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
-
Are all tabs the result of JS?
Hey all, Bit of a novice here, so bare with me. We have a page that has a lot of content in a tabular format that struggles to rank. I created a similar page, without the tabular format, which vastly outranks it, despite having a miniscule backlink profile in comparison. Now, I've always been under the impression that anything interactive on a website, like tabs, are the result of JS. However, I can't see any JS in the code (but as mentioned, I'm far from an expert). Code below. Description insert copy here, click on [insert anchor text](/media/MODULES AVAILABLE 2017-18.xlsx)
Technical SEO | | SwanseaMedicine
more copy here. Anyone able to shed any light? Cheers, Rhys0 -
Impact of Non SEO Subdomains
My company has several subdomains whose specific purpose is to act as a landing page/site for our paid search and/or email program. One of the things I've noticed on these subdomains is that they are not being excluded from the SEObots. Could the lack of proper SEO techniques on these subdomains impact our main www subdomain? What is the proper configuration we should use to make sure these sites are not considered for SEO?
Technical SEO | | APFM0 -
Page speed in relation to SEO
I cannot seem to find any information about this, so I thought I would try to get a few people's opinion. How do you think pagespeed is measured in terms of Google using it as a ranking factor? Do you think they use their internal Pagespeed app? Something during the crawl? Your GA site speed?
Technical SEO | | LesleyPaone0 -
What will be the future of seo ?
this question may sound like old one but i want to know something in depth. i mean will seo live forever ? Will i loose my seo job ? so just wanted to know what will be the future of seo ?
Technical SEO | | isolve1 -
Should component pages be visible in the search result?
Hi everyone, My question is suppose i have a blog having 200 pages arranged in footer like seomoz blog and when i move to 2nd page and say the url is http://www.seomoz.org/blog?page=2 and when i search exact url on google should this page be visible in search result or not. Since all component pages of seomoz blog are visible, i think this should not be a problem but when i see other popular blogs like SEJ and seroundtable none of their component pages are visible in search result. By the way i am using rel=prev and next but not robots: noindex, follow
Technical SEO | | himanshu3019890 -
SEO url best practices
We're revamping our site architecture and making several services pages that are accessible from one overarching service page. An example would be as follows: Services Student Services Essay editing Essay revision Author Services Book editing Manuscript critique We'll also be putting breadcrumbs throughout the site for easy navigation, however, is it imperative that we build the URLs that deep? For example, could we simply have www.site.com/essay-editing rather than www.site.com/services/students/essay-editing? I prefer the simplicity of the former, but I feel the latter may be more "search robot friendly" and better for SEO. Any advice on this is much appreciated.
Technical SEO | | Kibin0 -
Parallax Scrolling & SEO
Does anyone know the impact of Parallax scrolling from a SEO prospective?
Technical SEO | | AlgoFreaks0 -
Is SEO moz ranking tool reliable?
Good afternoon from 21 degrees C hot and sunny wetherby UK with the aroma of wetherby whalers fish and chips wafting through the office window... I'm begiining to question the vailidity of SEO moz ranking tool. Specifically for this site www.davidclick.com it ranks the site zero for term "York wedding photographer" Here is the evidence: http://i216.photobucket.com/albums/cc53/zymurgy_bucket/ranking-25-may-12copy.jpg I question it after checking this term on PC and networks ive never used before and i get the term ranking at 5th. Can anyone verify what SERP www.davicdclick.com ranks for "York wedding photographer" and indeed why SEO Moz ranking tool is scrorring in zero. Thanks in advance 😉
Technical SEO | | Nightwing0