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In this new site i’m building one of my main keywords is an abbreviation. As i’ve learned in this great community from members such as grahamstewart and papabaer, the way to go is to write proper markup, so i have <abbr title="keyword meaning">abbreviated keyword</abbr>. But how does SE interpret an abbreviation?
Google and AlltheWeb show different results for FBI and Federal Bureau of Investigation, so, IT makes a difference to write all the definition, just the uppercase, or just using the abbr tag.
I would expect that using the abbr tag would give you exact the same exposure if the search term uses:
However, i don’t think this is true. I know that the most used keyword is the abbreviation, and not the definition; so, what do you people suggest me using in my content from a SEO perspective, just the uppercase letters or really using correct markup with the abbr tag?
Any commentaries are welcome :)
This is an interesting question, but I don't know the answer.
For now, I think it would be best to include all the common forms of any given abbreviation in the plain text of your pages, and not rely on the search engines doing anything special with the <abbr> tag. You can have the expanded text for the abbreviation show up as a "tooltip" on hover as an aid to your visitors, but don't rely on it for anything search-engine-wise. I suspect you'll get whatever credit the search engine usually gives to text in a title attribute, but nothing more.
In the future, search engines may actually use the <abbr> data for special advanced-search purposes, but right now, I think most do not.
Jim
initialism
An abbreviation of a phrase consisting of the initial letter of each word in the phrase; distinguishable from an acronym in that it is not pronounced as a single word; for example B.B.C., C.I.A.
You can read through the recent discussion here...
Using <acronym> - What purpose does it serve? [webmasterworld.com]
From there you'll find links to various resources that discuss the use of both <acronym> and <abbr>. It appears that support for <abbr> is not as widespread as support for <acronym> (IE does not support the <abbr> at all). Get ready for information overload! Now you need to determine what is an acronym and what is an abbreviation. That is where the confusion lies.
The use of these two tags is strictly from an accessiblity standpoint. Although some of the articles make reference to indexing by search engine spiders. Whether or not the major SE's take these into consideration is still in question.
In regards to accessibility, you would be doing your users a great service in helping them to understand abbreviations and acronyms as they are referenced in your content. Then, through the use of style sheets you can specify how the user agent should react to instances of <acronym> and <abbr>.
acronym{speak:normal;}
abbr.initialism{speak:spell-out;}
<abbr title="Cascading Style Sheets" class="initialism">CSS</abbr>
jdMorgan brings up a good point...
For now, I think it would be best to include all the common forms of any given abbreviation in the plain text of your pages, and not rely on the search engines doing anything special with the <abbr> tag.
<added>
Google benefits. Google indexes the acronym title as well as the acronym itself, so people can find your site whether they search for the acronym or the spelled-out description.
I cannot confirm that the above statement is true. But, it comes from a fairly reputable resource in the web accessibility community.
