How do I fix duplicate content issues if the pages are really just localized versions?
-
Does this still hurt our SEO? Should we place different countries on their own respective domains (.co.uk, etc)?
-
Perfect.
Note the #2 item on this list. The key to having international content is treating each country subsite as it's own site. Make sure you have someone from that country consulting you on each country focused site. So if UK, have someone native to the UK review the site. Same for Germany, France, etc.
As for structure, my personal favorite is subfolders. So your UK site would be www.domain.com/uk. www.domain.com if you get to the point that you have so many and really need a US one as well, make www.domain.com the "universal" version, and www.domain.com/us as targeted to the US, but it might not be necessary at this point.
The content is the big part, if you want to do well internationally, really focus on getting the content right. There will be some overlap, don't worry about that. Focus more on the user experience for people in each area.
The only technical thing that needs to be done is for you to geo-target in the respective WMT areas.
Does that help?
-
Geo-Target Only
- Don’t use HREFLANG, you are not translating inside a country so it’s not needed.
- The content and marketing in each targeted country has to be different.
- Pick the URL structure for your international growth and stick with it.
- Set up Google Webmaster Tools Geo-Targeting.
- Set up Bing Webmaster Tools Geo-Targeting.
- Don’t use IP detection for country targeting, but ask your customers to set a cookie.
- Only use people native to the country for outreach due to cultural differences.
Thanks Kate - what would you recommend?
-
No. A canonical would not be helpful here. There are major issues with canonicals and international content.
-
Can't we use rel=canonical in this case?
-
Actually, sorry guys, I am not sure HREFLANG is the right thing here. It might be, but it depends.
Christopher, can you check out the tool at this URL and answer the questions? Once you've done that, let me know what result you get and I can recommend some actions from there.
-
Stuart's exactly right - use the HREFLANG tag. You can set it up on multiple domains or subfolders (/en, /fr, etc.)
-
Hi Chrisopher,
Sounds like Hreflang could be your friend:
http://moz.com/blog/using-the-correct-hreflang-tag-a-new-generator-tool
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/189077?hl=en
Hope that helps!
Stuart
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
-
Which are the best off-page SEO techniques for 2020?
I have just published an awesome website or blog, and i really worked hard keeping everything perfect. Do you think it’s enough? Having a perfect blog, website or business is just enough. i need readers for my blog, visitors to my website, and customers for my business. So, what to do?
Local Website Optimization | | boxinghunter0 -
Preventing multiple market domains from appearing in the local search rsults
Working on an international client, how would you help solve multiple market domains from appearing in the local search rsults?
Local Website Optimization | | Cristiana.Solinas0 -
Do I need to change my country og:locale to en_AE
Hi MOZ, I have a site that is aimed at the English speaking market of the United Arab Emirates. The language tag is currently set to lang="en-GB" and the og:locale also set to en_GB. The domain is a .com and aimed at the whole world. Should I be trying to target en-AE and en_AE for these tags instead of GB?
Local Website Optimization | | SeoSheikh0 -
Pages ranking outside of sales area
Hi there Moz Community, I work with a client (a car dealership), that mostly serves an area within 50-100 miles at most from their location. A previous SEO company had built a bunch of comparison pages on their website (i.e. 2016 Acura ILX vs. Mercedes-Benz C300). These pages perform well in their backyard in terms of engagement metrics like bounce rate, session duration, etc. However, they pull in traffic from all over the country and other countries as well. Because they really don't have much of an opportunity to sell someone a car across the country that a customer could easily buy at their local dealership, anyone from outside their primary marketing area typically bounces. So, it drags down their overall site metrics plus all of the metrics for these pages. I imagine searchers from outside their primary sales area are seeing their location and saying "whoah that's far and not what I'm looking for." I tried localizing the pages by putting their city name in the title tags, meta descriptions, and content, but that doesn't seem to really be getting rid of this traffic from areas too far away to sell a car to. My worry is that the high bounce rates, low time on site, and general irrelevancy of these pages to someone far away are going to affect them negatively. So, short of trying to localize the content on the page or just deleting these pages all together, I'm not quite sure where to go from here. Do you think that having these high bouncing pages will hurt them? Any suggestions would be welcomed. Thanks!
Local Website Optimization | | Make_Model1 -
Local franchise seo strategy. what could be the best practice?
Hello what Could be the best practice of seo and website optimization for a franchise company. Business model: Lets say, a company(company.com) situated in a country having stores in different cities (more than 2 stores in some), provides n number of services depending on store's location. Physical addresses for some stores are available and new stores shall be launched in future. But, the seo and website pages are needed for those locations at the moment as well. If I choose a sub folder, to give each store a URL. This is how it should look like Country level pages company.com, company.com/service1/ _ _ _ company.com/serviceN/ City level pages company.com/city1/, company.com/city1/location1/ , company.com/city1/location2/, company.com/city2/ , company.com/city3/ Q1) In case I make each service page specific to a store location for eg. company.com/city1/service1/, it will create duplicate content issue because content of company.com/city1/service1/ and company.com/service1/ shall be 60% same, except for **meta title,description and contact detail in footer. ** So, the question arises that shall i give canonical to country level main services page i.e company.com/city1/service1/ canonical to company.com/service1/ as it is very hard to make unique content for same services page. Q2) Or Do I need to rework on my complete website design and seo strategy?
Local Website Optimization | | Technians1 -
Are there any suggestions when you completly redesign your web page keeping the same domain but change the host? I want it to go smoothly and want to avoid the rankings we already have including sub pages.
I am currently having our website completely redone by a design company. Are there any suggestions on this process as to not lose the rankings we currently have for our site? The domain will remain the same however we are planning on changing our host. We also have a good amount of sub domains that the web company will not be changing for us.
Local Website Optimization | | molchman0 -
What is the best type map for local SEO?
Hi mozzers, Can someone tell me which type of map is best when embedding it into your service pages? or any map is good enough? Why? Thanks guys!
Local Website Optimization | | Ideas-Money-Art0 -
Launching Hundreds of Local Pages At Once or Tiered? If Tiered, In What Intervals Would You Recommend?
Greeting Mozzers, This is a long question, so please bare with me 🙂 We are an IT and management training company that offers over 180 courses on a wide array of topics. We have multiple methods that our students can attend these courses, either in person or remotely via a technology called AnyWare. We've also opened AnyWare centers in which you can physically go a particular location near you, and log into a LIVE course that might be hosted in say, New York, even if you're in say, LA. You get all the in class benefits and interaction with all the students and the instructor as if you're in the classroom. Recently, we've opened 43 AnyWare centers giving way to excellent localization search opportunities to our website (e.g. think sharepoint training in new york or "whatever city we are located in). Each location has a physical address, phone number, and employee working there so we pass those standards for existence on Google Places (which I've set up). So, why all this background? Well, we'd like to start getting as much visibility for queries that follow the format of "course topic area that we offered" followed by "city we offer it in." We offer 22 course topic areas and, as I mentioned, 43 locations across the US. Our IS team has created custom pages for each city and course topic area using a UI. I won't get into detailed specifics, but doing some simple math (22 topic areas multiplied by 43 location) we get over 800 new pages that need to eventually be crawled and added to our site. As a test, we launched the pages 3 months ago for DC and New York and have experienced great increases in visibility. For example, here are the two pages for SharePoint training in DC and NY (total of 44 local pages live right now). http://www2.learningtree.com/htfu/usdc01/washington/sharepoint-training
Local Website Optimization | | CSawatzky
http://www2.learningtree.com/htfu/usny27/new-york/sharepoint-training So, now that we've seen the desired results, my next question is, how do we launch the rest of the hundreds of pages in a "white hat" manner? I'm a big fan of white hat techniques and not pissing off Google. Given the degree of the project, we also did our best to make the content unique as possible. Yes there are many similarities but courses do differ as well as addresses from location to location. After watching Matt Cutt's video here: http://searchengineland.com/google-adding-too-many-pages-too-quickly-may-flag-a-site-to-be-reviewed-manually-156058 about adding too man pages at once, I'd prefer to proceed cautiously, even if the example he uses in the video has to do with tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of pages. We truly aim to deliver the right content to those searching in their area, so I aim no black hat about it 🙂 But, still don't want to be reviewed manually lol. So, in what interval should we launch the remaining pages in a quick manner to raise any red flags? For example, should we launch 2 cities a week? 4 cities a month? I'm assuming the slower the better of course, but I have some antsy managers I'm accountable to and even with this type of warning and research, I need to proceed somehow the right way. Thanks again and sorry for the detailed message!0