Design SEO in a Gender-sensitive Manner

Posted by Luis Andrianto on September 15th, 2021

At the beginning of the masterclass, Wartenberg defined the term gendering: Literally translated, it means social gender, but it means gender-appropriate language. This includes not only female and male, but also non-binary persons. Gendering, however, is not a new phenomenon; it has its origins in the 1970s. A guideline to avoid sexist language was even issued in the 1980s.

The generic masculine, i.e. a person or job title in the masculine form, is still criticized. This should be remedied by gender-appropriate language.

Wartenberg gave examples for the different spellings and showed how Google interprets them. For most forms, such as with a slash or gender asterisk, Google simply abbreviates them and only shows search results in the male address. Even if only the female form is searched, Google will return male search results.

The main problem here lies with the search engines, but with the search terms. For example, the search volume for \"graphic designer\" is 18,100 while for \"graphic designer\" there are only 880 search queries. In particular, certain industries such as banks and insurance companies do without gender-appropriate language.

But how can this be changed in the future? The SEO services gives a valuable tip to bypass the generic masculine word by naming the activity (driving a car) instead of the person (for example the driver).

Google learns from us

Finally, he once again mentions the algorithm on which Google is based. The search engine aims to learn from us. Search engines can only acquire these terms if companies integrate gendering into their web presence. \"The challenge remains that language is changing and change can never really be stopped,\" said Wartenberg.

Gendering in SEO is therefore a bigger task for many companies, but according to the expert it is a completely feasible and worthwhile challenge.