Multilingual SEO subdirectories structure
-
Hi,
I have to optimize a domain for Google for 3 languages (.com with subdirectories)(Dutch, German and English) content is only served on domain.com/nl, .com/de and .com/en NO CONTENT is served on domain.com.
How do I exclude domain.com from getting in Google? Because there is no content on the top level only on subdirectories.Is there a rule we have to add to htaccess? Or Robots.txt by disallow all and next lines allow /nl, allow /de and allow /en?
Thanks a lot!
Kind regards,
Alain Nijholt
-
Why don't you use the domain.com to serve a "choose language" page - store the choice in the cookie and for subsequent visits redirect to the chosen language. Example: http://www.volvocars.com. This is a pretty standard approach in Belgium to serve both Dutch/French content on the same domain.
rgds,
Dirk
-
No problem.
Consider .nl as main domain as well.
-
Never thought about serving the dutch content on .com and not .com/nl Just because I find it looks strange, and I am more a fan of multilingual SEO with .nl, .de and the .com for English. The reason why we have subdirectories is because of the links, rankings etcetera. Maybe in a existent situation Dutch language on .com isn't that strange (if I look at it in an other way).
Well thanks you've helped me sofar, I will ask on Dutch communities before I'll decide.
Cheers!
-
I say go with your main language on main domain. So, in your case it'd be Dutch.
Personally, since you really want Dutch to be main one, I'd have yourdomain.nl as main domain and then put different language versions in subfolders. Of course, it'll depend on current rankings, links and so on.
-
Well the case is that the main market is not English but Dutch. I had the Enlish content served on the main domain. And in practice the main domain ranks the strongest and I was faced with the head domain ranking stronger than the prefered domain .com/nl So I chose to put the English content on .com/en and my this ranking issue was solved.
It feels better to serve the English content on main domain, but with Dutch language as main language this situation occurs. But would you also choose in this Dutch situation to serve the English content on the main domain and suggest I have to build more and better links to outperform the main domain to prevent it from ranking above .com/nl?
Thanks,
-
Well, I would have an international version (usually english) on main domain and then put other languages into subdirectories.
There are lots of good content about international SEO in MOZ community - https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=moz%20international%20seo
You might wanna check those out, see what people say. You'll most likely find useful info
-
Well you've mentioned "even though the way you want to do it is a bit strange"
So I am curious how did you apply this yourself on a multilingual domain with subdirectories? Did you? And what would be the "other way" the one you find less strange?
Thanks,
-
Why is it an issue? That would do exactly what you're asking for (as far as i understand). It would let crawlers to see that domain is indeed existent, they can touch it, taste it and so on. But it won't be in google SERPs. At the same time you still can have JS, htaccess rules or whatever to redirect to proper subdirectory based on locale.
-
Hi Dimitri,
Well I am sorry, I was wrong. Indeed you wrote noindex follow.
Still I find that a bit strange way to solve this issue. How do you handle this issue in a multiligual subdirectories structure?
-
Sorry, i meant noindex follow.
-
Hi Dimitri,
Thanks for your quick response!
Well that is strange! I would never try the noindex,nofollow on the top level domain. Not in my wildest dreams
Is there an other solution, one that makes sense? Do not want to kill the domain in Google
Thanks,
-
Hello, my friend.
Well, even though the way you want to do it is a bit strange, the answer is to use meta robots. noindex follow. It needs to be in head tag like so:
<title>...</title>
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
-
Archive pages structure using a unique hierarchical taxonomy, could be good for SEO?
Hi, Preamble:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | danielecelsa
We are creating a website where people look for professionals for some home working. We want to create a homepage with a search bar where people write the profession/category (actually it is a custom taxonomy) that they need, like ‘plumbers’, and a dropdown/checkbox filter where they can choose the city where they need the plumber.
The result page is a list of plumber agencies in the city chosen. Each agency is a Custom Post Type for us. Furthermore, we are hardly working to make our SEO ranking as high as possible.
So, for example, we know that it is important to have a well-done Archive Page for each Taxonomy term, besides a well-done Results Page.
Also, we know it is bad for SEO to have duplicated pages or (maybe) similar pages, ranking for the same (or maybe also similar) keywords. Proposed Structure:
So, what we are thinking is to have this structure:
A unique hierarchical taxonomy that INCLUDES the City AND the profession! That means that our taxonomy ‘taxonomy_unique’ has terms like: ‘Rome’, ‘Paris’, ‘Dublin’ as father and also terms like ‘Plumbers’, ‘Gardeners’, ‘Electricians’ which are sons of some City father! So we will have the term 'Plumbers' son of 'Rome' and we will have also the term 'Plumbers' son of 'Paris'. Each of these two taxonomy terms (Rome/Plumbers and Paris/Plumbers) will have an archive page that we want to make ranking for the keywords ‘Plumbers in Rome’ and ‘Plumbers in Paris’ respectively. It is easier to think of it imagining the breadcrumbs. They will be:
Home > Rome > Plumbers
and
Home > Paris > Plumbers Both will have: a static content (important for SEO), where we describe the plumber profession with a focus on the city, like ‘Find the best Plumbers in Rome’ vs ‘Find the best Plumbers in Paris' a 'dynamic' content - below - that is a list of Custom Post Types which have that taxonomy term associated. Furthermore, also 'Rome' and 'Paris' are taxonomy terms that have their own archive page. In those pages, we are thinking to show the Custom Post Types (agencies) associated with that taxonomy term as a father OR maybe just a list of the 'sons' of that father, so links to those archive pages 'sons').
In both cases, there should be also a static content talking maybe about the city and the professionals it offers in general. Questions:
So what we would like to understand is: Is it bad from an SEO perspective to have 2 URLs that look like this:
www.mysite.com/Rome/Plumbers
and
www.mysite.com/Naples/Plumbers
where the static content is really similar and it is something like that:
“Are you looking for the best plumbers in the city of Rome”
and
“Are you looking for the best plumbers in the city of Naples”? Also, these kinds of pages will be much more than 2, one for each City.
We are doing that because we want the two different pages to rank high in two different cities, but we are not sure if Google likes that. On the other hand, each City will have one page for each kind of job, so:
www.mysite.com/Rome/Plumbers
www.mysite.com/Rome/Gardeners
www.mysite.com/Rome/Electricians
So the same question, does Google like this or not? About 'Rome' and 'Paris' archive pages, does Google prefer a list of Custom Post Types that have that father term associated as taxonomy, or a list of the archive pages 'sons', with links to those pages? What do you think about this approach? Do you think this structure could be good from an SEO perspective, or maybe there could be something better alternatively? Hoping everything is clear, we really appreciate anyone dedicating its time and leaving feedback.
Daniele0 -
SEO Migration Options
Hi Guys, We have a www.sitename.com.au domain name and looking to move into the US market, and other markets in the future such as UK, Canada, etc. We are reviewing our options. Currently the .com.au is ccTLD to Australia so won't perform well in US. It seems the best option at this stage is to get a generic domain Generic top-level domains (gTLDs) like a .com. Then create different sub-folders for each country for example: .com our main country .com/us/ target us .com/uk/ Then in Google Search Console don't set country targeting for entire domain but use Hreflang Tags to specify the targeting for each page? -- This seems like a complex strategy to execute so i just want to check if this would be a optional option? Any suggestions would be very much appreciated! Cheers.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | cerednicenko0 -
Why is hosting good for SEO?
I've heard a few people mention this now. I have seen hosting packages range from £5 to £1000 per month, and I understand that each comes with their own amounts of storage space, bandwidth and all. Now I understand that page speed is important to SEO and the type of hosting will dictate your page speed, but other than this why is hosting important to SEO?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | moon-boots0 -
Pagination, Javascript & SEO
Hi I need some help identifying whether we need to rethink the way we paginated product pages, On this page http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/workbenches when clicking page 1,2, etc - we have javascript to sort the results, the URL displayed and the URL linked to are different. e.g. The URL for these paginated pages is for example: page2 http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/workbenches#productBeginIndex:30&orderBy:5&pageView:list& Then the arrows either side of pagination, link to the paginated landing page e.g. http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/workbenches?page=3 - this is where the rel/prev details are - done for Google However - when clicking on this arrow, the URL loaded is different again - http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/workbenches#productBeginIndex:60&orderBy:5&pageView:list& & doesn't take you http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/workbenches?page=3 I did not set this up, but I am concerned that the URL http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/workbenches?page=3 never actually loads, but it's linked to Google can crawl it. Is this a problem? I am looking to implement a view all option. Thank you
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey0 -
Meta refresh bad for SEO
Hi there, Some external developers have created a wishlist for a website that allows visitors to add products to a wishlist and then send an enquiry. Very similar set-up to a shopping basket really (without the payment option). However, this wishlist lives in a separate iframe and refreshes every 30 seconds to reflect any items visitors add to their wishlist. This refreshing is done with a meta refresh. I'm aware of the obvious usability issue that the visitor's product only appears after 30 seconds in their wishlist. However, are there also any SEO issues due to the refreshing of the iframe every 30 seconds? Please let me know, whether small or large issues.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Robbern0 -
Video SEO for Google
I was wondering what the prime factors were to make something rank for a video on Google. Does anyone have any suggestions? I think that length may be important, but I don't know what the ideal run time is. Hypothetically for local SEO, would I be better off doing a tag like "Mercedes Buffalo NY" or do individual tags of "Mercedes" and "Buffalo" Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | oomdomarketing0 -
Page Speed Factors For SEO
Hey Guys, I have developed a page and optimised it. I have got a dilemma, I have 2 variants of the optimised page I could use. The page is responsive and uses bootstrap from an external CDN. The 2 variants: External CDN - This is adding an an extra request and is delivering the entire framework (not ideal for mobile) I've looked in the node/grunt.js route (+unCSS) to remove redundant CSS, which led me to my next variant. Inline CSS. After doing some grunt.js work I shaved out the redundant code from the framework then added it inline. I will also point out that all assets are optimised, all CSS/JS/HTML is minifed. In terms for score the 1st variant is less than the second, but I believe that most users of the internet already have bootstrap cached due to it being so common. The ultimate question comes down to ranking, I'm not entirely sure where I draw the line between development and SEO (I will also ask in Stack Overflow). Which one would rank better? all other factors being equal.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AkashMakwana0 -
SEO Landing Page Fail
We have a PPC landing page template that I've used to aggregate blog post collections thematically. http://www.ietravel.com/machu-picchu-travel http://www.ietravel.com/kenya-and-tanzania-safari The hope was that they would start ranking. After 5 months, it has yet to happen.Thought it was a good idea at the time because these pages have a nice prominent call-to-action area. It now occurs to me that the pages are probably under-performing because they are not incorporated into the main site navigation. Do you think that if I move these under their appropriate categories in the main site I'll see some lift? (Of course, I will add 301 redirects as well.) Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | csmithal0