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
-
Seeking SEO contractor
I would like to hire an SEO contractor to assist with some technical/SEO issues on our site (Schema, etc). Can anyone make a recommendation? I am looking to work with a small company. Thank you in advance for any referrals!
On-Page Optimization | | JulieALS0 -
On-page SEO
This is a question for the organic SEO experts, once you added the main keyword that you want to rank for in the homepage title, meta title plus meta description, perhaps once or twice in the text on the homepage. How often do you then write it in the content marketing, say blog posts, we want to rank higher on Google for "SEO agencies Cardiff" however if you mention this in the blog posts too much say once a week, this could lead to over optimisation issues?
On-Page Optimization | | sarahwalsh1 -
Does DA/PA have any effect on rankings?
I have seen many people are concerned about increasing DA and PA of their websites. While I am very curious why do people focus on increasing DA and PA? Does DA and PA effect the rankings of the website? Because I have recently launched my website regarding men beard trimmer and it is ranking on 1st page but not on number 1 position. Will increasing DA/PA of the site help me in occupying 1st position?
On-Page Optimization | | RyanAmin0 -
Question For SEO Companies From An On-line Retailer
When employing an SEO company what should I be looking for? When I go to a companies website I look for how many keywords they have ranked on Semrush. Most of the companies that I have looked at do not rank very many. Saying most I am talking about 10-12 companies. There was one company that had a lot more than anyone else but their reviews were awful. Then I look at their clients websites to see how many keywords they have ranked and this is where I am baffled. Quite a lot of them especially retail sites with lots of products have very few keywords ranked and my belief is that the more related keywords that you have ranked the better you will do. I also look at how the thier organic traffic is doing over a number of months. what surprises me most is that companies are advertising clients websites where it looks like traffic is climbing and then all of a sudden there is a big drop. Am I missing something in order to find a company that will do what we are paying them for? Thank you in advance.
On-Page Optimization | | Palmbourne0 -
International SEO - differentiating Meta data
Hi, We are developing a website for a company based in the US, but that also distributes to the UK. After careful thought, we decided to go with adding subdirectories for the UK pages on the site rather than creating content on a new ccTLD (though they own that domain). 1. How much of the Title Tags, H1, content, needs to be different for UK versions of the same page. Is it enough to simply Geo tag the EN subdirectory in Webmaster Tools? Or do the Title tags and content need to be different in order to avoid keyword cannibalization? 2. Would it be better to create a Landing Page using the ccTLD .co.uk version with information that links to the .com/en version? This would allow the users to see the .co.uk version for trust-building purposes. Or, would it just be better to 301 redirect the .co.uk version to the .com/en? Thanks for your help! Erin
On-Page Optimization | | HiddenPeak0 -
Why is my key word rank so horrible?
I've been with seomoz for a couple of months now. I've been working hard trying to rank for the key word "kayak fishing" on my site yakangler.com. My onpage report for my home page is an A, my moztrust rank is higher than my competitors. I don't have the most links but I don't have the fewest either. Why am I ranking so horribly. Last I checked I wasn't on the first 50 pages for Google search. Any advice would be greatly appreciated!
On-Page Optimization | | mr_w0 -
Local SEO Two Locations - Should I have a web page for each address?
Hi I have a business that has two offices each servicing a different local area. On my website I have both address locations on one page. www.company.com/contact
On-Page Optimization | | VivaArturo
Is it better to have each office on a separate page for local seo www.company.com/location1 and www.company.com/location2 Thanks Arthur0 -
SEO strategy recommendations?
Hi My website http://www.harrisbassett.co.uk is now ranking on the 1st page of Bing and Google for phrases such as Chartered Accountant Swansea and Tax Planners Swansea But the phrase 'accountants swansea' is still performing poorly - as it is near the bottom of the second page? Would I be better placing more accountant swansea phrases on the homepage of the site or would this have an adverse effect on the current 'Chartered Accountants Swansea' ranking as would this be classed as keyword cannabilisation? So would it be better to further optimise http://www.harrisbassett.co.uk/accounting.htm and include the phrases Accountants Swansea and Auditors Swansea or would this act against the homepage? Sorry for the questions I am just looking for the best route forward to further boost the ranking on additional terms as the majority of the 1st page listings seem to weak?
On-Page Optimization | | idv0