Country domain: Seo for other languages
-
Hi,
I have an italian domain (.it) for an italian hotel, it is an old authoritative domain (1997) and it is well optimized for the keywords that include the city the hotel is in, now the page is decently positioned in Google Italy.
There are many problems to have the same rank for German version (in google.de, google.at). The German version is in the /de folder.
The hotel has another .com domain, much less authoritative (2007), in a German server, but it was and is only a simple redirect 301 (by code) to the German version in the .it domain. (obviously the rank for this domain is almost nonexistent).
Do you have any suggestion? Thank you.
-
Ah, I apologise. I knew someone from South America who targeted a .co (Colombia's TLD) subfolder to Brazil, so I thought it was okay to do that for others. I've just looked it up and Google started to allow .co to be geotargeted in 2010, so I must have missed that. The clues are even in at least one of those links I provided. Slaps forehead
I don't think you want to mess with 301 redirecting the .it to a .com and risk losing some of the authority that's built up - would you say there's also a chance Italians prefer to click to a .it rather than a .com? Do you see yourself expanding to target other countries in future? If so it might be worth using the .com and geotargeting a .com/de, .com/fr etc. You also have to consider whether you have the resources to keep more than one website updated.
Other than that I can only think it's best to continue in your current form and do everything else you can to get the /de ranking higher in German speaking countries - obviously the language (use a native to write your content as well as help with the keyword research), and if possible include an address based in the country you're targeting on localised pages, is it possible to include some German information on your Google Places listing (if you don't have one, set one up!)?
Get inbound local links (maybe encourage German-speaking visitors to post on local review sites?) and get listed on every review, booking and tourist information site you can in the target country. Maybe you could get some German travel guides written for your city if you haven't already, perhaps something that could act as link-bait if there's anything unique or quirky you could come up with (a top 10?) or get guest posts written for German-speaking sites with a link to your /de subfolder?
The upside of doing this over the .com solution is all the links you get from Germany etc. will go towards the overall Domain Authority, rather than it being spread between the .com and .it. Of course all this helps even if you can geotarget.
-
When I add www.example.it/de/ to my GWT sites, it don't ask about verification (because the main domain was already verificated**).**
In Setting/Geo Target there is:
Destinazione geografica Il dominio del tuo sito è già associato alla destinazione: Italia
Translated: Geo target the domain is already associated to target: Italy
the same is for the root domain.
Geo target is only for generic domains (and some other particular domain)
bye
-
I'm not sure I understand what you're saying - it is possible.
When you add a site in Google Webmaster Tools, just add http://www.example.it/de/ as the site and upload the verification file (if you verify that way) to the de folder.
-
Have you targeted the /de folder to Germany (assuming Germany is your preference over Austria) in Google Webmaster Tools?
No, unlucky it is not possible for Country domains.
Did the .com used to be the German version of the site?
No, there is only the index.html 301 redirected on the domain.it/de
Thank you for the links.
-
Have you targeted the /de folder to Germany (assuming Germany is your preference over Austria) in Google Webmaster Tools? That will help immensely. You need to add it as a new site. It'll also help if you get links from the countries you want to target.
Did the .com used to be the German version of the site?
Here are some (I'd say must-view) links on the subject of international SEO:
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2010/03/working-with-multi-regional-websites.html
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/international-seo-where-to-host-and-how-to-target-whiteboard-fridayYou can also make use of the meta lang and country attributes and have a native German speaker check over the content if you haven't already.
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
-
'domain:example.com/' is this line with a '/' at the end of the domain valid in a disavow report file ?
Hi everyone Just out of curiosity, what would happen if in my disavow report I have this line : domain:example.com**/** instead of domain:example.com as recommended by google. I was just wondering if adding a / at the end of a domain would automatically render the line invalid and ignored by Google's disavow backlinks tool. Many thanks for your thoughts
Technical SEO | | LabeliumUSA0 -
AJAX and SEO
Hello team, Need to bounce a question off the group. We have a site that uses the .NET AJAX tool kit to toggle tabs on a page. Each tab has content and the content is drawn on page load. In other words, the content is not from an AJAX call, it is there from the start. The content sits in DIV tags which the javascript toggles - that's all. My customer hired an "SEO Expert" who is telling them that this content is invisible to search engines. I strongly disagree and we're trying to come to a conclusion. I understand that content rendered async via an AJAX call would not be spidered, however just using the AJAX (Javascript) to switch tabs will not affect the spiders finding the content in the markup. Any thoughts?
Technical SEO | | ChrisInColorado0 -
SEO for sub domains
I've recently started to work on a website that has been previously targeting sub domain pages on its site for its SEO and has some ok rankings. To better explain, let me give an example...A site is called domainname.com. And has subdomains that they are targeted for seo (i.e. pageone.domainname.com, pagetwo.domainname.com, pagethree.domianname.com). The site is going through a site re-development and can reorganise its pages to another URL. What would be best way to approach this situation for SEO? Ideally, I'm tempted to recommend that new targeted pages be created - domainname.com/pageone, domainname.com/pagetwo, domainname.com/pagethree, etc - and to perform a 301 redirect from the old pages. Does a subdomain page structure (e.g. pageone.domainname.com) have any negative effects on SEO? Also, is there a good way to track rankings? I find that a lot of rank checkers don't pick up subdomains. Any tips on the best approach to take here would be appreciated. Hope I've made sense!
Technical SEO | | Gavo0 -
Blog.domain or domain.com/blog
My client can't do domain.com/blog because he's on wix. I'm thinking blog.domain.com. Do you have any resources for the pros and cons of this? I understand that google looks at them very similarly now, is that true for google +?
Technical SEO | | tylerfraser0 -
Buying Expired Domains
Recently i was looking to buy some good quality Expired Domains. But while performing site and links query on such domains in google, none of the domains are showing any links or pages indexed in Google but the same domains are showing hundreds of links in opensiteexplorer for that domains. So does Google has started devaluing expired domains or will expired domains recover all their rankings after re registration by us.
Technical SEO | | amit910 -
Change of domain name?
Hello, We are currently developing a new site for an existing online clothing retailer. The existing site is on a .co.uk domain, however we are targeting a global market and wondered whether we could/should launch the new site under a .com address and whether this would be beneficial? Most of our back links come from Affiliate blogs and we could quite easily change these to the new URL. Thanks Bilal
Technical SEO | | PLP1 -
Domain redirect seo
Hello, my domain www.pacomarca.com and when i start the new campaing i get this pronblem: We have detected that the domain www.pacomarca.com and the domain pacomarca.com both respond to web requests and do not redirect. Having two "twin" domains that both resolve forces them to battle for SERP positions, making your SEO efforts less effective. We suggest redirecting one, then entering the other here. my domain is in networksolutions.com. how can i resolve it? many thanks Gonzalo
Technical SEO | | Kuna0 -
Accidently did a 301 redirect on root domain and lost domain keyword position
I just bought a domain about a week ago and instantly ranked number 4 for for my keywords with the domain keyword bonus. I created a landing page off the root of my domain while I'm building out my main site. I accidentally did a 301 redirect instead of a 302 from my root to my landing paging and this resulted in me losing my position and only being about to find my domain in the google if I searched for my domain specifically. Anyway to regain my original position? I have removed the redirect. Have I been put in the sandbox?
Technical SEO | | JohnTurner790