SEO geolocation vs subdirectories vs local search vs traffic
-
My dear community and friends of MOZ, today I have a very interesting question to you all.
Although I´ve got my opinion, and Im sure many of you will think the same way, I want to share the following dilemma with you.
I have just joined a company as Online Marketing Manager and I have to quickly take a decision about site structure.
The site of the company has just applied a big structure change. They used to have their information divided by country (each country one subdirectory) www.site.com/ar/news www.site.com/us/news . They have just changed this and erased the country subdirectory and started using geolocation. So if we go to www.site.com/news although the content is going to be the same for each country ( it’s a Latinamerican site, all the countries speak the same language except Brazil) the navigation links are going to drive you to different pages according to the country where you are located.
They believe that having less subdirectories PA or PR is going to be higher for each page due to less linkjuice leaking. My guess is that if you want to have an important organic traffic presence you should A) get a TLD for the country you want to targe… if not B)have a subdirectory or subdomain for each country in your site.
I don’t know what local sign could be a page giving to google if the URL and html doesn’t change between countries- We can not use schemas or rich formats neither…So, again, I would suggest to go back to the previous structure. On the other hand…I ve been taking a look to sensacine.com and although their site is pointing only to Spain
| |
| | |
| | |
| | |
| | |
| | |
| | |
| | |They have very good rankings for big volume keywords in all latinamerica, so I just want to quantify this change, since I will be sending to the designers and developers a lot of work
-
Hi.
Normally changing the content but not the URL via scripts is not a good idea in International SEO. A good example of this use is Dropbox, which geolocalize different languages but does not change the URL of its homepage, which remains always dropbox.com.
Regarding Sensacine.com (a site I know well, because I live in Spain), the success it has also in Spanish Latin America is quite surely due to its very good link profile, and surely not to meta tags like:
because these kind of geotargeting metas are not taken into consideration by Google, but only by Yahoo! and Bing (and also for them they are not the most relevant geotargeting signals).
-
I can't seem to figure out your specific question, but I do agree that one news page with dynamic, location-based links will be a more challenging site to rank. Obviously, engines are accustomed to sites for multiple languages and countries. The extra subdirectory is of no real concern to the engines...they "rank pages, not sites" right?
Of course, managing various news pages could be a technical headache, which is prompting this change. That said, I think your approach is going to be easier for search engines (those dynamic links, ouch!). Sadly we have to balance SEO and such with business needs...
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
-
Is there value in including a city name in my keyphrase if my target demo is searching from within that city?
If I'm located in Phoenix, and I search for "mobile app development" it automatically adds an implied "near me" to bring up local results first, right? Therefore, I would assume searching "mobile app development phoenix" would garner the same results. It seems targeting "mobile app development phoenix" as a keyphrase is only valuable if I want people outside of Phoenix to find me when searching for mobile app development. Is it correct that focusing on national keywords/phrases ("mobile app development") will improve my ranking nationally AND in my local market? Links to reputable articles support your answer are much appreciated
Local Website Optimization | | Kitely_Katie1 -
Some of my brand keywords have a suspicious constant search visibility percentage.
Hi, I am having doubts about my search visibility on my brand key words, all of them have a constant rate of 32.50% and don't move up or down in months, even that when I track my site it has a great variety of organic entries each week. what can be the issue, if it's an issue, or why it's the search visibility not changing? Thanks for your responses.
Local Website Optimization | | garcia.meme0 -
Local Business Schema Image requirement
Hello, I work exclusively with Dentists and we have been putting our json schema in the footer for a while now. Just recently they made 'image' a requirement for the Dentist category. We already use the logo in our schema and that is an image. Since the schema is in the footer, it is on every page, and the only image on every page is the logo. Does the image we add to our schema need to be on the actual web page or could it be anything related to the business, like an image of the practice or the dentist? Would it hurt to have the logo listed twice in the schema - once as the logo and once as the image? Trying to figure out what the best thing to do is for the required 'image' field for a dentist. Thanks! Angela
Local Website Optimization | | tntdental0 -
Can I block blexhn30.webmeup.com. Or does it have anything to do with my Moz Local
I am getting alot of hits from blexhn30.webmeup.com. My web host says it could be a web service. Is this part of moz local activity? Otherwise I want to block it. Have you seen this before??
Local Website Optimization | | stephenfishman0 -
Local food delivery SEO strategy
Hey guys, I'm working with a new company that doesn't have a brick and mortar storefront, they deliver. They basically deliver pre packaged smoothies in a VERY localized area (Vancouver, BC). I'm wondering how grandiose their goals should be re ranking for keywords that have non localized authority. What do I mean? Lets say their marketing pillars are "health education related to smoothies" "convenient veggies for smoothies" "(insert health benefit here) for smoothies". Should they be trying to compete for these keywords? Or should they really be trying to rank with keywords especially to Vancouver? Side note: What kind of effect does Country and Locality have on keywords that are generally used by content providers and not service related companies building out an inbound strategy? Thanks in advance!
Local Website Optimization | | Anti-Alex0 -
Removed huge spammy location footer, looking to rebuild traffic the right way
Hello, On this site, I removed a huge spammy location footer with hundreds of cities, states, and dog training types. The traffic and rankings have gone down a lot, and I'd like a discussion on how to rebuild things the right way. There's some local adjustments to be made to the home page content, but other than that: My plans: 1. Analyze top 10 Google analytics keyword queries and work them into the content as best as possible, though I am debating whether the client should make new pages and how many. 2. I'm going to suggest he add a lot of content to the home page, perhaps a story about a dog training that he did in Wisconsin. I'll think about what else. Any advice is appreciated. Thanks.
Local Website Optimization | | BobGW0 -
Server response time: restructure the site or create the new one? SEO opinions needed.
Hi everyone, The internal structure of our existing site increase server response time (6 sec) which is way below Google 0.2sec standards and also make prospects leave the site before it's loaded. Now we have two options (same price): restructure the site's modules, panels etc create new site (recommended by developers)
Local Website Optimization | | Ryan_V
Both options will extend the same design and functionality. I just wanted to know which option SEO community will recommend?0 -
Will subdomains with duplicate content hurt my SEO? (solutions to ranking in different areas)
My client has offices in various areas of the US, and we are working to have each location/area rank well in their specific geographical location. For example, the client has offices in Chicago, Atlanta, Dallas & St Louis. Would it be best to: Set up the site structure to have an individual page devoted to each location/area so there's unique content relevant to that particular office? This keeps everything under the same, universal domain & would allow us to tailor the content & all SEO components towards Chicago (or other location). ( example.com/chicago-office/ ; example.com/atlanta-office/ ; example.com/dallas-office/ ; etc. ) Set up subdomains for each location/area...using the basically the same content (due to same service, just different location)? But not sure if search engines consider this duplicate content from the same user...thus penalizing us. Furthermore, even if the subdomains are considered different users...what do search engines think of the duplicate content? ( chicago.example.com ; atlanta.example.com ; dallas.example.com ; etc. ) 3) Set up subdomains for each location/area...and draft unique content on each subdomain so search engines don't penalize the subdomains' pages for duplicate content? Does separating the site into subdomains dilute the overall site's quality score? Can anyone provide any thoughts on this subject? Are there any other solutions anyone would suggest?
Local Website Optimization | | SearchParty0