Internationalization without losing SEO
-
Hi everyone !
For years we've had our e-commerce site targeting only our Brazilian customers, thus our domain name was domain.com.br . We've built a very strong AdWords account with the URLs within this domain and we've got a considerable SERP positioning as well.
Now we've also bought the domain.com (without the country extension ".br"), to target international clients. Our plan is to build the site using the following structure:
domain.com/en-US/
domain.com/es-ES/
domain.com/en-GB/and also
domain.com/pt-BR/ (for our brazilian audience).
We thing that just dropping off the original domain.com.br and redirecting everything to domain.com/pt-BR/ would not be a good move, as we would need to redo all our AdWords campaigns (the domain is different) and would lose all our reputation/quality score. In terms of SEO I don't know how Google would react with the redirects (if we would keep the quality or not).
So our plan is to keep both the domain.com.br and domain.com/pt-BR/ working simultaneously, but then there's the problem of duplicate content. Should we use the "canonical" tag and if so, where should we say the original content is?
Has anyone been through this before, ie. expanding a country-level domain to a .com with multiple languages, but keeping the reputation gained by the original language.
Thanks for any advice!!
P.S. - We've also though about setting up the new structure with subdomains such as en.domain.com , es.domain.com, fr.domain.com, but we though it would work better using subdirectories. Any thoughts on this is also very welcomed.
-
If it were a brand new site and the target markets were pretty equal (or the Brazilian market was relatively small), I think the sub-folder approach is a good bet. You could use <rel="alternate" hreflang...> for language-equivalent pages, and the combination of a .com plus language/country targeting should work fairly well.
In this case, though, since the Brazilian market is so strong, and you're already dependent on that .com.br domain, I think making the switch completely would be very high-risk. From an organic standpoint, I would advise against redirecting the .com.br domain to the Brazilian sub-domainfolder
I'd suggest either launching the new domain with <rel="alternate" hreflang...>and no Brazilian sub-folder, or, as you said, setting up <rel="canonical"...>from the sub-folder to the .com.br domain (and keeping that the main site for Brazilian visitors). As the new site gains ground and you see how it performs, you can always switch them out later.</rel="canonical"...></rel="alternate" hreflang...>
As Michael said, make sure you're not double-dipping on the Adwords side with two domains in the same region. That could land your account in hot water. For now, if the .com.br stayed canonical for Brazil, AdWords should continue to use the .com.br site. You can set up regional/country campaigns for the .com site and target them specifically. That shouldn't be a problem and will give you time to build up the quality score and history on the new domain.
-
"When you hit 10/10, dump the old domain."
10/10 QS - that's ambitious!
You can't have more than one domain used per ad-group. This would only be advisable to have in a new separate campaign within the account. But if I understand you right then you are competing for the same keywords so both campaigns go in the bid auction and can push up your CPC.
-
The simple answer:
- Keep your .br site for AdWords campaigns. Keep your AdWords landing pages live, but canonicalize them to the en-BR subdomain.
- For the non-AdWords landing pages, do a 301 redirect from your .br site to the en-BR subdomain.
This allows you to move all your organic traffic to the en-BR subdomain while not losing your AdWords domain strength. Have your cake and eat it too!
Over time, take your highest performing ads:
- Make 5 copies of your ad exactly as they are
- Make 1 copy of your ad pointing at your new domain
This will send 15% of your keyword traffic to your new domain. Once Google sees that your new domain performs just as admirably as your old domain (a few weeks, at most), you'll start seeing the Quality Score for the new keyword rise. When you hit 10/10, dump the old domain. Your AdWords account is fully transitioned.
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
-
"Duplicate without user-selected canonical” - impact to Google Ads costs
Hello, we are facing some issues on our project and we would like to get some advice. Scenario
Paid Search Marketing | | Alex_Pisa
We run several websites (www.brandName.com, www.brandName.be, www.brandName.ch, etc..) all in French language . All sites have nearly the same content & structure, only minor text (some headings and phone numbers due to different countries are different). There are many good quality pages, but again they are the same over all domains. Current solution
Currently we don’t use canonicals, instead we use rel="alternate" hreflang="x-default": <link rel="alternate" hreflang="fr-BE" href="https://www.brandName.be/" /> <link rel="alternate" hreflang="fr-CA" href="https://www.brandName.ca/" /> <link rel="alternate" hreflang="fr-CH" href="https://www.brandName.ch/" /> <link rel="alternate" hreflang="fr-FR" href="https://www.brandName.fr/" /> <link rel="alternate" hreflang="fr-LU" href="https://www.brandName.lu/" /> <link rel="alternate" hreflang="x-default" href="https://www.brandName.com/" /> Naturally this si reflected in ""Duplicate without user-selected canonical” . Issue
We create the same ad in Google Ads for 2 domains. So the content is mostly identical, ads are identical, target URLs differ only in domain. Yet Google Ads “Quality score” is different (10/10 vs. 6/10) and “Landing page experience” is very different (Above average vs. Average). Some members of our team think lower “Landing page experience” increases the Google Ads costs, which I personally don't believe, but I want to double check. Question: Can “Duplicate without user-selected canonical” issue decrease the “Landing page experience” rating and as result can it cause higher Google ads costs? Any suggestions/ideas appreciated, thanks. Regards.0 -
100+ PPC Landing Pages Linking To Main URL... Hurting My SEO?
I started another thread around this question but don't think I was articulate enough. So, I have over 100 various landing pages that I use for targeted PPC. I don't really have any interest in these pages amassing their own SEO value; I simply use them for my PPC accounts. However, they all link back to my home page. Is this considered a link farm? And, if so, is the best option to simply add a nofollow attribute to all the links pointing to my home page? Would there be any reason to keep the links as follow? I don't think they're giving my site any SEO value but I'm concerned that they could be harming it instead. Any expert advice would be much appreciated.
Paid Search Marketing | | jfishe19880 -
What is the SEO value of Thomasnet
Ok, the company I work for has had a paid listing on Thomasnet.com. This was started long before I took over the marketing. We get no real value from Thomasnet, just a lot of solicitation for unrelated things. And my company has been paying $15,000 a year for this listing. Thomasnet is a huge waste of money and I want to cancel it. The problem is that I do not have a good understanding of the link value from Thomasnet. They have a high domain authority and we have a good number of links from them because we pay for the listing. If we stop paying, those links go away and I am afraid it will hurt us in our rankings. Any insights? Thanks!
Paid Search Marketing | | dloeschen0 -
Using the same landing page for seo and ppc
When does it make sense to create one landing page for both seo and ppc?
Paid Search Marketing | | melen0 -
AdWords *free* vouchers hurt SEO?
Maybe it was the penguin, or maybe it was Panda, but around about the time of the three updates close together and the rumoured 'parked domain' update that went wrong, I used a free adwords voucher. The site in question used to rank for practically every search term relevant to the niche. Now, I can search back to 60 pages in Google results and nothing. Now, I know its not been de-indexed, it still there when I search for info:TheDomainInQuestion.co.uk It also has 6 site links when searching for the url alone. Each and every page is hand written original content built up over many years and also edited and updated regularly. On linkdetective, I have a very nice rainbow type graph regarding the type of links and also a very very good spread of anchors. 118 different phrases pointing in and aside from one site that linked to me sitewide (16000+ but since removed and now down to 3300 and dropping almost daily). Even with that, the highest percentage of anchor text was 20%. Basically, gone through practically everything that is available on the web about combating penguin and panda, yet the site kept dropping and has disappeared completely for keyword phrases. Might sound a bit paranoid, but could Google have done this on purpose to try to make me carry on with adwords?
Paid Search Marketing | | NinJaSkrtel0 -
Do you take Seo and ppc management on competitor sites?
I would love to hear what everyone thinks : I wanted to know what people do about seo and ppc when the keywords and industries overlap.
Paid Search Marketing | | DavidKonigsberg0 -
Does anyone do SEO for a % of sales?
I am the CEO of a small company ( 33 employees in Jacksonville, FL ) We have a family of websites that sell office products - we are the manufacture we have a staff of 3 in the website dept - but with 10 active sites its alot of work. We are launching a new site this week and need to do some SEO for the site .. Since this new site has no sales - i want to see if there is someone that will work based on a % of sales - say 10% of sales for 18 months - Here are my thoughts : Option A: - go out and get a "package" for say $5000 and have SEO done and hope it proves results Option B: - partner with someone and give them 10% of sales the site produces - so if we can grow it to $1M in sales - that person could make $100K off the site - ( our competition is a $20M + site) Some would say that im crazy and it might cost me $100K -i like it because we are all on the same page and i pay for results - not promises. Thoughts?
Paid Search Marketing | | BryanCroft1 -
What is the effect of a proxy server replicating a sight on SEO
I have heard of PPC company's that set up a proxy server to replicate your site so that they can use their own tracking methods for their reports. What affect if any does this have on SEO for a site?
Paid Search Marketing | | prima-2535091