International Sites
-
Hi Guys
Just wanting to get some feedback on best practices for international website.
The main website is a .co.uk there looking to target France & Belgium. The web hosting is UK based.
Do we replicate the UK site and translate to local language but use a .fr domain and have 3 versions of the websites on 3 separate domains? or do just use the co.uk with french & Belgium translation have pages related to those countries?
Any assistance will be appreciated
-
Hi Logan,
Thanks for your response. Yes, I also agree however it's important that websites are maintained separately, that's why I suggested checking whether the person who asked the question has the resources to maintain them strategically.
https://moz.com/learn/seo/international-seo
Regards,
Vijay
-
Hi,
According to Moz, ccTLDs are the single strongest way to show search engines and users where the site originates. So I would recommend purchasing a .fr and .be version of the domain and replicating the site on each with translated content. You can and should also specify geography in Search Console.
Additionally, you'll also want to apply hreflang tags on each page. The goal of hreflang is to serve the right content to the right users. It'll help each country-specific version of Google index the right content, i.e. your www.site.fr content will stay in google.fr and so on.
-
International targeting, How you wish to go about this is going to be a strategic decision, because there are a couple of ways that lead to almost similar results. The decision is going to be strategic, as you will have to maintain the future SEO of the website(s) based on this decision.
This is from my personal experience, although Google asks you to choose a target country, yet you can still rank higher in other countries using off-page strategies. This means first preference is given to what you defined as a target but if Google finds your website appropriate for other country audience, it won’t shy away from showing you on those country SERPs. As for the getting sub-domain or an entirely new website, the decision is up to you, whether you will be able to maintain the SEO for the different websites in sync with each other. You can also have sub-folder for each target country, choice is yours.
As per Google Webmaster documentation for International Targeting
- On the International Targeting report, click the Country tab.
- Check the Geographic target checkbox and choose your country target. If you want to ensure that your site is not associated with any country or region, selectUnlisted in the drop-down list.
Google Search returns the most relevant and useful sites for a user. Because of this, search results can differ between a user in Ireland and a user in France. If your site has a generic top-level domain, such as .com or .org, you can help us determine which countries are most important to you. If your site has a country-coded top-level domain (such as .ie or .fr) it is already associated with a geographic region (in this example, Ireland or France). If you use a country-coded domain, you won't be able to specify a geographic location. You can specify a target country in the International Targeting report.
How do we determine location without Search Console?
If no information is entered in Search Console, Google relies largely on the site's country domain (such as .ca, .de). If you use an international domain (.com, .org, .eu), we'll rely on several signals, including IP address, location information on the page, links to the page, and any relevant information from Google My Business. If you change hosting provider for a country domain, there should be no impact. If you change the hosting provider of an international domain to a provider in another country, we recommend using Search Console to tell us which country your site should be associated with.
Source : https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/62399?hl=en
-
Hi,
That would primarily depend on the goals of the sites / sub-domains.
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
-
Best practices around translating quotes for international sites?
I'm working on a site that has different versions of the same page in multiple languages (e.g., English, Spanish, French). Currently, they feature customer testimonial quotes on some pages and the quotes are in English, even if the rest of the page is in another language. I'm curious to know what are best practices around how to treat client quotes on localized languages pages. A few approaches that we're contemplating: 1. Leave the quote in English and don't translate (because the customer quoted doesn't speak the localized language). 2. Leave the on-page quote in English, but provide a "translate" option for the user to click to see the translated version. The translated text would be hidden until the "translate" button is selected. 3. Go ahead and translate the quote into the local language. Appreciate your thoughts, thank you!
Local Website Optimization | | Allie_Williams0 -
Server was banned, now all sites have dropped ranking.
Hi, I'm new here 🙂 I look after half a dozen sites on the one server. Early January three of those Wordpress sites were hacked and reported for phishing. All sites have been cleaned and the report(s) removed but they are all ranking much lower than previously. I also added IP block to the sites to limit the traffic to Australia and New Zealand as these are all local small businesses. I checked IP reputation for the server and it is neutral, with no blacklisting showing. I checked with the hosting company and they have no bans or warnings on the server either. These sites were ranking ok, usually first or second page but they have all dropped down to page 5 or worse now. Is there anything else I should check? I have resubmitted the sites to Google a few days ago. Any guidance greatly appreciated. I a web designer so I know a little about SEO but this is beyond me.
Local Website Optimization | | MarkNWD0 -
International subdirectory without localized content - best practice / need advice
Hi there, Our site uses a subdirectory for regional and multilingual sites as show below for 200+ countries.
Local Website Optimization | | erinfalwell
EX: /en_US/ All sites have ~the same content & are in English. We have hreflang tags but still have crawl issues. Is there another URL structure you would recommend? Are there any other ways to avoid the duplicate page & crawl budget issues outside of the hreflang tag? Appreciate it!0 -
Different variations of my site (www ; non www ; https ; http) have different authority status
In Open Site Explorer I can see that the www and non www versions of my site gets treated differently with one group of links pointing to each version of the same page. This gives a different PA score. eg. http://mydomain.com DA 38 PA 37 http://www.mydomain.com DA 28 PA 27. Currently our preferred variation is https://www.mydomain.com but it used o be http://mydomain.com for 3+ years and I can see that the non www version of my domain have more authority. Would you advise us to "change back" to setting our preferred url as the non www version as before or would it have a negative impact on our SERP ranking etc if we change it again now?
Local Website Optimization | | shaunn140 -
Best SEO Option for Multi-site Set-up
Hi Guys, We have a Business to Business Software Website. We are Global business but mainly operate in Ireland, UK and USA. I would like your input on best practice for domain set-up for best SEO results in local markets. Currently we have: example.com (no market specified) and now we are creating: example.com/ie (Ireland) example.com/uk (united kingdom) example.com/us (united states) My question is mainly based on the example.com/us website - should we create example.com/us for the US market OR just use example.com for the US the market? If the decision is example.com/us should we build links to the directory or the main .com website. To summarize there is two questions: 1. Advise on domain set-up 2. Which site to build links to if example.com/us is the decision. Thank you in advance, Glen.
Local Website Optimization | | DigitalCRO0 -
Changing the sites root folder
Hi am in the process of developing my new site domainname.com/devs/ but my current site is still on www.domainname.com/ When the time comes to launch the new site (in devs folder) I want to change the main root folder to this devs folder. Is there a correct system to do this with as little pain as possible. I know I will need to go through all of my pages and make sure they are 301 redirected to the new folder, but not sure what the correct way to tackle the domain name root folder change. Any help would be awesome! Thanks
Local Website Optimization | | SeoSheikh0 -
Duplicate content question for multiple sites under one brand
I would like to get some opinions on the best way to handle duplicate / similar content that is on our company website and local facility level sites. Our company website is our flagship website that contains all of our service offerings, and we use this site to complete nationally for our SEO efforts. We then have around 100 localized facility level sites for the different locations we operate that we use to rank for local SEO. There is enough of a difference between these locations that it was decided (long ago before me) that there would be a separate website for each. There is however, much duplicate content across all these sites due to the service offerings being roughly the same. Every website has it's own unique domain name, but I believe they are all on the same C-block. I'm thinking of going with 1 of 2 options and wanted to get some opinions on which would be best. 1 - Keep the services content identical across the company website and all facility sites, and use the rel=canonical tag on all the facility sites to reference the company website. My only concern here is if this would drastically hurt local SEO for the facility sites. 2 - Create two unique sets of services content. Use one set on the company website. And use the second set on the facility sites, and either live with the duplicate content or try and sprinkle in enough local geographic content to create some differential between the facility sites. Or if there are other suggestions on a better way to handle this, I would love to hear any other thoughts as well. Thanks!
Local Website Optimization | | KHCreative0 -
Single sites per location as well as group site. Should we get rid of single sites & only keep group site.
Currently we have several single sites for each of our dealership locations as well as an automotive group site linking to each location(dealership) website. Currently there is no landing page for each location on the group site. To save money we were looking into beefing up our group site and getting rid of our individual location sites. 301 redirecting them to location landing pages on the group site website. Each site has about the same authority including the group site. Each dealership location resides in the same province(state) but some locations are a 7hour drive apart so not all within the same vicinity. I want to ensure we continue to rank well in each location. I won't be able to include all geographic locations in the title tag on the homepage of the group site due to the character restrictions. What would you recommend? Keeping the individual websites per dealership location OR focusing solely on a group website. I need to ensure we continue to rank well in each city where each dealership resides. Thanks for any recommendations! It's greatly appreciated. Thanks for everyone's thoughts & opinions.
Local Website Optimization | | DCochrane1