: What is the best way to handle special characters for Google searches? For example, originally my name is Denny Müller but I have used Denny Mueller for many years. This is common practice
For example, originally my name is Denny Müller but I have used Denny Mueller for many years. This is common practice in Germany and it has the same meaning but with a different way of writing it.
I like to write it my name with ue but in Germany it is usually ü. Also my domain is with ue and it's easy to find at Google if I look for denny mueller. But anyone in Germany looking for my name would write it with ü and it is impossible to find in Google.
Is there a preferred way to handle this double layout?
Edit: google.de works fine but not on google.com.
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The results from .de and .com Google are expected to vary. If you want to rank well on the .com then your website needs tweaking.
Do not write your content in German
Do not write titles, alts, tags, metas in German
Ideally don't use a .de domain, but not required.
The .com of Google is associated with English speaking sites. 'WEBENTWICKLER UND DESIGNER' for example will not help you in getting remarkable Google rankings on the .com.
Additionally the sites beating your rankings are offering more content than you, or they have more authority and age. While the competitors for the phrase "Denny Mueller" have better rankings the pages are not very strong. Adding more than just social links to your website, i.e. write some content about yourself on the site, will increase your rankings as well as off page SEO such as backlinks with the anchors "your name".
Google usually maps ü and ue and searching for Danny Müller just a second ago, I see your website on 5th place just behind some Facebook profiles and some image search results:
Google Search
That's true for google.de but I just tested google.com in English and it seems like Google is mapping ü=>u and thus not showing your website.
To solve this you might need more content and to include a different writing of your lastname e.g. Müller or Muller somewhere in the page. Maybe just in the meta description. Meta keywords won't help on Google, so Müller as you put there will not work.
I just saw that you put lang="en" may be changing this to de and telling Google this will help. I would also set the following meta tags:
<meta http-equiv="content-language" content="de">
<meta http-equiv="language" content="de">
<meta name="language" content="de">
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