What Is The Impact Of Different Character Sets On SEO?

Story Based Question

You’re managing a global e-commerce website that sells fashion items. Your store has localized versions for different regions, including Russia and China. While optimizing your website for these regions, you realize that Russian and Chinese characters use different character sets (e.g., Cyrillic for Russian and Han characters for Chinese). You’re wondering, how do these different character sets impact your SEO strategy? Will they affect how your website ranks in search engines or the experience of local users?

Exact Answer

Different character sets like Cyrillic and Chinese can impact SEO by affecting keyword targeting, URL structure, and the way search engines index content. Ensure that your website supports these character sets, use localized keywords, and follow best practices for URL encoding to optimize for international users.

Explanation

Character sets like Cyrillic (for languages like Russian) and Chinese (which uses Han characters) are different from Latin characters (used in English and many other languages). These differences affect multiple aspects of SEO, including keyword optimization, URLs, and page indexing.

Here’s how these character sets impact SEO and what you can do to manage them effectively:

1. Keyword Optimization for Non-Latin Languages

When targeting regions that use Cyrillic or Chinese characters, you must adjust your keyword strategy to account for the local language and writing system. Search engines like Google, Baidu, and Yandex will rank pages based on keywords in the target language’s character set.

• Why This Matters: Using the correct character set ensures that search engines can index your content properly, helping it rank for relevant searches in that language.
  • Action: Research and target keywords in the local character set for better visibility in local search engines.
  • Example: In Russian, the term for “fashion” is “мода”. For the Chinese market, the term might be “时尚” (shíshàng).

2. URLs and Encoding

URLs in Cyrillic or Chinese characters can affect SEO in terms of readability and crawlability. While search engines like Google support Unicode, it’s often better for SEO to use URL encoding to ensure that special characters are processed correctly.

• Why This Matters: If you use Cyrillic or Chinese characters directly in URLs, search engines may misinterpret them or cause encoding errors, impacting your SEO performance.
  • Action: It’s recommended to use URL encoding (e.g., %20 for spaces) or Latin character equivalents in URLs.
  • Example: Instead of having a URL like “example.com/мода”, you could encode it as “example.com/%D0%BC%D0%BE%D0%B4%D0%B0”.

3. Search Engine Indexing

Different character sets also influence how search engines index and rank content. For example, Baidu (China’s leading search engine) prioritizes content in Chinese characters, while Yandex (Russia’s primary search engine) handles Cyrillic characters more efficiently.

• Why This Matters: Search engines need to correctly index content based on the local character set. If your website is in Russian but is using incorrect encoding, Yandex may have trouble indexing it, which can impact rankings.
  • Action: Implement language-specific markup (like hreflang tags) to ensure that content in different character sets is indexed and served to the right users.
  • Example:
    • For the Russian market, use hreflang="ru" to indicate the page is targeting Russian-speaking users.
    • For the Chinese market, use hreflang="zh" for simplified Chinese content.

4. Content Readability and User Experience

Supporting different character sets not only helps search engines but also enhances the user experience. A website that uses the correct characters in its content will appear more authentic and trustworthy to local users.

• Why This Matters: If users from Russia or China encounter poorly rendered or incorrect characters on your site, they might leave and go to a competitor.
  • Action: Make sure your website is fully compatible with Cyrillic and Chinese characters in all content areas—titles, descriptions, and body text.
  • Example: On a Russian fashion site, ensure that the titles and descriptions (e.g., “новая коллекция” for “new collection”) are properly displayed and match local language expectations.

Example

Let’s say you’re running an e-commerce site selling clothing, and you want to target the Russian and Chinese markets.

Russian Market Example

You conduct keyword research in Russian and discover that “красная футболка” (red t-shirt) is a popular search term in Russia. You want to target this keyword on your product page.

• Step 1: Use Cyrillic characters in the product title, description, and meta tags.
  • Product Title: “Красная футболка”
  • Description: “Качественная красная футболка для лета”
• Step 2: Encode the URL for proper indexing.
  • URL: example.com/%D0%BA%D1%80%D0%B0%D1%81%D0%BD%D0%B0%D1%8F-%D1%84%D1%83%D1%82%D0%B1%D0%BE%D0%BB%D0%BA%D0%B0

Chinese Market Example

You’re also targeting China, so you optimize your product page for “红色T恤” (red t-shirt in Simplified Chinese).

• Step 1: Use Chinese characters in the product title, description, and meta tags.
  • Product Title: “红色T恤”
  • Description: “舒适的红色T恤，适合夏季穿着”
• Step 2: Encode the URL for Chinese characters.
  • URL: example.com/%E7%BA%A2%E8%89%B2T%E6%81%A4

Hreflang Tags for Both Markets

To ensure Google serves the correct page to users in Russia and China, implement hreflang tags:

<link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”ru” href=”https://example.com/ru/red-tshirt” />
<link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”zh” href=”https://example.com/zh/red-tshirt” />

Different character sets, such as Cyrillic and Chinese, impact SEO by influencing keyword targeting, URL encoding, indexing, and user experience. By ensuring proper localization, using correct character sets for content and URLs, and optimizing for local search engines, you can improve your visibility in Russian and Chinese markets.