Google Webmaster Tools - International SEO Geo-Targeting site with Worldwide rankings
-
I have a client who already has rankings in the US & internationally.
The site is broken down like this:
- url.com (main site with USA & International Rankings)
- url.com/de
- url.com/de-english
- url.com/ng
- url.com/au
- url.com/ch
- url.com/ch-french
- url.com/etc
Each folder has it's own sitmap & relative content for it's respective country.
I am reading in google webmaster tools > site config > settings, the option under 'Learn More': "If you don't want your site associated with any location, select Unlisted."
- If I want to keep my client's international rankings the way it currently is on url.com, do NOT geo target to United States?
- So I select unlisted, right?
- Would I use geo targeting on the url.com/de, url.com/de-english, url.com/ng, url.com/au and so on?
-
Very interesting answers. Thanks to all of you!
-
I agree, trying to target many locals may stuff you up.
-
I agree. Let Google decide unless you need to target a specific country.
-
My tip here is to use this geotarget feature only, and if only, you want to target ONE specific country. Otherwise, let Google decide.
-
Here is where the traffic comes from.
-
60% of the quotes come from people in the United States
-
40% of the quotes come from people in their own country, not usa.
It sounds as 'if' I GEO target url.com to US (this has the rankings), my international keywords will disappear because I am telling google that url.com is only in the US. 40% of my traffic would go away by geo targeting URL.com to the US. I see that you said URL.com/us, but then I would have duplicate content. Url.com would equal url.com/us, unless I rewrote everything. I think url.com will go as unlisted. "If" I create url.com/us with original content, then I will be competing for the same keywords.
-
-
I would set your GEO to USA as international is fairly untargeted and much of the people that typically use Google.com are US users, any of countries would typicallly use the local GEO domains.
You can set url.com and all the subdirectory locations seperately, i would consider setting url.com/US as a GEO of focused directory and then you can leave url.com as untargeted.
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
-
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 -
Queston about subdomains for SEO Gurus
What is the best way to deal with a blog acting as subdomain (blog.domain.com) when you have 3 regional website versions (uk.domain.com, us.domain.com, and fr.domain.com)? I am facing a big problem for proper distribution of link juice to the three main websites. The point is that I have one blog, in which I have general content not targeting any specific market, but the link juice cannot be distributed properly across three websites, because I have a script to determine visitor’s region and serve him the right regional website. It uses a geoip script for Apache to redirect a visitor to their proper subdomain by determining which continent they are connecting from based off their IP address. Apache can use any type of redirect for this purpose, but we're using 302 to maintain user experience without using a 301 which might permanently redirect a crawler to only one version of the website. That cannot be done without 302 redirect, which means sending no link juice from the blog subdomain to the main websites. So, when you click on the logo from blog.domian.com, the script determines visitor region, and then 302 to the proper website. I don’t have main domain like www.domain.com. Instead the script is acting on this domain so that it 302 redirects to regional website according user location. The situation is complicated because you can’t send equal link juice to 3 regional website, having only one general blog. Even worse, none of the regional websites receives link juice from neither individual posts, nor blog.domain.com because of the 302 redirect. Any help is appreciated. Thanks.
International SEO | | darmar0 -
URL Structure for Multilingual Site With Two Major Locations
We're working on a hotel site that has two major locations. Locations currently live in separate domains. The sites target users from around the world and offer content in multiple languages. The client is looking into migrating all content into one domain and creating sub-folders for each location. The sites are strong in organic search, but they want to expand the keyword portfolio to broader keywords regarding activities, which they also market on their sites. The goal is to scale their domain authority as they have a really strong brand. The question is which would be a preferred URL structure in case content is finally migrated into one domain? - (we have doubts about were the lang folder should be placed as each location has different amenities and services). Here is what we had in mind: domain.com – this is the homepage domain.com/location-1 – to target English visitors domain.com/location-2 – to target English visitors domain.com/es/location-1 – to target Spanish visitors domain.com/es/location-2 – to target Spanish visitors
International SEO | | burnseo0 -
.im domain ranking globally?
Hello all, I know that Matt Cutt's stated a while back that .co domains would become recognized by google as a gtld and was wondering how google views .im domains. I was looking at using a couple for work but have a generic name .im of my own that when checked in webmaster tools is locked to the isle of man in the geographical targeting option. I was wondering if anyone can advise me on this and if possible provide some feedback based on experience with .im domains. Thanks.
International SEO | | LukeHutchinson0 -
Using Javascript to alter ONE or TWO keywords in International Site
Hi, What is the best way to target a language that has slight variations in it without actually targetting specific countries? Scenario: Ecommerce site that sells mobile phones in Spanish, initially created to target Spanish from Spain. We call a mobile phone a "movil" Now we want to target LatinAmerican users, which also use Spanish with variations, the most notable being mobile phone called "celular". We don't want to create specific sites via new ccTLDs, nor subdomains, no directories for each new country, and we want to avoid having two sites - one for spain, one for latinamerica- given that the only major difference is we say MOVIL in spain and CELULAR in LatinAmerica. What is Googles take if we simply decide to modify THAT specific keyword in each page where it is mentioned? Either by: a) Server based. IP Detect. that is, render the page with either one or the other term b) Javascript based. i.e. Have BOTH terms on all pages but using Javascript show/hide according to user preferences. c) Display the keywords with different font sizes/emphasis, depending on the visitor. Any ideas?
International SEO | | doctorSIM0 -
Can geographic location of web server affect in SEO?
I have server in Singapore. I need to target USA and Europe for my site. Whether I need to change server? Please guide me... Can geographic location of web server affect in SEO? If Yes, how it affect in SEO?
International SEO | | MayurChavda0 -
Very fluctuating rankings
For a couple of years we're doing internet marketing for a local car rental company in Holland that operates at Amsterdam Airport and competes with players like Herz, Europcar, Avis, ... We started with SEO, SEA & Remarketing. With an overall conversion rate of 13% the results are pretty good, and our client is happy 🙂 Whieee End 2011 we started with an evaluation of the efforts we did last year(s) and to come to new insights to work on in 2012. The SEA & remarketing campaings have a (very) possitive ROI, and they give us lots of insights where we should focus on doing SEO. We identified longtail keywords with a high search volume but when monitoring these keywords in SEOmoz we see they are fluctuating. Some keywords gain ranking positions in google.nl but lose positions in google.com and vica versa. That's pretty frustrating, because we want to rank good in both 🙂 I was wondering what's the best practice for these longtails... Do we make specific landingspages that focus on these longtails, or do we focus on linkbuilding getting links with longtail anchor texts to the homepage of the website? An example: last week we rose 14 positions for a keyword in google.nl but for the same keyword we dropped 4 places in google.com (while .com is much more interesting for our client) Any suggestions are welcome!!
International SEO | | nvs.nim1 -
Geo Targeting for Similar Sites to Specific Countries in Google's Index
I was hoping Webmaster Tools geo targeting would prevent this - I'm seeing in select google searches several pages indexed from our Australian website. Both sites have unique TLDs: barraguard.com barraguard.com.au I've attached a screenshot as an example. The sites are both hosted here in the U.S. at our data center. Are there any other methods for preventing Google and other search engines from indexing the barraguard.com.au pages in searches that take place in the U.S.? dSzoh.jpg
International SEO | | longbeachjamie0