International Sites - Sitemaps, Robots & Geolocating in WMT
-
Hi Guys,
I have a site that has now been launched in the US having originally just been UK. In order to accommodate this, the website has been set-up using directories for each country. Example:
As the site was originally set-up for UK, the sitemap, robots file & Webmaster Tools account were added to the main domain. Example:
The question is does this now need changing to make it specific for each country. Example:
The sitemap and robots.txt for the UK would move to:
and the US would have its own separate sitemap and robots.txt. Example :
Also in order to Geolocate this in WMT would this need to be done for each directory version instead of the main domain? Currently the WMT account for the UK site is verified at www.domain.com, would this need reverifying at domain.com/en-gb?
Any help would be appreciated! Thanks!
-
Thanks for the insights. Very helpful. What about the robots.txt, though? Should it stay under http://www.example.com, where crawlers can find the file?
-
Yes, that's how I did it.
-
Thanks for the response, much appreciated.
Would this mean that the sitemap featured at www.domain.com would need to reference each directory version (UK & US etc etc), leaving the en-gb & en-us to reference just their own?
-
Hi, here's what Google officially has to say:
Webmaster Tools data and reporting work best on a site level. For example, if your site http://www.example.com has separate sections for different countries, we recommend adding each of those subsites or subfolders as a separate site. For example, if you have a travel site with specific subfolders covering Ireland, France, and Spain, you could add the following sites to your Webmaster Tools account:
- http://www.example.com
- http://www.example.com/france
- http://www.example.com/ireland
- http://www.example.com/spain
Following this I have solved the exactly the same problem you had for a client. And it works perfectly.
- _The question is does this ["sitemap"] now need changing to make it specific for each country. _What I have done is add the sitemaps for each subdirectory as well as the main domain. It works (tracking and all that) and is easy to do.
- _Also in order to Geolocate this in WMT would this need to be done for each directory version instead of the main domain? _Yes, that is the way to go.
- _Currently the WMT account for the UK site is verified at www.domain.com, would this need reverifying at domain.com/en-gb? _Yes, it does. And so do every other subdirectory you add down the line. That allows precise international targeting per subdirectory via the hreflang and country targeting settings and setting the main GWT site for the root domain to be for global traffic.
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
-
Switch to Separate URL Configurations for International SEO?
We run an ecommerce website and sell to customers in the US and Canada. We recently realized that the way we serve content to our users isn't Google's recommended way. We use locale-adaptive pages in that some content changes slightly depending on where we think the user is located based on their IP address. But the URL doesn't change. Google's stance on locale-adaptive - https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/6144055?hl=en&ref_topic=2370587 That being said, the changes are quite minor. It is usually only pricing and currency that changes depending on if we determine the user to be based in Canada or the US. However, I understand that there can be problems related to this configuration because of GoogleBot primarily using a US-based IP. We decided that the best course of action for us is to serve US content as our default content on all of our existing URLs. And Canadian content would be served using new url paths such as: example.com**/en-ca/**product1. All of this would also be configured to use hreflang tags. The problem we have run into is that it is a pretty huge development challenge to reconfigure how the site serves content when we have been using locale-adaptive for over a year. So developer resources would be taken away from other tasks and put toward this one for a relatively long time. Based on this information and the fact that we would like to both rank better in Canada and to follow Google's recommendations, how important would you say this change would be? I realize this isn't a black and white question and it depends a lot on business goals and preferences. However, I need to be able to gauge as best as I can how necessary it is to do this in order to make the decision of whether to do it or not. Any input is greatly appreciated!
International SEO | | westcoastcraig1 -
Lost local organic rankings and international issues
Hi Everyone, Hoping we can get some help from our fellow Mozzers (Mozee's? Mozites?) We have 3 TLD's .com.au .co.uk & .com We noticed an issue a couple of weeks ago where we suddenly lost a lot of our search rankings for keywords on the .com.au site that we'd been top with for a long time. A lot of our Australian visitors were coming through our US site. US & UK sites got increased ranking results. We fixed up what we thought were the issues (Potentially HREF Lang issues and old sitemap issues). Google Search Console is still telling us we have some HREF Lang Errors, (but this could be waiting an updated crawl as the number is decreasing) Our main domain example.com is now showing up as first result in google.com.au search and the example.com.au doesn't show up until page 4 (prior to 2 weeks ago it was number 1) Any input would be appreciated...
International SEO | | tinyme0 -
Naming URL for Russian version of the site
Hi, Our site has two languages: English and Russian. My question is that should I use Cyrillic letters in the URL structure and file naming of the Russian version of the site, as Russian users are searching for information by using Russian words not English words? Thanks in advance, Sam
International SEO | | Awaraman0 -
Best practice for WPML, Yoast and sitemap for google
Hi Mozzers, I have a wordpress installation and work on a hotel website in three different languages: English, German, Spanish. In order to manage each language as a regional or global website, I started to give the website the names like: de.hotelnamen.com, es.hotelname.com (Hotel is in Costa Rica, maybe cr.hotelname.com is even better???) and hotelname.com. The possibility of WPML to manage my multilingual blog is good and the Yoast plugin gives me the sitemaps I want for each language. Because it is a hotel I have to have a global page which should serve the world if they try to find the hotel, right? That's why i put hotelname.com as a global page in English and registered the sitemaps and page on my webmaster account in countries as "not listed". For de.hotelname.com I choose Germany on another webmaster account and for es.hotelname.com Costa Rica (the country in which the Hotel is located). Unfortunately, after three month I don't receive good results with that methode. The hotelname.com adress is always the page which comes up in all search engines. I my tactic wrong? Where is my mistake? I would like to have hotelname.com in the rankings of all search engines beside of google Germany because for the German market I have the German version. Same in Costa Rica. Thanks for some ideas...
International SEO | | reisefm0 -
International Link Building - France, Spain, Germany, Italy, Switzerland
I've got a partner agency (non-SEO) in Europe who wants to send some additional SEO business our way, but I don't currently have a system in place geared specifically towards international, country specific link building. Does anyone know of any resources (blogs, lists, tools) specifically geared towards getting links from country specific TLDs for France, Spain, Germany, Italy and Switzerland? (.fr, .es, .de, .it and .ch are the TLDs.) .co.uk sources would also be handy. A list of potential link building sources in those countries would be most helpful. I fully understand the SEO elements in play for international SEO, I just don't have any decent resource lists for those specific countries. Sites in those countries that accept guest blog posts, language specific infographic sites, foreign PR platforms, high-quality non-penalized directories...really anything would be awesome! Thanks in advance folks!
International SEO | | Point_It0 -
International (foreign language) URL's best practices
I'm curious if there is a benefit or best practice with regards to using the localized language on international sites (with specific ccTLDs). For example, should my french site (site.fr) use the french language as keywords within the URLs or should they be in english? e.g. www.site.fr/nourriture vs. www.site.fr/food Is that considered best practice for SEO (or just for brand perception those markets?). Is there a tangible loss in SEO if we do not use the correct language for those URLs and just stick with English around the world? I recall seeing a Matt Cutts video on the topic and he said that google does support i18n URL's but other SE's might not support them as gracefully but he didn't come down with a hard recommendation to go with i18n URL's or just English. Would love a strong ruling in favor one direction based on best practices.
International SEO | | mongillo0 -
How do I successfully verify my site for Baidu's webmaster tools?
Instructions for verifying a website via file validation for Baidu's webmaster tools are pretty vague. Does anyone know if the process is the same as Google Webmaster Tools where the verification string must appear in the URL and in the content of the file? Also, does it truly have to be verified within 2.6 hours? Appreciate any feedback from people who have successfully verified their site.
International SEO | | sigmaaldrich0 -
Anchor text for international SEO
HI I am looking to rank sites in multiple foreign search engines. I am thinking about the anchor text strategies I need to employ. My key phrase: golfschläger (golf club) I am targeting a German page (written in German). Would Google understand that if I use the anchor text “golf club” to my German “golfschläger” page, it is infact the same word and therefore give anchor text benefits to that page, or for anchor text benefits to pass does the anchor text have to be in the same language? thanks for any help!!!!
International SEO | | Turkey0