Best start for int'l SEO?
-
Hi all
We're soon going to begin our international SEO efforts, and I wanted to get some opinions on laying the foundation first.
I'm aware of the best, most ideal practices (getting a proper translator, ccTLDs vs subdomains vs folders, etc.) and wanted to know if this would be a good first step:
Creating folders by language/country code (does it matter which?) that will have unique copy on the respective page, and targeting those pages to the corresponding country via Google WMT.
The nature of our website would require a massive, coordinated effort to translate all of the content, so I was thinking about starting with the homepage for each country and going from there.
Is the risk of duplicate content for every new folder too high to chance not translating EVERY bit of content?
Thanks for any help or advice!
-
Hi Brandon,
About your questions:
- How you call the subdirectories shouldn't be a matter: /es/ or /es-es/ (it's meant to be descriptive and short for users but non-relevant at this point as a signal towards search engines). However, what's important is how you name the URLs of each language version later: they should be in the language of the content that they show.
- If your international versions are country targeted (meant to be focused on users in a specific country and not language targeted, meant to focus on any user speaking a language) then you should geolocate them through Google Webmaster Tools.
- You should also use hreflang annotation in your different pages, referring to each URL language (and country, if they're geotargeted) too, so you won't end-up facing any content duplication issues, since you might have for example a Spanish version targeting to Mexico with a very similar Spanish copy than your Spain version. If you add the annotations then Google will know these different URLs are targeting to different countries or languages audience and shouldn't cause a content duplication problem.
- If you can't just translate/localize the whole site structure to other languages, then it's a must that you prioritize. Start with those language / countries that have the higher current audience for your site and have the higher potential to grow too. Enable just the most important landing pages / sections of your site if you can't do them all, the ones that you can really maintain, translate / localize well, to give also the best user experience to those visitors (besides of being able to rank with them well in search engines).
Take a look at this post where I wrote about how to set an International SEO strategy well from the start and avoid running into issues in the implementation later.
Thanks!
Aleyda
-
We set up some international sites around this time last year ( over a dozen of them in fact).
We had the same thought you did, and were concerned that the content translations might be classed as duplicate copy, From what we've seen it shouldn't do, especially if you're aiming the sites/ folders at specific countries in Webmaster Tools.
We've done this with International sites which use the English language and we've not had an issue with increasing our rankings so far. So if it's working like that for us, then you should be fine as well.
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
-
SEO Implications of using Images for Article Titles
Hi guys! New to Moz Pro. I just recently completed an online course with Moz... I have a client who is writing some new content for their site, and we are approaching it with SEO in mind. I was wondering about using an image with text on it as the article title, instead of an actual "text on the page" title. Wondering if that's going to "cost" us anything, SEO wise. I guess we could use alt-text/title/description fields to make sure the keywords are crawlable for our article title but do they have less "weight" than a standard title? How does that work? Hope my question makes sense. Article header attached mB0PXsA.jpg
On-Page Optimization | | JakeWarren1 -
Cross-linking for mobile SEO
Hi everyone! I am having a hard time finding information about weather to/how to apply internal seo linking to mobile versions of sites. We decided to go with dynamic serving with user agent detection. Our desktop site has a quite heavy seo-internal-cross-linking. As I understand, for mobile we should simplify and focus on usability, so get rid of unnecessary links. But I have a doubt about weather removing this part of the web structure can hurt our SEO. Do Google mobile bots look at and rank mobile versions of pages from scratch or do they use what they know about the site and the site's structure from its desktop version?
On-Page Optimization | | ofertia0 -
Why Can't I Get Indexed?
I cannot seem to get my website indexed by Google! I submitted the sitemap using Google WMT about a month ago but only one page is being indexed. There are very few backlinks to the site, so I don't believe there are any penalties due to over-optimization that would prevent indexing. Also, my robots.txt file is properly configured and is not preventing any pages from being crawled. I've tried using the "Fetch as Google" settings in WMT with no luck. Any ideas?
On-Page Optimization | | socialfirestarter0 -
Can Your Site Get Penalized For Keyword Stuffing On An 'Untarged' Keyword?
My site has dropped since the EMD/Panda 20 roll out and I am looking for reasons why. I am looking at Keyword Stuffing as one potential problem. My web site is on the topic of WordPress Security with that being the main keyword I want to target. Now I can limit the number of occurrences of 'wordpress security' to below the recommended 15, but it is impossible to do this for 'wordpress' without severely compromising the user experience. I've got other content on topics such as WordPress Backup and WordPress Security Plugins etc, so obviously the word 'wordpress' is bound to appear frequently. Is there a risk that Google will penalize me for Keyword Stuffing on 'wordpress' and thus pull down the site or page for other keywords? Or would it simply mean I won't be able to rank for 'wordpress' (which I am quite happy about)? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | andersvin0 -
Best SEO extension or plugin for on-page optimization
I was wondering what you guys might recommend for a browser extension or plugin that would help developers optimize each page for specific keywords. I'm looking for a tool that will give me a grade on how well it's optimized with a recommendation checklist. I would use SEOMoz's onpage analysis tool but it doesn't have access to my private development environment (hence the need for a plugin.) Recommendations? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | net32SEO0 -
SEO for Image only posts
Let's say I have a post where I show 25 different wood textures. I start the post with a small paragraph and then I show several images of wood textures linked to an internal or external page. Since I don't use a text link, then I have to rely on alt tags. It would be very difficult to assign a different alt tag to so many similar images, and I guess there would be a risk of keyword stuffing (walnut wood, oak wood, etc). On the other side, if I assign the same tag to all images, then that clearly is keyword stuffing (alt=wood textures). This is just an example, but it applies to most of my posts. What do you think I should do with the alt tags? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | enriquef0 -
ECommerce Site Breadcrumbs Best Practice
I'm working on an Ecom website and I was wondering - For breadcrumbs - is there an SEO and/or UEx preference when it comes to taking them back to the homepage? I have the option of going CATEGORY > SUB CATEGORY > SUB CATEGORY or HOME > CATEGORY > SUBCATEGORY > SUBCATEGORY Each example is hyperlinked except for the lowest level. Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | Blenny0 -
Maximum length of a URL for good SEO?
Hi there, We have a content database as part of our site and I noticed that the way the database is loaded with new content, it means that the URL’s for these pages are really long, around 100 characters or sometimes more http://www.xxxyy.org/knowledge-base/documents/word1-word2-word3-word4-word5-word6-word7-word8 Is there a suggted maximum character length for a URL? Kind of like for title tag where I max out at 69… Should I truncate the URL’s or at least reduce the numbers of words in them to something less spammy? Does that make a difference? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | inhouseninja0