Simple question: Is it better to use the correct foreign characters in a url? Or simplify them by removing accents etc? e.g mydomain.com/tjøme/ OR mydomain.com/tjome/
When you target local language like for example Norwegian you should use URLs like mydomain.com/tjøme/ this will help you to come up higher for keywords which are typed in Norwegian into the Google search box. Don't use URLs like mydomain.com/tjome/ as this will not help you in Google.no
I would actually tend to offer the opposite advice! Although I agree that having your exact keywords in your URL can help with SEO, the effect these days is fairly minor compared to other factors - such as building links. And by using 'non-standard' characters in your URL you're increasing the chances of people messing up when linking to you. So I would stick to the standard a-z, 0-9 and - characters for all of my URLs.
Both good points. My site uses URLs generated from a database full of country names including foreign characters. (e.g mydomain.com/tjøme/ mydomain.com/london/ etc). Just say I wanted to use only standard a-z.... Is there a PHP filter I can use to convert these to English alphabet characters? Or are there some foreign characters that don't have a dumbed down "close enough" English character? I guess I could do a massive search and replace in the database if I was really desperate.