Does the use of a unicode character high up on page adversely affect SEO?
-
I work for a company in the travel industry and we are currently in the process of building out a 360-degree video landing page to inspire travel to our destination. There is some desire from individuals on my team to use the unicode degree symbol ( ° ) after 360 to ensure clarity.
We currently have the ° symbol in the Page Title and H1 tag. Does the use of a unicode character adversely affect SEO? Our concern is that it is very unlikely that people are searching for 360-degree videos using the unicode symbol. We also have it fully written out as well. Just want to make sure we won't get dinged for this.
Thanks!
-
Completely agree, just 1 character might not influence anything. Search engines are very well able to understand what that specific character means in the context if you add 360 next to it.
-
Hey there,
Unicode characters are exactly like any other character in any other encoding. It won't hurt your ranking in any way.
However, make sure that it actually help you somehow. I guess that most people don't even know how to write the "degree" symbol. Maybe you can make some space in the title by replacing this character with a different keyword?
Cheers, Martin
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
-
SEO Content Audits Questions (Removing pages from website, extracting data, organizing data).
Hi everyone! I have a few questions - we are running an SEO content audit on our entire website and I am wondering the best FREE way to extract a list of all indexed pages. Would I need to use a mix of Google Analytics, Webmaster Tools, AND our XML sitemap or could I just use Webmaster Tools to pull the full list? Just want to make sure I am not missing anything. As well, once the data is pulled and organized (helpful to know the best way to pull detailed info about the pages as well!) I am wondering if it would be a best practice to sort by high trafficked pages in order to rank them for prioritization (ie: pages with most visits will be edited and optimized first). Lastly, I am wondering what constitutes a 'removable' page. For example, when it is appropriate to fully remove a page from our website? I understand that it is best, if you need to remove a page, to redirect the person to another similar page OR the homepage. Is this the best practice? Thank you for the help! If you say it is best to organize by trafficked pages first in order to optimize them - I am wondering if it would be an easier process to use MOZ tools like Keyword Explorer, Page Optimization, and Page Authority to rank pages and find ways to optimize them for best top relevant keywords. Let me know if this option makes MORE sense than going through the entire data extraction process.
Technical SEO | | PowerhouseMarketing0 -
How to Remove Web Cache snapshot page & other language SEO Title in Google Search Engine?
Hi... Please tell me how to remove web cache link given below. I have changed my SEO title but it can't be changed...Any other methods for without using webmaster tools. Kw3arat
Technical SEO | | Thilak_geo040 -
Should you use the keyword for your page in an image?
Hi there! I am currently working on building up the SEO ranking on a page using a specific keyword - dresses. Within this page, we have an online image library full of dresses which are then added to multiple pages determined by brand, colour, type etc for people to search. I am adding hundreds of images all of dresses - I wanted to know if I name these images using the keyword: for example 'dresses_1, 'dresses_2' - will that have a knock on effect on page I am trying to build up and optimise for the keyword 'dresses'??? Any help is appreciated.
Technical SEO | | Jaybeamer0 -
Is the seomoz on-page factor :Appropriate Use of Rel Canonical working properly?
I have a word press site with a rel canonical plug in. The rel="canonical" href= is there and the url in there works and goes to the actual page.So why does the seomoz keep giving the warning: Appropriate Use of Rel Canonical
Technical SEO | | CurtCarroll0 -
Duplicate Content on SEO Pages
I'm trying to create a bunch of content pages, and I want to know if the shortcut I took is going to penalize me for duplicate content. Some background: we are an airport ground transportation search engine(www.mozio.com), and we constructed several airport transportation pages with the providers in a particular area listed. However, the problem is, sometimes in a certain region multiple of the same providers serve the same places. For instance, NYAS serves both JFK and LGA, and obviously SuperShuttle serves ~200 airports. So this means for every airport's page, they have the super shuttle box. All the provider info is stored in a database with tags for the airports they serve, and then we dynamically create the page. A good example follows: http://www.mozio.com/lga_airport_transportation/ http://www.mozio.com/jfk_airport_transportation/ http://www.mozio.com/ewr_airport_transportation/ All 3 of those pages have a lot in common. Now, I'm not sure, but they started out working decently, but as I added more and more pages the efficacy of them went down on the whole. Is what I've done qualify as "duplicate content", and would I be better off getting rid of some of the pages or somehow consolidating the info into a master page? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | moziodavid0 -
Local SEO for service industry - one landing page for every town...in every county...in every state?
Starting a second local based service site. Initially going to target a couple counties and move on from there as the business grows. The first site of mine I set up a page for each town [service] + [town] + [state] + [zip]. I am afraid this could get out of control though if I don't have unique content on each page. For the last site I simply copied the page and replace the town name in each as well as the picture, picture title, and image name to make it look more unique for users but not necessarily Google. I had pretty good results but I want this next site to be done properly. Should I only target a few of the major markets to begin with? What about long tail searches for smaller towns that currently bring in a good amount of business? I am concerned about having "too many" long tail pages for each town which would essentially become a listing of every town and county in the state if I was to maintain the pace I want to. Also I would need a good amount of backlinks to each specific town page url if I wanted to do well in each of those specific markets right? Is this where the fine line between niche term and broad search is? Is there any happy medium?
Technical SEO | | kabledesigns0 -
Redesign an SEO-Disaster | Help with Redirects of Gray Hat Pages
Hi gang. I'm a new SEO and I'm currently working on the redesign of a website. I have just discovered a ton of hidden pages that are filled with duplicate content, basically reiterating the main keyword in a variety of different variations. Each page is titled with the variation on the keyword phrase and then has one paragraph of text very similar to the previous page, etc. Here is an example of one of the offensive pages (nice lookin' site, eh?): http://www.vasectomy-reversals.com/vasectomy_reversal_surgery.html The new site will not have any of these pages. I'm writing the 301 redirects now and want to redirect these offensive pages to the most relevant page on the new site. But, I'm afraid to redirect the offensive pages. Should I leave them alone, or can I have the former developer remove them? Help. Don't know how to handle these pages and their redirects. Thanks for your help! ~ Mills
Technical SEO | | Mills0 -
Is SEO affected when hosting service is changed?
I put my plan to change web hosts on abeyance when an SEO friend of mine told me that it would negatively impact the sites SEO. I am not changing the url or anathing, just the host.
Technical SEO | | ambisuite0