Different URLS for our multi language pages caused penalty?
-
Hi all,
We have a website www.phoneboxlanguage.com with 4 different language versions (Spanish, French, Italian, German). We have all the different versions on totally different URLS. E.G the French URL is www.cours-telephone-anglais.com. Recently this month we saw a huge drop in SERPS for all the 'foreign' language pages.
This had happened before for the Spanish and French, which we put down to keyword density issues, so created new URLS for those pages.
However now all 4 foreign pages have dropped.
Could this be due instead to a penalty for duplicate sites?
The content is obviously different due to different languages, but the coding and templates for the sites are the same.
How can we find out this is the case and what should we do? I was thinking after some research on the forum to create subfolders in the original (phoneboxlanguage.com) and then create 301 redirects, from the old dropped sites, or would their penalties be bad for our original site, if this were the case?
We are obviously very keen to not further damage the site and the original site which remains o.k.
Many thanks for your kind help.
Quime.
-
Hi thanks for the reply,
Should we not have any shared scripts, how can we avoid this, just by removing them? Ideally we need the pages the same, but with different language versions, while not being punished.
I will make all the changes you suggest.
The Geo-targeting was not done for all, but we did it today.
The drops were on Google regional and com search engines.
Would these changes lift the penalties, or are they more permanent sometimes?
You would not suggest subdomains and moving the foreign pages to the main site?
Also I have just been told that having 'dashes' in the URL has become an issue, has anyone ever heard of that??
Many thanks
-
a) Your international sites have this in the headers <html xmlns="<a class="attribute-value">http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml</a>" xml:lang="<a class="attribute-value">en</a>" lang="<a class="attribute-value">en</a>">
Should be: <html xmlns="<a class="attribute-value">http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml</a>" xml:lang="<a class="attribute-value">en</a>" lang="FR">
b) I would nofollow or delete if not necessary to conversion any of the links pointing to your main domain on your other sites, including your school. subdomain login page and anything else linking to the main site. Run a tool to identify where your external links are and nofollow all of them.
You're sharing scripts:
<script type="<a class="attribute-value">text/javascript</a>" src="http://www.phoneboxlanguage.com/javascript/thickbox.js">script> <script type="<a class="attribute-value">text/javascript</a>" src="http://www.phoneboxlanguage.com/Javascript/dropdownmenu1.js">script>
c) are you properly geo-targeting the sites in Google WMT?
d) you saw the results drop for the international sites in their respective Google regional search engine?
-
Hi, thanks for the reply,
The sites were interlinked, (a link at the top going to the other language pages on each)
There was link building involved to a greater or lesser extent, the Italian page not for several months, the French and Spanish quite recently.
They are hosted on the same host account but on separate I.P addresses.
On the webmasters we have not seen any messages warning us of anything.
-
Were the sites all interlinked?
Were you doing any link building?
Are they all on the same server?
If you're penalized you need to unwind the penalties. Have you gotten any messages in your Google WMT accounts?
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
-
What happens when you replace a page with a new version that has the same URL?
a new page template was created the plan is to publish the new page (which has the same URL as before) to web and delete the old page that has the URL , will that have an SEO implications ?
Technical SEO | | lina_digital1 -
Search Console Indexed Page Count vs Site:Search Operator page count
We launched a new site and Google Search Console is showing 39 pages have been indexed. When I perform a Site:myurl.com search I see over 100 pages that appear to be indexed. Which is correct and why is there a discrepancy? Also, Search Console Page Index count started at 39 pages on 5/21 and has not increased even though we have hundreds of pages to index. But I do see more results each week from Site:psglearning.com My site is https://wwww.psglearning.com
Technical SEO | | pdowling0 -
150+ Pages of URL Parameters - Mass Duplicate Content Issue?
Hi we run a large e-commerce site and while doing some checking through GWT we came across these URL parameters and are now wondering if we have a duplicate content issue. If so, we are wodnering what is the best way to fix them, is this a task with GWT or a Rel:Canonical task? Many of the urls are driven from the filters in our category pages and are coming up like this: page04%3Fpage04%3Fpage04%3Fpage04%3F (See the image for more). Does anyone know if these links are duplicate content and if so how should we handle them? Richard I7SKvHS
Technical SEO | | Richard-Kitmondo0 -
Pages with Duplicate Page Content Crawl Diagnostics
I have Pages with Duplicate Page Content in my Crawl Diagnostics Tell Me How Can I solve it Or Suggest Me Some Helpful Tools. Thanks
Technical SEO | | nomyhot0 -
How to find original URLS after Hosting Company added canonical URLs, URL rewrites and duplicate content.
We recently changed hosting companies for our ecommerce website. The hosting company added some functionality such that duplicate content and/or mirrored pages appear in the search engines. To fix this problem, the hosting company created both canonical URLs and URL rewrites. Now, we have page A (which is the original page with all the link juice) and page B (which is the new page with no link juice or SEO value). Both pages have the same content, with different URLs. I understand that a canonical URL is the way to tell the search engines which page is the preferred page in cases of duplicate content and mirrored pages. I also understand that canonical URLs tell the search engine that page B is a copy of page A, but page A is the preferred page to index. The problem we now face is that the hosting company made page A a copy of page B, rather than the other way around. But page A is the original page with the seo value and link juice, while page B is the new page with no value. As a result, the search engines are now prioritizing the newly created page over the original one. I believe the solution is to reverse this and make it so that page B (the new page) is a copy of page A (the original page). Now, I would simply need to put the original URL as the canonical URL for the duplicate pages. The problem is, with all the rewrites and changes in functionality, I no longer know which URLs have the backlinks that are creating this SEO value. I figure if I can find the back links to the original page, then I can find out the original web address of the original pages. My question is, how can I search for back links on the web in such a way that I can figure out the URL that all of these back links are pointing to in order to make that URL the canonical URL for all the new, duplicate pages.
Technical SEO | | CABLES0 -
Penalty for many domains pointing to the same URL?
I've searched around on the Google forums, and other sources (including the Q&A!), but haven't seen a solid answer on this one. I've recently discovered that throughout the years we've had several hundred domains pointed to our homepage. These are our domains and are related to our niche. I believe they were pointed for the purposes of attracting type-in traffic. Before last month I knew at least some existed, but I didn't realize the extent until last week. I know there isn't any positive SEO effect to doing this (except perhaps if any of the domains have links to them, and a few do), but is there any negative SEO effect? I realize that there are legitimate redirects for type-in traffic, like misspellings and such, but most of these are just exact-match-domains. It just screams unnatural to me, but perhaps I'm just a little paranoid. 🙂
Technical SEO | | tncomseo0 -
Home page penalty?
What does it mean when your home page has a penalty? I have a site that has good rankings for many pages, but my home page seems to be penalized by Google. I tried searching for my home page URL in Google, www.xxxxxx.com and my page doesn't show up, but sub pages do show up? What would cause this penalty and how do you correct this issue.
Technical SEO | | tadden0 -
I have 15,000 pages. How do I have the Google bot crawl all the pages?
I have 15,000 pages. How do I have the Google bot crawl all the pages? My site is 7 years old. But there are only about 3,500 pages being crawled.
Technical SEO | | Ishimoto0