Link vs Subdomain Language redirect
-
Hi all,
I'm managing a website that uses a redirect to show different languages to the users. I mean when a user access the site from any country it sees the full domain but when it access it from Italy, France or Germany it goes to domain.com/lang=FR or IT.
I see that other sites use a technique to redirect to it.domain.com or fr.domain.com but I have doubts about which one is better.
We do an aggressive link building strategy and we have a lot of links to the root domain across the various languages. Is it better to do the link building to the it.domain.com and fr.domain.com, depending on the language source of the link instead of the root?
I'm seeing that some of our competitors are doing this but I'm afraid is going to spread the link juice across many subdomains and lose power to the root.
Thanks in advance
-
Subdomains would be a hard path, totally possible, but really tough. You need time and resources to dedicate to each subdomain to build the content (if geo-targeting, more time and resources would be needed to change and focus the content). I would suggest parameters, but that's just my 2 cents. Good luck!!
-
Hi Kate,
Sorry for the late reply.
I appreciate your answer and I recognize that we might not be doing the best separation of the users, and that's why we need to know what is the best solution.According to your Guide, we should be using Translate/HREFLANG, however I see that all the competition is doing the subdomain trick, in order to get more relevance on every specific markets.
My question still remains if we should go to a subdomain strategy (correctly redirected) or we keep the translation parameters in the URL, sending every user to the root.com/lang=IT, for ex.
Thanks
-
First of all, I don't think what you are doing is best for the user. Setting language based on IP address is assuming things that are not always true. Rather than setting language based on IP, try detecting language preference from the browser. http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8199760/how-to-get-the-browser-language-using-java-script
I would suggest checking out this guide to international strategy to determine if you need to just target language or country.
If you do end up just translating, I prefer using subfolders or parameters, not subdomains. And don't use a ccTLD like .fr or .de. Those are for geo-targeting only and require you to distinguish your content based on what country you are targeting.
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 set up a competitor URL with a language slug for a campaign
Hello, I am trying to set up a competitor with language slug for my (subfolder) website with a language slug. Let's say my website is something like: websiteholding.com/de/website
Competitive Research | | Siir
My competitor is: competitor.com/de When I go to Campaign Settings > Comptetitor Sites > type in competitor.com/de > Hit Save Competitor > Then it shows the saved competitor without the language slug as competitor.com I am not sure if this is a correct method of tracking since for my DE website I would like to track the DE page of the competitor, not their global page. Please correct me if I am wrong and help me out on possible solutions? I am quite new to SEO & Moz , so any help on the topic would be appreciated.0 -
Interal linking
Re: I'm stuck by internal linking. What structure should a football website follow? Silo or Topic Cluster?
Competitive Research | | thanhdung0906
I need advice on my website. My website: https://tipbongda247.net/
I hope there are answers!
Thanks0 -
Link juice from links that are not on the page?
Hello, Thank you in advance for your help! I was doing research for backlinking opportunities by looking at competitor backlinks using Open Site Explorer and I ran into a puzzle. When I do an Open Site Explorer search for http://whatsdavedoing.com/ I find that link equity is being passed to the site from a number of pages on the http://www.travelsupermarket.com/ blog with the anchor text "What's Dave Doing" When I go to these pages and do a source code search I cannot find this anchor text. When I do a google search with the following: site:travelsupermarket.com "What's Dave Doing" I find that there are tons of items that come back with a list of blogs in their description: "Dec 5, 2013 - ... foXnoMad · Inside The Travel Lab · itravelnet · The Mad Traveler Blog · The Mad Traveler Online · Uncornered Market · What's Dave Doing?" Where is this coming from? What is going on here? Is this a linking tactic that sites use to pass link juice to contributors without linking to them directly? Any help is much appreciated! Thanks!
Competitive Research | | overlandundersea0 -
Tool for discovering outbound links?
I want to find a tool where I can put in a url: www.site.com and it will tell me all the people that site links to. If this is in the Moz tool set, then I apologize. I couldn't find it. I can only find tools that tell me who links to a site, but not the other way around. Thanks, Ruben
Competitive Research | | KempRugeLawGroup0 -
How Do You Currently Analyze Outbound Link Profiles?
So I'm looking at some potential guest blogging &/or article writing opportunities and I'm looking for a tool which will analyze the OUTBOUND links from the site....it would be handy if inbound were displayed too but not essential as there are many tools available for this. When I ask for sample sites it is clear that a number of them (all?!) have been created purely for us content purposes, however it would be good to analyze the site further. A tool that could analyze its outbound links would give me a rough idea if the site is suitable or simply a glorified link-farm. Also, if you have any useful links regarding industry averages on outbound links for blogs & article sites (eg Ezine) for benchmarking it would be good! Thanks
Competitive Research | | cmooki
C:)0 -
List of all outbound links to a specified site
For example, I want to search for every link to my site from stumbleupon. Is there a way to do this? Much thanks in advance!
Competitive Research | | TrevorMcKendrick0 -
Looking Up C-Block Links
I have been trying to find the tool that provides the campaign data the linking C-block data. Does anyone know which tool it is? Or is that just part of the campaigns?
Competitive Research | | purch0 -
What is the right way to due a competitive Link analysis?
Trying to use the saturation report suggestion with no luck for google.com,and looking for away to benchmark either Pagerank or page authority to figure out how many links are required to overr take competitors from diversified sources. What is the process to do this to get the best results for the client.
Competitive Research | | bmcfarlane0