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".
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
-
Metered paywall & seo
Hello In our site we are planning to add a metered paywall, a kind of soft paywall, in which users can see X pages on the site with no restriction, and then on the next page (X+1) they are blocked and need to register. How will this affect SEO? Should we cancel the block on search engine spiders? If the block is just JS popping up a full-screen popup, but the actual content is loaded, is that ok? or another method should be utilized? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | idosmaccount0 -
Q& A section - SEO perspective
We have a software in our website where customers can ask questions and it will send questions to people who already bought it to get answers. The answers are there in each item page. So each item page has item description , reviews, and Q&A sections. We get lot of questions and answers and software is great but we don't know if it really is helping us for the huge price we are paying them. In an SEO perspective will it help due to content or will it dilute main keywords due to the Q&A content? Thanks RB
On-Page Optimization | | rbai2 -
Is using hyphens in a URL to separate words good practice?
Hi guys, I have a client who wants to use a hyphen to separate two words in the URL to make each work stand out. Is is good or bad practice to use a hyphen in a URL and will it affect rankings? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | StoryScout0 -
How to hide element without affecting SEO listing
I have a problem I would like to remove header from normal page flow as I already have same information copied in CTA box but I need this header for SEO, is there a way to remove this header from a document flow without being blacklisted by google?
On-Page Optimization | | tesdublin0 -
Exact keyword vs connecting words.
Hi guys, I'm wondering if there's a huge difference between exact keywords vs connecting words. i.e. "limo service chicago" vs " limo service in chicago" or something similar. It's tough to have 4+ keywords on a page sound great without using some form of connecting word. Will google still rank the page as high if I use connection words in a few instances of the keyword? Or should I just leave the exact keyword fir all instances. Thanks in advance. Aron
On-Page Optimization | | aronwp0 -
Local SEO - Rich content and list of towns enough?
I'm working on creating pages to target local SEO. I've created pages for example 'wedding band london' with useful content and optimised them with title tags, alt tags etc and will continue to do so for major cities and queries where there are significant search volume. However, I also want to pickup longtail local search queries such as 'wedding band camden' etc... Will adding a list of towns somewhere on the page for each city or county help drive traffic to the site from such queries? Is so what's the best way to structure the page?
On-Page Optimization | | SamCUK1 -
FAQS For Seo & Long Tail Optimization
Would it be ok to create a small FAQ section on the particular page I am working on using long tail keywords, all which have low competition, high search volume? I see a few competitors ranking this way, but it does not flow, its very obvious they are stuffing. Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | TP_Marketing0 -
Optimizing E-Commerce Category Pages For SEO
Hey, Does anyone have any tips for optimizing e-commerce category pages? Looking to add content to each category page but not sure where to put the content i.e. above the footer? Above the search results? In the left hand nav bar? Have a landing page which they click through to see search results? If anyone has any good examples or tips it would be much appreciated. cheers David
On-Page Optimization | | DavidLenehan0