You Did the U Mlaut Again How?

When reading German SEO blogs and forums, few questions are equally often recurring every bit the result of umlauts and how to deal with them when optimising webpages. Umlauts are special characters in the High german language that are non part of the ASCII character ready originally used for webpages and URLs.

During the 25 years of the world wide web, several ways of representing umlauts in a fashion that conforms with a limited set of characters have been created, from the HTML-code equivalents of "Ä (Ä) to UTF graphic symbol replacements such every bit %C3%84 (Ä). Only even before that, since the early days of typewriters, there was an easy style of replacing umlauts that is still widely used past German language speakers when forced to type on a keyboard that lacks the correct keys: adding a "e" to the graphic symbol without the dots on top "AE" (Ä).

When information technology comes to on-site keyword use, umlauts mainly are of concern for URLs, equally information technology is still mutual to form these using only ASCII characters for ease of use and to avert the risk of misrepresentation in sure web browsers also equally non-performance links. Simply what are we to do with the sometimes significant search volume that nosotros might miss if we ignore the alternative spellings and character representations? Nosotros had a look at some examples in club to shed some calorie-free on how Google handles these search queries.

First things first, though: at no bespeak should we apply alternatives to the correct umlauts in places visible to the user other than URLs, simply because it would exist a misspelling and await truly awful to a German eye. In fact, one of the well-nigh common means of getting round this is to apply the total URL in titles, descriptions and on the webpage itself. But is it actually necessary?

We looked at three keywords containing umlauts and the search results they returned. We also looked at the top ranking pages in order to find out how the keywords were used on them.

The kickoff keyword is Rätsel (Puzzle). We compared the SERPs for the correct spelling (Rätsel), the substituted version "Raetsel" and the plain misspelling "Ratsel". All these keywords take search volume, from 60,500 average monthly searches to i,300 and 320 for the substituted and misspelt versions.

We can run into that xc% of the peak x search results for "Raetsel" are the same as for the correct spelling. However, for "Ratsel" it's just xl%.

Looking at the actual search results, we can run across that the dominating spelling in the URL is the substitution "ae" and not the at present frequently recommended UTF code for the "ä". Intrigued past this, we had a closer expect at how the keywords were used on the actual pages. Of the top four pages, all had the "Raetsel" in the URL. Ane actually had it in the page title, and ane even in the H1 (in the grade of the URL).

All pages had the right "Rätsel" in the H1 and page championship equally well equally, of course, in the folio content. More interestingly though, no page had the misspelled "Ratsel" anywhere at all, but Google withal showed 40% of these pages for that query. The remaining 60% had either the misspelt "Ratsel" in the URL (l%) or nowhere at all. Google is clearly getting quite good at this.

Does Google get confused by plurals?

Our adjacent example is the keyword "Äpfel" (Apples). The interesting attribute hither is that, apart from the usual substitution "Aepfel", the third alternative "Apfel" is actually a valid keyword, namely the atypical form of the aforementioned fruit. It also has a very loftier search book, making it definitely worth targeting. And in this case it's even possible without upsetting whatsoever grammar or spelling rules.

Interestingly, here the ten top search results for "Äpfel" and "Aepfel" are exactly the same, even though not all of them appear on exactly the aforementioned ranking positions.

Looking at the use of keywords on the top three pages we find something interesting: This fourth dimension, the substitution "ae" was not present anywhere at all. The first two pages, existence Wikipedia pages, utilise the UTF character replacement option to present the correct "Ä" in the URL instead. The tertiary ranking page uses the singular "Apfel" keyword. Interestingly, none of the meridian pages uses the "Aepfel" exchange. In fact, of the ten top ranking pages, simply two apply this class of representing the umlaut in the URL. Conspicuously, the webmasters implementing them have rightly decided that the singular form "Apfel" is the better pick.

When information technology comes to the on-folio elements, nosotros can notice that "Aepfel" isn't represented anywhere at all. Over again, the singular form "Apfel" is predominant in H1s, titles and the content of the elevation ranking pages, followed by "Äpfel" which is present in the content of all of the pages. We tin can too annotation that in several cases the "Apfel" is office of a compound noun, merely still recognised and highlighted as a keyword by Google, supporting what I accept said in my previous weblog post.

Can skipping the dots make a keyword English?

The 3rd and final keyword we looked at is "Übermensch". This i is interesting, because, dropping the dots makes it into a word commonly used in English, where this philosophical term commonly isn't translated. But equally English language keyboards lack a key for the umlaut, it'due south often spelled simply "ubermensch". In Germany, this form still has 140 monthly searches, as opposed to the correct spelling'due south 1300. The substitution "Uebermensch" on the other paw, is only searched for 20 times.

The look at the search result pages shows a like picture to the get-go keyword we examined. The substitution "ae" shows 90% identical pages. Nonetheless, when searching for "ubermensch", just 30% of the results are the same. Nosotros can doubtable that 22,200 monthly searches in the US might lead Google to come across this as an English language keyword. The fact that, on Google.de, but two of the top ten search results are in German – everything else is in English – reinforces this theory.

But how are the keywords used on the pages? Well, three of the English pages listed have the keyword without dots in content and URL, some other one in the URL only. Otherwise the correct spelling dominates, even on the English pages listed. And the "Uebermensch" is nowhere to be seen.

So how are we supposed to treat umlauts in German language SEO?

• Firstly, it's clear that the archetype substitution of umlauts by skipping the dots and adding an "east" instead works well in URLs. We can also conclude that Google does empathise these keywords to be the same as the correct spelling. Thus, we should apply these in URLs and file names wherever nosotros are unable to utilize UTF characters.
• Secondly, when the German word without the umlauts is a correct discussion, such as the atypical of the same thing, nosotros should consider targeting this every bit a divide keyword for a separate page. Combining information technology with the umlauted form could hateful missed opportunities.
• And lastly, we should avoid simply removing the dots and assuming Google will still recognise the keyword. While this many times works for accents in French or Spanish, umlauts are not accents and Google will non care for them the same. In fact, simply dropping the dots is the least advisable style of using these keywords. Additionally, doing this, might take chances attracting English webpages to your search results, whenever the dot-less version is widely used as a term past English language speakers.

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Jens is the Operations Manager at Webcertain. He was born in Germany and moved to Sweden when he was 19, where he lived for 20 years before moving to the UK. Having worked as a journalist and magazine editor for many years, he has always had an involvement in the internet and created his starting time webpage in 1993. Working for Webcertain since 2010, Jens has made his way from SEO Projection Manager within the Keywords section to working more strategically with improving processes and efficiencies across the operations departments.

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Source: https://blog.webcertain.com/do-umlauts-matter-how-to-handle-the-most-annoying-characters-in-german-seo-2/10/04/2014/

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