutch store.
could you please explain why it makes sense to purchase the schädlinge.de domain? (because it's registered by a domain farm and will probably be expensive)
I did find when searching for German terms with the umlaut, domains without them included score excellent (usually top 3.) This to me, would make sense since it was not always possible (even in Germany) to register domains with the umlaut included.
-
Jason
Yes, that changes. If you are targeting / going to target google.de eventually, it makes complete sense to acquire schädlinge.de.
I checked ranking data on Google.de for both schädlinge and schadlinge and what's interesting is that "schadlinge" is actually considered a mis-spell of schädlinge.
Are you currently only targeting Google US or other countries other then Germany?
-
Hi Nakul,
thanks for your swift reply. I don't quite understand your reasoning. Let me first clairfy that since the buisiness expands to Germany, we are looking to target google.de
I did find google understands my intent but searching for schädlinge or schadlinge yield in different results. The domain name is supposed to give a boost in rankings for en exact match with the searched keyword.
Could you please further clarify?
Thanks
-
Based on the SERPS in Google US for your keyword, it looks like you don't need it. Just using it in the page title should be enough. Further, if you do need it at a later date, you could technically have an inner page like schadlinge.de/red-schädlinge if needed and so on.
https://www.google.com/search?q=schadlinge
I 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
-
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 -
English and French under the same domain
A friend of mine runs a B&B and asked me to check his freshly built website to see if it was <acronym title="Search Engine Optimization">SEO</acronym> compliant.
Technical SEO | | coolhandluc
The B&B is based in France and he's targeting a UK and French audience. To do so, he built content in english and french under the same domain:
https://www.la-besace.fr/ When I run a crawl through screamingfrog only the French content based URLs seem to come up and I am not sure why. Can anyone enlighten me please? To maximise his business local visibility my recommendation would be to build two different websites (1 FR and 1 .co.uk) , build content in the respective language version sites and do all the link building work in respective country sites. Do you think this is the best approach or should he stick with his current solution? Many thanks1 -
How can you promote a sub-domain ahead of a domain on the SERPs?
I have a new client that wants to promote their subdomain uk.imagemcs.com and have their main domain imagemcs.com fall off the SERPs. Objective? Get uk.imagemcs.com to rank first for UK 'brand' searches. Do a search for 'imagem creative services' and you should see the issue (it looks like rules have been applied to the robots.txt on the main domain to exclude any bots from crawling - but since they've been indexed previously I need to take action as it doesn't look great!). I think I can do this by applying a permanent redirect from the main domain to the subdomain at domain level and then no-indexing the site - and then resubmit the sitemap. My slight concern is that this no-indexing of the main domain may impact on the visibility of the subdomains (I'm dealing with uk.imagemcs.com, but there is us.imagemcs.com and de.imagemcs.com) and was looking for some assurance that this would not be the case. My understanding is that subdomains are completely distinct from domains and as such this action should have no impact on the subdomains. I asked the question on the Webmasters Forum but haven't really got anywhere
Technical SEO | | nathangdavidson2
https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!msg/webmasters/1Avupy3Uw_o/hu6oLQntCAAJ Can anyone suggest a course of action? many thanks, Nathan0 -
Rel canonical between mirrored domains
Hi all & happy new near! I'm new to SEO and could do with a spot of advice: I have a site that has several domains that mirror it (not good, I know...) So www.site.com, www.site.edu.sg, www.othersite.com all serve up the same content. I was planning to use rel="canonical" to avoid the duplication but I have a concern: Currently several of these mirrors rank - one, the .com ranks #1 on local google search for some useful keywords. the .edu.sg also shows up as #9 for a dirrerent page. In some cases I have multiple mirrors showing up on a specific serp. I would LIKE to rel canonical everything to the local edu.sg domain since this is most representative of the fact that the site is for a school in Singapore but...
Technical SEO | | AlexSG
-The .com is listed in DMOZ (this used to be important) and none of the volunteers there ever respoded to requests to update it to the .edu.sg
-The .com ranks higher than the com.sg page for non-local search so I am guessing google has some kind of algorithm to mark down obviosly local domains in other geographic locations Any opinions on this? Should I rel canonical the .com to the .edu.sg or vice versa? I appreciate any advice or opinion before I pull the trigger and end up shooting myself in the foot! Best regards from Singapore!0 -
Beating a keyword Domain
Has anyone here managed to beat a keyword/exact match domain to top spot? I am currently second and wondering if it is worth the time and effort to knock it off the top spot. How hard is it to get these very annoyingly favoured domains off 1st? Any help and advice much appreciated.
Technical SEO | | pauledwards0 -
Multiple Domains on 1 IP Address
We have multiple domains on the same C Block IP Address. Our main site is an eCommerce site, and we have separate domains for each of the following: our company blog (and other niche blogs), forum site, articles site and corporate site. They are all on the same server and hosted by the same web-hosting company. They all have unique and different content. Speaking strictly from a technical standpoint, could this be hurting us? Can you please make a recommendation for the best practices when it comes to multiple domains like these and having separate or the same IP Addresses? Thank you!
Technical SEO | | Motivators0 -
Outranking a competitor when their domain name is the keyword
Hi I'd just like to ask the opinion of my fellow members here : We are currently ranking second for a very important keyword and would obviously like the top spot on the SERP - the site that is ranking first has the domain name as the keyword phrase(along with a good amount of quality links from a variety of domains) - now I know it is possible to outrank them since I do remember reading about this in one of Rands posts(I think it was the whole white hat black hat one he posted recently) - bascially we have more domain authority, slightly less links but from double the amount of root domains and a higher page authority too! Does having the keyword as your domain make THAT much of a difference when we are(imo) quite close in terms of great content and link profiles(and all the onpage factors) ? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | DanHill0 -
301 Redirect vs Domain Alias
We have hundreds of domains which are either alternate spelling of our primary domain or close keyword names we didn't want our competitor to get before us. The primary domain is running on a dedicated Windows server running IIS6 and set to a static IP. Since it is a static IP and not using host headers any domain pointed to the static IP will immediately show the contents of the site, however the domain will be whatever was typed. Which could be the primary domain or an alias. Two concerns. First, is it possible that Google would penalize us for the alias domains or dilute our primary domain "juice"? Second, we need to properly track traffic from the alias domains. We could make unique content for those performing well and sell or let expire those that are sending no traffic. It's not my goal to use the alias domains to artificially pump up our primary domain. We have them for spelling errors and direct traffic. What is the best practice for handling one or both of these issues?
Technical SEO | | briankb0