International Site - Language Targetting
-
Hi Mozzers,
I am currently conducting a technical site audit on a large website. Their main content and audience is in the US, but they have started to add translated versions of the content in different languages (about 30 different languages). Also, they are not using cookies or scripts to auto-populate the language on the page, and the pages seem to be getting indexed just fine.
Currently, they have their language distinguished by sub-folder (i.e. example.org/blog/by-language/spanish/), which I plan to 301 redirect to example.org/blog/es/ for each language. However, they are not implementing any sitemaps or hreflang header tags.
I have not dealt with this in the past as all of my work has been done on smaller US sites, so I wanted to verify the steps I plan to take to ensure this is a solid approach.
- 301 redirect example.org/language/spanish/blog/ to example.org/es/blog/
- Recommend adding hreflang markup into the header for each language. (They have a lot of pages, so they may not implement this if it is too much work.)
- Highly recommend adding XML sitemaps for each content version of the site using the media flow HREFLANG Siitemap Tool.
- Setting up multiple Webmaster Tools accounts and geotargetting them by language. I would also add the XML sitemap for each language.
Is this a solid approach, given the information above? I want to make sure I am fundamentally sound on this before suggesting so many large changes. Thank you in advance for any thoughts / wisdom you can instill!
---------------------additional information---------------------
If I am hearing you correctly, I would only submit one XML Sitemap for international content. It would look something like the below image. I would only use one GWT account to upload the file, and I would not need to add any additional markup on each page, as it will be located in the hreflang xml sitemap.
Finally, would it be a good or bad idea to 301 redirect their naming convention to a new, shorter one?
example.org/by-language/spanish/blog/this-is-an-example --> example.org/es/blog/this-is-an-example
-
Thank you very much Robert for your thorough follow-up. I am humbled at the insights you offered, and am very glad I asked about this. It is much more detailed than I was expecting, and definitely not something to make a hasty, uninformed decision on.
-
Jbanz,
I am happy to help. I want you to realize that for a first multi-lingual, international site, you are taking on a big project. You need to be very clear as to what you are doing before you do it. The reason I preface my comments is: I think you are getting confused between language and country/region or seeing them both as the same (they are not). NOTE: Before you begin to make changes to URLs, use a program like Screaming Frog so you do not lose any of your urls. You will be able to go back afterwards and compare apples to apples on your 301's. (Yes, based on the structure you gave in the example, I do think it would be good to clean them up.)
You state:** Their main content and audience is in the US, but they have started to add translated versions of the content in different languages (about 30 different** languages).
Then you state: **...****Webmaster Tools accounts and geotargetting them by language **If you are geotargeting, you are saying I want to influence a region (not a language). So, a gTLD for the US would set the geotargeting in WMT to US. That same site could have Spanish pages (we do this a lot in Texas), Vietnamese pages, etc. but you are geotargeting the US and you are providing content to people in the US who speak these various languages. That is different from having a gTLD that is trying to influence many worldwide markets. If the US site I mentioned wants to influence (target) all Spanish speakers in the world, you would not set the geo-targeting in WMT to the US as that would dampen your exposure in Spain, Chile, Mexico, etc. You would instead (if using a single site and directories) use the sitemap approach talked about in GWMT. It clearly says, "These annotations help Google serve the correct language or regional URL to searchers." So, you are deciding what you want to do and you can do both.
If you use the example from GWMT, they have an English site, but they want to target German speakers worldwide. So if you are saying that you have German pages and you want to geo-target German speakers in Switzerland and also all German speakers the sitemap would look like theirs. (See notes after code).
-
<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9" <br="">xmlns:xhtml="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<url><loc>http://www.example.com/english/</loc>
<xhtml:link<br>rel="alternate"
hreflang="de"
href="http://www.example.com/deutsch/"
/>
<xhtml:link<br>rel="alternate"
hreflang="de-ch"
href="http://www.example.com/schweiz-deutsch/"
/>
<xhtml:link<br>rel="alternate"
hreflang="en"
href="http://www.example.com/english/"
/></xhtml:link<br></xhtml:link<br></xhtml:link<br></url><url><loc>http://www.example.com/deutsch/</loc>
<xhtml:link<br>rel="alternate"
hreflang="en"
href="http://www.example.com/english/"
/>
<xhtml:link<br>rel="alternate"
hreflang="de-ch"
href="http://www.example.com/schweiz-deutsch/"
/>
<xhtml:link<br>rel="alternate"
hreflang="de"
href="http://www.example.com/deutsch/"
/></xhtml:link<br></xhtml:link<br></xhtml:link<br></url><url><loc>http://www.example.com/schweiz-deutsch/</loc>
<xhtml:link<br>rel="alternate"
hreflang="de"
href="http://www.example.com/deutsch/"
/>
<xhtml:link<br>rel="alternate"
hreflang="en"
href="http://www.example.com/english/"
/>
<xhtml:link<br>rel="alternate"
hreflang="de-ch" **This is saying German speakers in Switzerland and establishes a location. **
href="http://www.example.com/schweiz-deutsch/" **This is the url for those in Switzerland who speak German. **
/></xhtml:link<br></xhtml:link<br></xhtml:link<br></url>You must create a separate
url
element for each URL. Eachurl
element must include a loc tag indicating the page URLs, and anxhtml:link rel="alternate" hreflang="XX"
subelement for every alternate version of the page, including itself. </urlset> -
This example uses the language code
de
for the URL targeted at German speakers anywhere, and the language-locale codede-ch
for German speakers in Switzerland. If you have several alternate URLs targeted at users with the same language but in different locales, it's a good idea to provide a URL for geographically unspecified users. For example, you may have specific URLs for English speakers in Ireland (en-ie
), Canada (en-ca
), and Australia (en-au
), but want all other English speakers to see your generic English (en
) page. In this case you should specify the generic English-language (en
) page for searchers in, say, the UK.
Again, you are taking on a big task. Go at it slowly and methodically until you get the hang of it.
Best,
Robert -
-
Thank you Robert for your thorough explanation! I am sorry your first post timed-out, and I appreciate the follow up post. I added a little clarification based off of what you said.
-
Jbanz,
Your question is reasonable and I wrote an extensive answer that, when I hit post, all went away as moz had logged me out. Even though I could still go to my community profile, etc. and had an option to logout. Makes me want to scream. Spend a lot of time answering and nothing to show for it. But, maybe the shorter version is better.
So, since I have little time I will give you the condensed version. You are trying to use language to target countries and it won't work the way you are trying to do it. You cannot use geo-targeting of a generic TLD when you want to target more than one country.
What you need to do is back up two or three steps and read the following about sitemaps and targeting from GWMT:
Submit rel-alternate-hreflang annotations in a sitemap. (NOTE: not multiple sitemaps for urls from one gTLD domain) This will keep it simple for you. From GWMT (the bold is mine)
If your site targets users in many languages and, optionally, countries, you can use Sitemaps to provide Google with
rel="alternate" hreflang="x"
. These annotations help Google serve the correct language or regional URL to searchers. More information.Imagine you have an English language page, targeted at English speakers worldwide. You also have equivalent versions of this page targeted at German speakers worldwide, and German speakers located in Switzerland. Your full set of URLs is:
I hope this helps you out and makes it all simpler for you.
Robert
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
-
Setting up international site subdirectories in GSC as separate properties for better geotargeting?
My client has an international website with a subdirectory structure for each country and language version - eg. /en-US. At present, there is a single property set up for the domain in Google Search Console but there are currently various geotargeting issues I’m trying to correct with hreflang tags. My question is, is it still recommended practise and helpful to add each international subdirectory to Google Search Console as an individual property to help with correct language and region tagging? I know there used to be properly sets for this but haven’t found any up to date guidance on whether setting up all the different versions as their own properties might help with targeting. Many thanks in advance!
International SEO | | MMcCalden0 -
International Market
Hello Moz friends, I am new to the tool and I was wondering if anybody has a best practice for international markets. I used to work with a different tool before and handling international markets has definitely been a challenge for it. What is the best way to set up campaigns/ keyword lists? By country? By topic? How helpful is the keyword explorer and reporting for international markets? I really appreciate your help.
International SEO | | LisaGerecht0 -
International SEO - Targeting US and UK markets
Hi folks, i have a client who is based in italy and they set up a site that sells travel experiences in the sout of Italy (the site currently sit on a server in Italy). The site has been set up as gTLDs: www.example.com They only want to target the US and the UK market to promote their travel experiences and the site has only the english version (the site does not currently offer an italian version). If they decide to go for the gTLDs and not actually change to a ccTLDs (which would be ideal from my point of view) how are the steps to be taken to set this up correctly on GSC? They currently only have one property registered on GSC: www.exapmple.com therefore i guess the next steps are: Add new property - www.example.com/uk and and set up geo targeting for UK Existing property - www.example.com/ set up geo targeting for US In case the client does not have the budget to optimise the content for american and british languages, would still make sense to have 2 separate property in GSC (example.com for US market and example.com/uk for UK market)? Few considerations: Add canonical tag to avoid duplicate content across the two versions of the site (in the event there is no budget to optimise the content for US and UK market)? Thank you all in advance for looking into this David
International SEO | | Davide19840 -
International Sites - Sitemaps, Robots & Geolocating in WMT
Hi Guys, I have a site that has now been launched in the US having originally just been UK. In order to accommodate this, the website has been set-up using directories for each country. Example: domain.com/en-gb domain.com/en-us As the site was originally set-up for UK, the sitemap, robots file & Webmaster Tools account were added to the main domain. Example: domain.com/sitemap.xml domain.com/robots.txt The question is does this now need changing to make it specific for each country. Example: The sitemap and robots.txt for the UK would move to: domain.com/en-gb/sitemap.xml domain.com/en-gb/robots.txt and the US would have its own separate sitemap and robots.txt. Example : domain.com/en-us/sitemap.xml domain.com/en-us/robots.txt Also in order to Geolocate this in WMT would this need to be done for each directory version instead of the main domain? Currently the WMT account for the UK site is verified at www.domain.com, would this need reverifying at domain.com/en-gb? Any help would be appreciated! Thanks!
International SEO | | CarlWint0 -
Multiple domains for one site / satellite domains
Hi, I know this has been asked a few times before but I want to clarify everything my own head. We've recently relaunched a website for a client that combined three existing sites into one. The new site is http://www.gowerpensions.com/ I've added 301 rewrite rules to the three old domains to to point to the correct page on the new website, i.e the old contact page goes to the new one, the about page to the new about page etc, etc. The old domains are thehorizonplan.com, horizonqrops.com and horizonqnups.com. I've informed Google Webmaster Tools of the change. The client also has several other domains such as horizonpensions.com and qnupscheme.com. Am I correct in thinking I should not park these domains on top of the gowerpensions.com website as this will be seen as duplicate content? I don't think there is anything linking to these domains. They might not even be listed in Google. With the thehorizonplan.com, horizonqrops.com and horizonqnups.com domains there are existing links to them, but will parking these on top of gowerpensions.com cause a problem, or should I keep my 301 redirects forever? Would a better strategy be to make microsites on all of the satellite domains that link to the main one to create more relevant links? If this is the case then I'd need to fix any third party links to the old horizon domains. I hope that makes sense. Thanks Ric
International SEO | | BWIRic0 -
New web design targeting UK & France
Hi I have a couple of topics I would like to clarify. My existing website is on .ie & we are now expanding into France & UK We have decided to take the route of example.com with subfolders for example.com/ie example.com/uk & example.com/fr just like thishttp://app.wistia.com/stats/278112 provided by SEOmoz Should we 301 redirect our existing .ie site to the .com or the .com/ie? When building links should links be built to .com or each .com .com/fr etc Also are there any good resources out there about International SEO? Thank you 🙂
International SEO | | Socialdude1 -
Best URL for international domain
Hello SEomozers We have a site with this structure: -www.xyz.com US customers, limited content in12 languages, -global.xyz.com for International customers, full content in 12 languages. The global site is the hub for the rest of the world. We are creating a new site from scratch and want to consolidate the two domains in one by using subfolders, such as: www.xyz.com for USA, www.wyz.com/jp for US customers reading in japanese and www.xyz.com/int-jp for customers from Japan (international - will set geo location with webmastertool) What do you think would be the best naming convention for the international?
International SEO | | FXDD
www.xyz.com/int-jp or
www.xyz.com/eu-jp or
www.xyz.com/eu/jp or
www.xyz.com/ ...any other suggestions?0 -
What is the best SEO site structure for multi country targeting?
Hi There, We are an online retailer with four (and soon to be five) distinct geographic target markets (we have physical operations in both the UK and New Zealand). We currently target these markets like this: United Kingdom (www.natureshop.co.uk) New Zealand (www.natureshop.co.nz) Australia (www.natureshop.com/au) - using a google web master tools geo targeted folder United States (www.natureshop.com) - using google web master tools geo targeted domain Germany (www.natureshop.de) - in german and yet to be launched as full site We have various issues we want to address. The key one is this: our www.natureshop.co.uk website was adversely affected by the panda update on April 12. We had some external seo firms work on this site for us and unfortunately the links they gained for us were very low quality, from sometimes spammy sites and also "keyword" packed with very littlle anchor text variation. Our other websites (the .co.nz and .com) moved up after the updates so I can only assume our external seo consultants were responsible for this. I have since managed to get them to remove around 70% of these links and we have bought all seo efforts back in house again. I have also worked to improve the quality of our content on this site and I have 404'ed the six worst affected pages (the ones that had far too many single phrase anchor text links coming into them). We have however not budged much in our rankings (we have made some small gains but not a lot). Our other weakness's are not the fastest page load times and some "thin" content. We are on the cusp (around 4 weeks away) of deploying a brand new platform using asp.net MVP with N2 and this looks like it will address our page load speed issues. We also have been working hard on our content building and I believe we will address that as well with this release. Sorry for the long build up, however I felt some background was needed to get to my questions. My questions are: Do you think we are best to proceed with trying to get our www.natureshop.co.uk website out of the panda trap or should we consider deploying a new version of the site on www.natureshop.com/uk/ (geo targeted to the UK)? If we are to do this should we do the same for New Zealand and Germany and redirect the existing domains to the new geo targeted folders? If we do this should we redirect the natureshop.co.uk pages to the new www.natureshop.com/uk/ pages or will this simply pass on the panda "penalty". Will this model build stronger authority on the .com domain that benefit all of the geo targeted sub folders or does it not work this way? Finally can we deploy the same pages and content on the different geo targeted sub folders (with some subtle regional variations of spelling and language) or will this result in a duplicate content penalty? Thank you very much in advance to all of you and I apologise for the length and complexity of the question. Kind Regards
International SEO | | ConradC
Conrad Cranfield
Founder: Nature Shop Ltd0