Language/country redirect best practice?
-
Hi,
What is SEO best practice when it comes to redirecting users from www.domain.com to their specific language/country, let's say www.domain.com/de for Germany?
From what I heard in on of the whiteboard fridays, it seems to be Javascript based on IP and browser language, and then set a cookie - correct?
Or should we let our users manually select their language/country at the first visit?
Any suggestion appreciated, thanks!
-
I recommend avoiding javascript redirects as they can be considered cloaking.
Here's an idea: show the English language homepage by default, but determine the user's preferred language (from the accept-language header sent by the browser). If your site supports the identified language, include & display a hyperlinked text-box/graphic-banner suggesting the visitor "view this site in {the user's identified language}" which links to the homepage for that language.
Useful links for reference:
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
What is the best practice to seperate different locations and languages in an URL? At the moment the URL is www.abc.com/ch/de. Is there a better way to structure the URL from an SEO perspective?
I am looking for a solution for using a new URL structure without using www.abc.com**/ch/de** in the URL to deliver the right languages in specific countries where more than one language are spoken commonly. I am looking forward to your ideas!
Technical SEO | | eviom0 -
Redirecting the .com of our site
Hey guys, A company I consult for has a different site for its users depending on the geography. Example: When a visitor goes to www.company.com if the user is from the EU, it gets redirected to http://eu.company.com If the user is from the US, it goes to http://us.company.com And so on. I have two questions: Does having a redirect on the .com will influence rankings on each specific sub-site? I suspect it will affect the .com since it will simply not get indexed but not sure if affects the sub domains. The content on this sub-sites are not different (I´m still trying to figure out why they are using the sub-domains). Will they get penalized for duplicate content? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | FDSConsulting0 -
IP redirects
My website, on a .com domain, displays a different language/content depending on the IP of the user. For example, if someone is browsing my web from Spain, it will show the spanish content, and so on. Does anyone has an idea on how will Google index my pages? Their servers being located in the US, I assume the bot will only crawl and index the english content. How can I tell the bots to do the same for the other languages/content? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | Alemoto0 -
Redirects 301
Hello, I need to reedirect a URL of a page that I have in my site (http://digitaldiscovery.com.pt/servicos-de-marketing-digital/publicidade-online/) to a new URL with SEO porpuses. Whats the best way to this? I use Wordpress btw. Tks in advance! PP
Technical SEO | | PedroM0 -
Local SEO best practices for multiple locations
When dealing with local search for a business with multiple locations, I've always created an individual page for each location. Aside from the address and business name being in there, I also like to make sure the title tag and other important markup features the state/city/suburb, or, in the case of hyper-local, hyper-competitive markets, information more specific than that. It's worked very well so far. But, the one thing you can always count on with Local is that the game keeps changing. So I'd like to hear what you think... How do you deal with multiple locations these days? Has Google (and others, of course) advanced far enough to not mess things up if you put multiple locations on the same page? (Do I hear snickers? Be nice now) How does Schema.org fit in to your tactics in this area, if at all? Cheers (Edit: dear SEOmoz, stop eating my line breaks)
Technical SEO | | BedeFahey0 -
Do search engines treat 307 redirects differently from 302 redirects?
We will need to send our users to an alternate version of our homepage for a few hours for a certain event. The SEO task at hand is to minimize the chance of the special homepage getting crawled and cached in the search engines in place of our normal homepage. (This has happened in the past so the concern is not imaginary.) Among other options, 302 and 307 redirects are being discussed. IE, redirecting www.domain.com to www.domain.com/specialpage. Having used 302s and 301s in the past, I am well aware of how search engines treat them. A 302 effectively says "Hey, Google! Please get rid of the old content on www.domain.com and replace it with the content on /specialpage!" Which is exactly what we don't want. My question is: do the search engines handle 307s any differently? I am hearing that the 307 does NOT result in the content of the second page being cached with the first URL. But I don't see that in the definition below (from w3.org). Then again, why differentiate it from the 302? 307 Temporary Redirect The requested resource resides temporarily under a different URI. Since the redirection MAY be altered on occasion, the client SHOULD continue to use the Request-URI for future requests. This response is only cacheable if indicated by a Cache-Control or Expires header field. The temporary URI SHOULD be given by the Location field in the response. Unless the request method was HEAD, the entity of the response SHOULD contain a short hypertext note with a hyperlink to the new URI(s) , since many pre-HTTP/1.1 user agents do not understand the 307 status. Therefore, the note SHOULD contain the information necessary for a user to repeat the original request on the new URI. If the 307 status code is received in response to a request other than GET or HEAD, the user agent MUST NOT automatically redirect the request unless it can be confirmed by the user, since this might change the conditions under which the request was issued.
Technical SEO | | CarsProduction0 -
Best Way to Handle - International Content - Different Language
Our site currently is focused in the USA and the entire site is in the English language. We have considered broadening our scope to include content from foreign countries - i.e. Brazil. What is the best way to approach this -- can we use our existing domain and just have a specific section of the site that is dedicated to a particular Country with content translated into that Country's predominant language? OR could this create SEO issues -- having a domain with both English and some other language? Would it be better to have this on a totally different domain with Country extension? This is totally foreign territory for me - bad pun intended. Any advice, help would be appreciated. Thanks. Matt
Technical SEO | | MWM37720 -
Implications of hosting country versus actual trading country?
Unbeknown to me our web developers have hosted our UK e-commerce site (and only serving the UK & outer islands) on a US based server. Can this impact our SEO efforts? My further concern is when it comes to sending out emails and opt-in regulations - I am right to be concerned about this as well?
Technical SEO | | PH292
Thanks1