Multi Regional Website Best Practices

[nathanfranklin]

Hi there,

I have a website that is targeting 3 countries AU/US & NZ. I have set up hreflang tags for each page on each of the site however I am having difficulties getting it work right.

I read this article which was a great insight into the hreflang tags. https://moz.com/blog/hreflang-behaviour-insights and as a result I have implemented hreflang tags in the following manner:

When users access the root domain http://[website] it will redirect the user to their locale with a 302 redirect.

I have a few questions:
1. When building my external link profiles, I'm not sure if I should be building link profiles for http://[website]/ or for the geo graphical pages (http://[website]/aus/ etc..). Note that the http://[website]/ is never used, it just issues a 302 to the actual geographical location.

2. It seems that the hreflang tags are not working correctly. Perhaps its the result of the 302 on the root page, but in google.com.au (using the link http://www.google.com.au/search?hl=en&gl=au&pws=0&q=[branded search]) I would expect that I should see the search results for /aus/ given the fact that the hreflang tags are setup as en-au. Instead I am seeing the root domain page. Is that correct or should it be showing all the pages with /aus/. ALSO If I do a search in google thailand (http://www.google.com.au/search?hl=en&gl=th&pws=0&q=[branded search]) it returns the /aus/ version where it should be showing the /us/ using the x-default hreflang tag.

In google webmaster tools I have setup 4 site profiles:
http://[website]/
http://[website]/us/
http://[website]/aus/ (Targeted to Australia)
http://[website]/nz/ (Targeted to New Zealand)

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks

Nathan

[gfiorelli1]

Google explicitly advice to use 302 in case of redirection because of IP/User Agent detection, which is what it always says in others similar cases (i.e.: redirecting from desktop to mobile version of the site).

[nathanfranklin]

Hi Patrick,

If I created a landing page on the root domain, would that have positive or negative implications for SEO. I'm also thinking through usability whether it's more useable to redirect a user automatically with the option to change their region after they have landed on their 'local' site.

Do you know how my search results would look adding the landing page into the mix? I mean in terms of URL and content, how will it display in the search engines?

At the moment, sometimes I see the root domain in the search results and other times I see the country specific pages. An example of this is if you go to https://www.google.com.au/?gws_rd=ssl#q=destiny+rescue+where+we+work, you will see a mixture of results. There are some root domain representations, some /aus/ and even some /us/ and /nz/ (of which the last 2 technically shouldn't be present).

Thanks

[PatrickDelehanty]

Hi again

1. There is nothing you are going to lose by changing the 302 redirect to a 301. If anything, I would change the www.domain.com version of your site (leaving that country targeted to the world, no specific region) to give the user an option of what region they are from and what site they would like to visit based on their location. I would then follow the directions in my first paragraph.

2. See my suggestion in one. You shouldn't redirect your www.domain.com to a regional variant. Again, if anything, make the homepage an option page based on the users location so that they can choose which experience they would like to have.

Does this all make sense? Let me know!

[nathanfranklin]

Hi Patrick,

Thanks for your response.

I read the Moz page on redirections and it's interesting MOZ states that 0% link juice is passed with a 302. With that in mind I have the following additional questions:

1. At the moment I do a 302 from the root of domain to the geo graphical site. (The root domain page is never rendered, only redirected). From what I understand google bots only ever spider a site from the US. If I change the redirect to a 301 the link juice from the root page would then be transferred mostly to /us/ then would it? What sort of ranking power would /aus/ and /nz/ lose as a result of changing the redirect from a 302 to a 301.

2. Would that mean that the http://[website]/ root page would disappear from the search engines and only /us/, /aus/, & /nz/ would be displayed? At the moment the root page link (http://[website]/) is being displayed on most searches when I google.

Thanks.

[PatrickDelehanty]

Hi there

Yes - hreflang and language tags are a great place to start. I would also create a Google and Bing Webmaster Tools for each regional variation and country target them accordingly - here's the Bing resource to do that.

You can also use citation builders like Whitespark to build listings for the regional URL variations and their contact information.

When it comes to your 302 issues, I would make sure that your redirects are implemented properly - there are resources there on how to do so.

I would also suggest trying to mold your on-site SEO and content to capture traffic in regional areas for a better user experience.

Here are a couple of more resources for you:
International SEO (Moz)
The International SEO Checklist (Moz)

Hope this all helps! Good luck!