Question about International SEO
-
We've just recently launched our website in Canada and our web crawler is showing some pages with "&Country=CA", even if the current page already includes Country=CA. Why is this and how would we go about resolving?
-
What are the key considerations for implementing an effective International SEO strategy?
Answer: Implementing a successful International SEO strategy involves several critical considerations:
Market Research: Begin by researching and identifying target markets. Understand the local preferences, cultural nuances, and competitive landscape in each target country.
Keyword Localization: Optimize your website for relevant keywords in the local language. Translate content effectively, keeping in mind linguistic variations and keyword preferences.
Hreflang Tags: Use hreflang tags to signal to search engines the language and regional targeting of your webpages. This helps search engines deliver the appropriate content to users in different regions.
Website Structure: Consider the website structure for international audiences. Options include subdirectories (example.com/fr/), subdomains (fr.example.com), or country-code top-level domains (example.fr). Choose the structure that aligns with your goals.
Geotargeting: Set geotargeting preferences in Google Search Console to inform search engines about your target country or language.
Content Localization: Beyond translation, create content that resonates with local audiences. Adapt product descriptions, images, and other content to match cultural preferences and expectations.
Mobile Optimization: Ensure your website is mobile-friendly, as many international users access the web via mobile devices.
Technical SEO: Address technical aspects like site speed, server location, and international CDN (Content Delivery Network) to improve user experience and search engine rankings.
Local Link Building: Acquire high-quality, local backlinks from authoritative websites in the target country or region.
User Experience (UX): Prioritize a seamless user experience, including fast-loading pages, clear navigation, and localized user interfaces.
Local Reviews: Encourage and manage local reviews and ratings to build trust with local audiences.
Compliance: Adhere to legal and regulatory requirements in each target country, including data privacy and e-commerce laws.
Monitoring and Analytics: Continuously monitor your international SEO efforts using tools like Google Analytics and Google Search Console. Adjust strategies based on performance data.
Multilingual Sitemaps: Create and submit XML sitemaps for different language versions of your website to help search engines index your content correctly.
Cultural Sensitivity: Be culturally sensitive in your marketing and messaging to avoid inadvertent cultural missteps.
Competitor Analysis: Analyze the strategies of local and global competitors in your target markets to gain insights into what works effectively.
International SEO is an ongoing process that requires continuous refinement and adaptation. By considering these key factors and staying up-to-date with industry trends, you can improve your website's visibility and reach in international markets.
-
The primary goal of International SEO is to optimize a website's visibility and rankings in search engine results across multiple countries and languages to attract a global audience and increase international online presence. (Study abroad)
(Dental Hygienist Course Fee In Canada For International Students) -
International SEO (Search Engine Optimization) refers to the process of optimizing a website to rank well in search engine results pages (SERPs) for international audiences. It involves implementing various strategies and techniques to improve the visibility and reach of a website in different countries and languages.
When conducting an international SEO strategy, several factors need to be considered. These include:
Language: Adapting the website's content to cater to different languages spoken by the target audience.
Localization: Customizing the website's content, images, and design elements to suit the cultural preferences and norms of each target market.
Geotargeting: Optimizing the website to appear in search results specific to a particular country or region.
International keyword research: Identifying relevant keywords for each target market and incorporating them strategically into the content.
Hreflang tags: Implementing hreflang tags in the website's HTML code to indicate to search engines which language and region each page is intended for.
Backlink building: Acquiring quality backlinks from reputable websites in the target country or language to improve the website's authority and visibility.
Technical considerations: Ensuring the website's technical elements, like site structure, URLs, and mobile-friendliness, are optimized for international search engines.
International SEO is crucial for businesses that want to expand their reach and target customers in different countries. It helps improve organic search rankings, increase visibility, drive targeted traffic, and ultimately, generate more leads and conversions from diverse international audiences.
-
@nicole-nelson03 Your web crawler may be appending "&Country=CA" to pages due to URL handling or crawling settings. To resolve this, check for URL canonicalization issues, review crawler settings, and ensure proper handling of parameters in your website's code and configuration. Monitor and test to confirm the problem is resolved.
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
-
How to rank a website in different countries
I have a website which I want to rank in UK, NZ and AU and I want to keep my domain as .com in all the countries. I have specified the lang=en now what needs to be done to rank one website in 3 different English countries without changing the domain extension i.e. .com.au or .com.nz
SEO Tactics | | Ravi_Rana0 -
Tracking International Keywords
Hi I haven't had much luck tracking keywords on my international sites let alone discovering new keywords. What are some strategies/suggestions to accomplishing this? Currently I have campaigns set-up for the UK, Germany, France, and China in additional to our main US-Canada campaign.
International SEO | | Julie.P0 -
How to Localise per Region (Europe, America, APAC, EMEI) and not per country as best SEO practise?
Hi SEO expertises! I am currently working with a client that initially have an English website targeting UK users but want to expand their market into four new regions (Europe, America, APAC and EMEI) keeping English as a main language. I would like to request your help here as I told the client ISO location and hreflang it will be just possible per language and they must need to localise each English region with local keywords, however I would like to double check if it will be any way (Sitemap, Hreflang) we can tell Google we are targeting per region and not per country? Thanks a lot!
International SEO | | Atalig20 -
Local Strategies For International Business
A client of mine is in a field that Google (correctly) recognizes as international, and does get traffic and leads for this but they are bound by sales covenants to sell only in regional geographic territories in their country, Other than PPC is there a strategy I can use to increase regional traffic? As mentioned, Google does not recognize this business as local.
International SEO | | waynekolenchuk0 -
How to make Google consider my international subdomain relevant?
We have recently started to look deeper into international SEO. We have search engine optimized our international landing pages, title tags and meta descriptions with keywords etc. so each of the international language we support is SEO'ed for the local market. We support 12 languages, and each of them are located on a subdomain. That means if we say our site is helloworld.com, a person from Germany that lands on this site can switch to German and will then be redirected to de.helloworld.com and all content will be in German. Our problem is that we develop cloud-based software, we have a significant amount of traffic, but whenever we get media coverage or people link to us from anywhere in the world they always link to the root domain which in this case then would be helloworld.com. That means if I go to google.de and type in the exact meta description or title tag we use in German, the Google search engine can't even find us because "I assume" Google don't consider our de.helloworld.com relevant because nobody has ever linked to this site. I would appreciate very much if anyone can give me some advice on how I can address this issue. Thanks a lot! Allan
International SEO | | Todoist0 -
Country-specific SEO
Hi, my client offers courses that whilst based in Manchester, England are mainly attended by people in countries such as Georgia, Libya and Nigeria etc. The people that attend the courses are fluent in English. We're looking at performing country-specific SEO and I have a few queries. The plan so far: Obtain TLD's in each target country. These TLD's would be hosted on the same server as the core site based in England. Option 1: Each TLD would be a microsite with content specific to the country including geo-signals, in English. Option 2: Each TLD would 301 redirect to the core site, i.e. example.sa redirects to example.com/sa/ and this country-specific section would have relevant geo-signals. So I have 3 questions at this point: 1. Most-all of the tips I have seen about country-specific SEO assume that the content should be translated to the native tongue although in this case, the audience are fluent English speaks. Does this make a difference? Is it okay to use English and still be able to rank in country-specific search engines? 2. Between options 1 & option 2 - which would be the optimum setup? 3. Last question, if we obtain the TLD's I hear that it's not necessary to also host that TLD in the target country, is this right? Thanks.
International SEO | | lokito0 -
Targeting France Best SEO practices
I've got a client with a large e-commerce site with a .com domain and they want to start targeting France. Other than building another site in Frence with a .fr domain, what would be the best course of action? I know that the obvious option would be to build a separate French site with a .fr domain but is there another more cost effective way? I tried doing a search for one of their key-phrases using the Google Global app (Google.fr) and they are ranking in pretty much the same position as for Google.co.uk. Your thoughts on this would be greatly appreciated.
International SEO | | FishEyeSEO0 -
International SEO - auto geo-targetting
I read with interest the recent post on international SEO and the top level domain architecture approaches to local content: http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/folders-vs-subdomains-vs-cctld-in-international-seo-an-overview#jtc135670 The issue I have is a little more complex: The business sells a wide variety of products (37) but one is by far and away the biggest and most popular. This means that due to the link profile of the various country sites and HQ site, search engines categorise the site according to this product (this is easily seen with the Google Adplanner) and the other product lines suffer as a result. The current architecture is to have a .com site and then individual ccTLD country sites, again with all products on each site. This creates an issue as in most countries the brand is not strong (compared to the keyword names and search volumes of the products) and so it is not that effective in generating organic traffic. The .com hogs much of the inbound links and the country sites themselves are not that well optimised for a number of reasons. A proposed solution has been to leverage the strength of the .com and the search volume for the product names, and to produce thematic sites based on each product: productA.brand.com
International SEO | | StevieCC
productB.brand.com
productC.brand.com In this way, the sites, content and link profiles are aligned around the more desirable products and we can expect improved organic search performance as a result (or at least ensure relevant traffic finds the relevant content fast). In terms of providing localised content, the plan was to use content mirroring and to then assign each content mirror to a specific geo-location using the webmaster tools console (and other SE equivilents). This is shown I think in one of Rand's videos. ProductA.brand.com/de/de Germany site for product A with unique German content
ProductA.brand.com/fr/fr French site for product A with unique French content This makes economic sense to me as to utilise the ccTLDs would result in hundreds of separate sites with all the licence and server considerations that entails. For example, for product A alone we would have to produce: productA.brand.de
productA.brand.fr
productA.brand.cn
productA.brand.jp
ect ect ect This just would not be sustainable in license/server costs alone across 37 products and 24 countries. However, I saw in a recent presentation at SES London that (auto) geo-targeting is risky, often doesn't work well for SEO and can even be seen as cloaking. I think the above strategy could still work, but perhaps we should avoid the use of auto-geotargetting altogether and hope the search engines alone do their job in getting users to the right content as we optimise the unique content for each country (and if they don't, ensure our desgn, UX and country selectors do the job instead). SEO guru consensus is to use the ccTLD if you own it, but as described above, in the real world that just isn't possible or practical given the company's strategic position. Which leads to the final question- we do own the brand ccTLDs- if they are directed back to the content mirror for the country on the .com, is there any SEO benefit in doing so aside from directing back any link juice associated with the domain)?0