Ranking in .com .fr .de but not in my target .cz serp?

[advertisingtech]

Hello,

our website is targeted for the Czech Republic. When I monitor our rankings, we have very high rankings in all of the other SERPs like .com and .fr .de but we are in the very end of CZ serp.

Not CZ is the only SERP where we have two languages (Czech which is on subdomain cs.domain.com and domain.com which is for english). Now i am concerned about the example.com.

Why is it not ranking at all (very low in czech serp like 130 vs 10-15 in other serps)

We have used href lang tags to specify the language

I think

• Can it be because of my cs. domain is optimized for a keyword which is not the example.com keyword ?  (I think this is not the reason) - my example.com domain optimization is for "Kids clothes in Czech Republic" but cs domain for "Used clothes in Czech Republic"
• is it a linking issue? Should I have more local Czech links?

Im out of ideas.

[gfiorelli1]

Did you try to add a third hreflang annotation like this?

You can assign more than 1 hreflang annotation to an Url.

Maybe you could test this idea for a subfolder that you can easily track on Search Console.

[gfiorelli1]

Mmm... now I understand your question, and - yes - that sounds weird.

Sincerely, without knowing the site and for what keywords it doesn't rank with its English version in CZ for English queries, I cannot give an answer.

[advertisingtech]

Hello,

Thanks! That is a great answer. My question was not more why is not my subdomain ranking but why is not my example.com domain ranking for English queris in Czech SERP.

This would mean that if a person googles in google.cz "Cars in Czech" they should get my example.com domain and if they google in Czech language they get my cs. domain.

My issue is that example.com is ranking everywhere except in google.cz for english terms. (subdomain is not an issue, its ranking). I analyzed the keyword difficulties and this is not an issue. English terms in google.cz are lot easier in KD than in google.com for example...

[gfiorelli1]

If the sites are in two different languages, then canonicalizing the CZ  version to the EN version is not only a mistake: it's stupid because you're telling Google: "Hey, this is the Czech version of the site, but I don't care... so show the English version to Czech people".

Even if the two sites have the same language but target different markets, it would be wrong cross-canonicalize one of them.

The use of the hreflang is a win-win also for this reason: avoiding duplicate content issues... so, if you cross-canonicalized the two sites, quit that canonicalization ASAP!!!

Then, regarding how the hreflang has been implemented by you, that is ok... albeit no positive response can be given in a Q&A without seeing the actual code.

Finally, regarding why your CZ subdomain is not ranking in google.cz as the English version does elsewhere... the answer is easy (at least in theory, as - I repeat - no real answer can be given without knowing the website): your cz subdomain is a separate website and probably doesn't have a strong link profile, at least not as strong as its competitors.

And, no: even if your english website has a strong link profile, it is not helping at all the cz subdomain.

[advertisingtech]

Hello,

Yes they are the exact same except different language.

What do you mean? That we canonicalize the cs.example.com to example.com? E.g the homepage of example.com has <link < span="">rel="canonical" href="https://example.com/"></link <>

Reading online I see that this is not recommended. I changed the double tags now that the one href lang tag is just "En" and others "cs-cz". This is correct I presume?

[advertisingtech]

We are using a classified advertisement palfrom Osclass which does not support this. But this can not be the reason why my. Com domain ranks in other serp but not CZ, can it?

If it is then I will only choose one language and rank that.. But yes os class for some reason still does not support language tags. I can not use same database to install to /CZ the community has tried this.

So you think because I have cs subdomain and the main domain my rankings in Czech serp are so. So much lower? (were talking about. Com ranking from top 10-15 in all other serps and 120 in CZ. The keyword difficult is not so much different for example for Co.uk and CZ for English terms.