Google and keywords with and without accents. How to approach optimization for both?
-
This is more of a problem for people optimizing for keywords in spanish, french, german and such.
It is well known that SERPs for keywords with and without accents are different. However, I haven't been able to discover how do I make the incorrectly misspelled keywords rank without messing up the site's content.
Another fact to take into account is that more than half the searches made in these languages are done without accents because, let's face it, it's just too much work.
An example of my specific problem: The misspelled keyword "cursos de ingles" is currently ranking higher than the correctly spelled keyword "cursos de inglés". However, the misspelled keyword "clases de ingles" is not ranking at all and the correctly spelled keyword "clases de inglés" is on the first page. How is this possible?
Now, how can I optimize the misspelled keywords to rank higher without misspelling the content on my site?
Thank you!
-
Hi Bibiana,
Actually, I am the competition (own the business) But hey, nothing I am telling you is a secret and there is nothing like some good competition to make me more motivated to work.
If you are interested, send me a Private Message here on SEOmoz and we can talk more. We may be able to help each other out. It we collaborated a bit it could help both of the businesses out.Saludos y que tengas un buen día.
-
Hahaha you work for the competition!
Yes, the complete site is in Spanish, however, most of my users are not searching with accents, which is the real issue here. frustrated
P.S. Saludos desde el DF
-
I also have had to deal with this in my sites. In most cases, I actually go with the norm that the language is based in. By this I mean that if the page is in English, even if I am using a Spanish or French word, I tend not to use the accent. This is primarily because based on my statistics - I have been doing multi-language SEO for my sites for over 5 years - most people do not have their keyboards configured to make accents.
So, if somebody was looking for information on:Mexico
It is much much more likely that they would put that in google instead of:
México
Most non-tech people would struggle to figure out how to put an é, ñ or a ö on U.S. keyboards.
Of course there are some places on your site that you need to put the accents, especially if it is something like language education where they expect it to be with an accent, but otherwise I do not put them. Of course, if you have your entire page translated into Spanish or French, then put the accents in the correct places because there they will be expected and the searchers will probably look using accents. As you probably know, an accent in Spanish, French, etc can change the entire meaning of a word.
I hope this helps.
P.S. Hola desde Querétaro.
-
I once tried putting the mispelled variants in the keyword meta tag but that did nothing. Maybe you should try it? But I wouldn't expect much.
Another way is to put it into your content, but letting the reader know you mispelled it on purpose. Maybe something like "we offer clases de inglés (or clases de ingles if you can't find the accent button!)".
That way they know you mispelled it on purpose, and google still finds the word on the page.
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
-
Keyword rank drop, any advice?
Screen Shot 2021-08-26 at 19.02.18.png My search visibility dropped from around 13% a few weeks ago to 8.29%. I know that Google launched a bunch of updates in this past few weeks to ignore spam links, and I'm pretty sure that was the reason for the drop - some of the links to my site date back over 10 years and those links were garbage. Confusingly, at the same time, my Domain Authority went up by 1 to 32, then back down a week later. How can I restore my previous rank in the short term? We're designing a new site at the moment with vastly improved page speed, but I'm not sure what effect that will have yet (thespacecollective.com).
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | moon-boots0 -
I've all the things set up, still keywords are not rankign anywhere in Google.
No results, only just a few - site:10stuffs.com All the search results can be visible through manual URL searching... No manual actions or any technical fault detected. I'm wondering what's wrong with my site and why It's not gelling on with the Google. 10stuffs.com
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | stuffsurya0 -
Google News and Meta Title
Hi,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JohnPalmer
1. I just read this article: https://www.seroundtable.com/google-news-titles-h1-19876.html
Google want the same title. no problem. but what about the brand? for example
POST TITLE BLA BLU | My Brand
The "post title bla blu" is the H1 and title of the article and | My Brand is my brand...
I can keep it as is with the My brand? or remove it? what about posts with long title for example "POST TITLE BLA BLU POST TITLE BLA BLU | My Brand"
What is you suggestion, I know Google doesn't show all the text and we'll see "...". it's still important to write the brand name in the title or just the post title? (without the brand). Thanks,0 -
Ranking for local searches without city specific keywords?
Hey guys! I had asked this question a few months ago and now that we are seeing even more implicit information determining search results, I want to ask it again..in two parts. Is is STILL best practice for on-page to add the city name to your titles, h1s, content etc? It seems that this will eventually be an outdated tactic, right? If there is a decent amount of search volume without any city name in the search query (ie. "storefont signs", but no search volume for the phrase when specific cities are added (ie. "storefront signs west palm beach) is it worth trying to rank and optimize for that search term for a company in West Palm Beach? We can assume that if there are 20,000 monthly searches for the non-location specific term that SOME of them would be fairly local, so do we optimize the page without the city name and trust Google to display results with a local intent...therefore showing our client's site in the SERPS when someone searches "sign company" and they are IN West Palm Beach? If there is any confusion, please just ask me to clarify! I think this would be a great WhiteBoard Friday topic for Rand!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RickyShockley0 -
Google disavow tool
I have an algorithmic penalty on one of my websites. I never received a notification of a manual penalty in GWMT and even sent in a reconsideration request 6 months ago ad they told me their were no manual penalties on the website. I have cleaned up my link profile and what I could not clean up I sent in using the Google disavow tool a few days ago. I've heard to just wait if it's algorithmic or should I send in another reconsideration request for disavow links tool?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MarkHIggins0 -
Merging your google places page with google plus page.
I have a map listing showing for the keyword junk cars for cash nj. I recently created a new g+ page and requested a merge between the places and the + page. now when you do a search you see the following. Junk Cars For Cash NJ LLC
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | junkcars
junkcarforcashnj.com/
Google+ page - Google+ page the first hyperlink takes me to the about page of the G+ and the second link takes me to the posts section within g+. Is this normal? should i delete the places account where the listing was originally created? Or do i leave it as is? Thanks0 -
Google Places not appearing
is it possible to be sandboxed for a google places page? one of our clinics has a places page, and it was doing fine (http://www.google.com/maps/place?cid=5542269234389030356) but now whenever we set our location to trinity,fl and try to search for weight loss, weight loss trinity, etc.. it doesnt come up. it only comes up if we search medi weight loss trinity. also, when we go into our google places dashboard and try to edit the pictures, it doesnt show the same pictures on the actual locations page. for example, in our dashboard we have 5 pictures, but on the actual places page, 3 pictures are showing (none of which are in our dashboard). any ideas?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AustinBarton0 -
What is the systematic what of doing keyword research?
What is the systematic what of doing keyword research? I have been optimizing some sites, keeping in mind the completion and relevance. But still I am not happy with the keywords selected. Can you tell me the international Standard why of selecting keywords for any site? A systematic way, which will work for any kind of website. Please give me some list of free tools also which I can use for it. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ShashankGupta0