Localising our business to the correct country
-
Hi
I work for children's furniture business called Tidy Books. We are based in the UK. We have UK site www.tidy-books.co.uk. We also have a US site www.tidy-books.com which is registered in the US.
We have fully dedicated and translated French, German and Italian site (www.tidy-books.fr, www.tidy-books.de, www.tidy-books.it) . These all fall under our UK registered address. What I would like, is to have a French, German and Italian business address for these website. We just need an address only. This would mainly be used to for Google business listing and other business listings sites to help rank are sites correctly in their country domains. T
Do you know of or recommend any companies that can do this?
Is there any implications I need to be aware of, such as tax?
Thanks
-
Hi Geraldine
A client of ours used http://www.regus.fr/ to set up an address in Paris for this purpose and later opened a real office - and a real French company - when sales increased. Regus have offices worldwide see http://www.regus.fr/country-selector.aspx so I imagine that they can help for all countries.
I'll add to Gianluca's comments that Google won't be "fooled" by this address into recognising you as a French company. Google checks this through access to company registration databases rather than its own My Business listings.
But there are plenty of other advantages in having a My Business listing and Paris would be a good base in France for your site (audience reach). For an e-commerce site, potential clients will be reassured by a local telephone number too.
Looking at the French site, I noticed that the HREFLANG is incorrectly implemented. This is more important than the postal address. I strongly suggest you correct that
- Neil
-
Hi Gianluca thanks for getting back to me.
I see your point there's not fooling Google!
-
Hi Geraldine,
unfortunately, even though it is possible to obtain something like local P.O. Boxes and phone numbers, the issue is that Google deprecates their use for MyBusiness (Local Search). In other words, Google wants real offices with real phone numbers et al.
So, I see it hard for you to use Local Search in Google for earning more visibility if you do not have a real office in those countries.
However, you can still consider to buy local phone numbers, which then redirect to your UK customer care/commercial office and show them in your .de, .it and .fr websites, so users can call to those numbers. That would be users friendly and may improve the contacts conversions (something that you'd need to track with analytics).
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
-
Allowing correct crawlers for GeoIP Redirect
Hi All, I am working on an international site and we have started running into issues with crawlers successfully crawling the site. GeoIPEnable On Redirect one country RewriteEngine on
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | michaelpw
RewriteCond %{ENV:GEOIP_COUNTRY_CODE} ^US$
RewriteCond %{HTTP:X-Host} !.nexcesscdn.net$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.)$ https://us.website.com/ [R,L] The main reason for working on a hard GEOIP redirect would be that we are unable to show certain products in certain regions, the customer should not be given the option which is best practice. Can anyone advise? Thanking in advance.0 -
Sitemap: unique sitemap or different sitemaps by Country
Hi guys, i have a question about sitemaps. We are doing an international site, e.x. www.offers.com for landing page and www.offers.com/br for brazil, www.offers.com/it for italy, etc... i don't if we should do an unique sitemap for all countries or separate sitemaps by country, e.x.: unique sitemap: www.offers.com/sitemap.xml - including all sitemaps www.offers.com/br/sitemap.xml - sitemap for brazil market only. Thank you
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | thekiller990 -
Do I understand Silos correctly?
Hi everyone, Rob Cairns brought me onto the concept of silos. I'm very amazed of the concept and want to make sure that I get it right. When I create silos I sort subjects according to their main keyword which will rank most difficult and make this the main landing page (the main menu entry within a menu navigation). Then I create submenuentries that have the main menu entry as parent and that also have (in wordpress) the landing page (which is the main menu entry) as a parent site. I use these subpages for LSI and long tail KWs. I do not link between silo subpages of different categories. There is (naturally) a link from the main menu entry to the sub menu entries (which is a little weaker) and a link back to the main menu entry (the landing page) from within the text (which is a little stronger). I also can link between subpages of the same silo or from subpages to a landing page of a different silo if the keyword fits to that landing page. Is that correct so far? Cheers Marc
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RWW0 -
What is the best way to correct 403 access denied errors?
One of the domains I manage is seeing a growing number of 403 errors. For SEO purposes would it be ideal to just 301 redirect them? I am plenty familiar with 404 error issues, but not 403s.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RosemaryB0 -
Multiple distinct businesses owned by Group
I work for a company which owns 14 different brands, all of which have their own domain, website, sales teams, management teams etc. 10 of the websites sit on the same IP address and have the same (or very similar) WHOIS records. The group website links to all the other sites on an 'Our Companies' page, using the anchor text 'visit site' underneath a brief about that company. My question is what are the ramifications of having those 10 sites sitting on the same servers? They are distinct companies but they mostly have a similar theme. They don't really link to each other unless it's a genuine reason for a cross-over. My CEO has asked me to arrange to move some to other servers but I'm not 100% convinced it's necessary - and wouldn't moving over at this stage look like we're trying to hide something? (Most of the sites have been going for 5 years +). Looking at the WHOIS, or the address in each site's footer makes it clear that they're all part of the same umbrella group. And should I nofollow any links between all the sites? There's not many, it's mainly just the ones on the main group website.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Betfred_James0 -
Correct Internal Linking Flow / Keyword Cannibalization
Hi, Would like some advice re our internal linking structure and possible keyword self cannibalization on our ecommerce site.. Will try and give you an overview. Imagine this page structure: Site
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bjs2010
Brand 1
Brand 2
Brand 2 Shoes
Products
Brand 2 Sweaters Then say in Brand 2 Shoes page we have the shoes, e.g., the products labeled as Brand 2 Shoes "Name of Model"
Brand 2 Shoes "Name of Model" Now, what I'm worried about is that if I do a search for "Brand 2 Shoes" it should bring up my landing page right? But it doesn't, it brings up some of the products instead... I'm worried that we may be self cannibalizing some of the keywords - and thinking of changing the product page to be "Brand Name of Model Shoes" or "Name of Model Shoes by Brand" Any ideas or comments appreciated! Thanks all0 -
Is this a Correct Time to Use 302 Redirects?
Hi Mozzers! We are going through a rebranding process, and as of this morning we have 3 domains, all with identical content. For example (not real domain names): www.fantastic.com
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Travis-W
www.fantasticfireworks.com
www.fireworks.com We are using 3 domains to ease the rebranding transition. We currently only want people to visit 'www.fantastic.com,' and if they visit the other 2 domains we want them redirected. Since we will be using these other domains eventually, should we use 302 redirects instead of 301s? The other domains are new and do not have any domain authority or sites linking in, so we do not need to worry about link juice. Does it really matter what type of redirect we use? Thanks!0 -
"Original Content" Dynamic Hurting SEO? -- Strategies for Differentiating Template Websites for a Nationwide Local Business Segment?
The Problem I have a stable of clients spread around the U.S. in the maid service/cleaning industry -- each client is a franchisee, however their business is truly 'local' with a local service area, local phone/address, unique business name, and virtually complete control over their web presence (URL, site design, content; apart from a few branding guidelines). Over time I've developed a website template with a high lead conversion rate, and I've rolled this website out to 3 or 4 dozen clients. Each client has exclusivity in their region/metro area. Lately my white hat back linking strategies have not been yielding the results they were one year ago, including legitimate directories, customer blogging (as compelling as maid service/cleaning blogs can really be!), and some article writing. This is expected, or at least reflected in articles on SEO trends and directory/article strategies. I am writing this question because I see sites with seemingly much weaker back link profiles outranking my clients (using SEOMoz toolbar and Site Explorer stats, and factoring in general quality vs. quantity dynamics). Questions Assuming general on-page optimization and linking factors are equal: Might my clients be suffering because they're using my oft-repeated template website (albeit with some unique 'content' variables)? If I choose to differentiate each client's website, how much differentiation makes sense? Specifically: Even if primary content (copy, essentially) is differentiated, will Google still interpret the matching code structure as 'the same website'? Are images as important as copy in differentiating content? From an 'machine' or algorithm perspective evaluating unique content, I wonder if strategies will be effective such as saving the images in a different format, or altering them slightly in Photoshop, or using unique CSS selectors or slightly different table structures for each site (differentiating the code)? Considerations My understanding of Google's "duplicate content " dynamics is that they mainly apply to de-duping search results at a query specific level, and choosing which result to show from a pool of duplicate results. My clients' search terms most often contain client-specific city and state names. Despite the "original content" mantra, I believe my clients being local businesses who have opted to use a template website (an economical choice), still represent legitimate and relevant matches for their target user searches -- it is in this spirit I ask these questions, not to 'game' Google with malicious intent. In an ideal world my clients would all have their own unique website developed, but these are Main St business owners balancing solutions with economics and I'm trying to provide them with scalable solutions. Thank You! I am new to this community, thank you for any thoughts, discussion and comments!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | localizedseo0