Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
The use of foreign characters and capital letters in URL's?
-
Hello all,
We have 4 language domains for our website, and a number of our Spanish landing pages are written using Spanish characters - most notably: ñ and ó.
We have done our research around the web and realised that many of the top competitors for keywords such as Diseño Web (web design) and Aplicaión iPhone (iphone application) DO NOT use these special chacracters in their URL structure.
Here is an example of our URL's
EX: http://www.twago.es/expert/Diseño-Web/Diseño-Web
However when I simply copy paste a URL that contains a special character it is automatically translated and encoded.
EX: http://www.twago.es/expert/Aplicación-iPhone/Aplicación-iPhone
(When written out long had it appears: http://www.twago.es/expert/Aplicación-iPhone/Aplicación-iPhone
My first question is, seeing how the overwhelming majority of website URL's DO NOT contain special characters (and even for Spanish/German characters these are simply written using the standard English latin alphabet) is there a negative effect on our SEO rankings/efforts because we are using special characters?
- When we write anchor text for backlinks to these pages we USE the special characteristics in the anchor text (so does most other competitors). Does the anchor text have to exactly
I know most webbrowsers can understand the special characters, especially when returning search results to users that either type the special characters within their search query (or not). But we seem to think that if we were doing the right thing, then why does everyone else do it differently?
My second question is the same, but focusing on the use of Capital letters in our URL structure.
NOTE: When we do a broken link check with some link tools (such as xenu) the URL's that contain the special characters in Spanish are marked as "broken". Is this a related issue?
Any help anyone could give us would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks,
David from twago
-
Hi,
We have 4 foreign language sites, one in spanish and just remove the special characters in all and rank very highly, so there is no harm in doing this, it actually makes it harder.
I would stick with all lower cases or at least have the same logic in the URL - as long as it is consistent, then no biggie.
No matter what you do, make sure if you make changes to any of this that you 301 all of the old pages to their new version otherwise you will be starting from scratch!
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
-
Homepage Slider How to Handle H1 and H2's
Working on a site with a slider on the homepage, I dislike them but owner wants to keep in place. Currently, the slider has 4 slides with different images but the same text, so the slider has 4 slides with 4 identical H2 tags and accompanying text. There is no H1 tag on the page at all. It seems to me that a better solution would be to change the first slide to be H1 (with the target keyword) and rework the text in the other slides as H2 tags to appeal to the user. This does mean that the H1 and H2 tags in the slider would be styled the same. Is this a sensible approach?
Web Design | | GrouchyKids1 -
Making html table as 'seofriendly' as possible
Hi, On my website I have a table with a list of products, on every row I have a different product and a different property on each column. The table is made with css so the html code is clean. The problem is (I guess) that google doesn't 'understand' what its inside on the table. So if I do a google search that page appears on the page 87, there is any way to improve my SEO without changing the table? Or to improve my SEO I must change the format of my content? In resume, I want to improve the SEO page of a page that contains information organized inside a table. I don't know if there is a specific answer to this question. Any help is welcome. Regards
Web Design | | jcobo0 -
Using Button Links vs Sidebar Menu
I have a services page with a lot of rich text and a slideshow of images. Currently, I am using a column of buttons to various services, and am wondering if a sidebar menu would be more effective for Google to crawl and rank?
Web Design | | cinchmedia0 -
Will google penalize a website for using a table layout?
I just got a new client today and his entire website layout and structure is using tables instead of divs. This client is on a tight budget and wants to avoid unnecessary hours for re-coding the website, but at the same time he wants me to improve his SEO organically. This is the first time I've been asked to do work on an existing website that uses pure tables for the entire layout and I'm wondering if this effects the SEO in any way. So my question is, will tables effect rankings and SEO in any way?
Web Design | | ScottMcPherson0 -
Does Google count the domain name in its 115-character "ideal" URL length?
I've been following various threads having to do with URL length and Google's happiness therewith and have yet to find an answer to the question posed in the title. Some answers and discussions have come close, but none I've found have addressed this with any specificity. Here are four hypothetical URLs of varying lengths and configurations: EXAMPLE ONE:
Web Design | | RScime25
my-big-widgets-are-the-best-widgets-in-the-world-and-come-in-many-vibrant-and-unique-colors-and-configurations.html (115 characters) EXAMPLE TWO: sample.com/my-big-widgets-are-the-best-widgets-in-the-world-and-come-in-many-vibrant-and-unique-colors-and-configurations.html (126 characters) EXAMPLE THREE: www.sample.com/my-big-widgets-are-the-best-widgets-in-the-world-and-come-in-many-vibrant-and-unique-colors-and-configurations.html (130 characters) EXAMPLE FOUR: http://www.sample.com/my-big-widgets-are-the-best-widgets-in-the-world-and-come-in-many-vibrant-and-unique-colors-and-configurations.html (137 characters) Assuming the examples contain appropriate keywords and are linked to appropriate anchor text (etc.,) how would Google look upon each? All I've been able to garner thus far is that URLs should be as short as possible while still containing and contextualizing keywords. I have 500+ URLs to review for the company I work for and could use some guidance; yes, I know I should test, but testing is problematical to the extreme; I look to the collective/accumulated wisdom of the MOZVerse for help. Thanks.1 -
URL structure for multiple cities?
Hi, i am in the process of setting up a business directory site that will be used in a number of cities, though i am initially launching with only one city. My question is, what is the best URL structure to use for the site and should i start using this URL structure from day one? At the moment i am using www.mysite.com.au as my primary website where it contains all listings for the the one initial launch city. Though to plan for the future i was considering this URL structure: www.mysite.com.au/cityname so for example, if i launch in the city Sydney initially then all website traffic that goes to www.mysite.com.au would simply be redirected (302 temp redirect?) to www.mysite.com.au/sydney. When i expand to other cities www.mysite.com.au would simply be a "select your city" screen that then redirects to the city of choice (similar to www.groupon.com page). How would doing a 302 redirect from www.mysite.com.au to www.mysite.com.au/city impact on SEO for the initial launch? Or should i just place this on the root domain since no other cities exist at the moment?
Web Design | | adamkirk0 -
Should I use the google mod_pagespeed in my apache server?
Anyone already use it? There is some speed benefit? http://code.google.com/speed/page-speed/docs/module.html
Web Design | | Naghirniac0 -
Combining web pages and it's affects on SEO?
We are looking into amending a website we are working on to try and combine 2 or 3 current pages onto one page. This site is similar to an estate agents site and currently has images, map, floor plan sub pages etc. Can anyone tell me, if we were to combine these pages and include the above details on one page, how that would affect the current search engine rankings?
Web Design | | SoundinTheory0