Multinational website - best practice
-
Hello,
I am researching a lot on this subject and have read several articles here on Moz and elsewhere about the best practices for multinational websites. But I'm not yet convinced on what would be the best solution in my case.
Today we have the following websites (examples):
website.com which function as a global website.
website.dk which is for the danish market
website.no which is for the norwegian marketSome of the content on these websites are the same (but different languages; english, danish and norwegian). We want to expand the business to more countries and work with ccTLDs. Both to countries which speaks languages that we don't have content for yet (an example could be Poland), but also more countries that speaks english, like Great Britain (with a .co.uk domain) and Australia (with a .com.au domain). We expect to expand in many countries (as many as it makes sense to do).
I have read a lot about the alternative hreflang tag which would look like and that seems like a good solution, but I have a couple of questions that I hope you guys can answer:
- Should the alternate hreflang tags show every existing language versions including the one you're on or only show the alternative versions?
- Do we risk penalty by having identical or almost identical content for same language websites (could be UK and the global .com one) if we use the alternate hreflang tags? I'm aware that we should use the native spellings and sentences in each country.
- Would the sitemap solution be better in our case?
- We have the same link structure for all websites, but the sub-directories can differ due to their language (like /articles/ is /artikler/ in danish) - is that an issue?
- Will hreflang="en" function as global english? (so searching users that we don't have a local website for will see that).
-
I have an additional question, that I haven't been able to find an answer for elsewhere.
How does Google determine which version is the right one to show for each user? Is it by IP? I mean, in my example we could have an american user that is on vacation in UK. Would he see the .com or .uk result?
It could also be a norwegian user on vacation in Denmark, would he see the .no or .dk results? (danish and norwegian is fairly similar and has a lot of common spellings). -
Thank you for this in depth answer. It's a great help (yours too, Marie).
-
Marie... you're answers are not totally correct.
Please, see my answer below.
-
Here my answers, that partly correct what others answered already (not that they were wrong, but not totally exact).
- Should the alternate hreflang tags show every existing language versions including the one you're on or only show the alternative versions?
Not really. Let me explain.
-
In the case of websites/subfolders/subdomains, which share the same language (eg: USA, UK, AU or ES, MX, AR), using hreflang for every language-country is a must.
-
In the case you have also single websites/subfolders/subdomains that use a unique language (eg.: Italian, which is practically used only in Italy), than you can avoid to add its related hreflang annotation in internal URLs. You should still use it for the home page and every page that may target a not-Italian keyword: I say this so to not see the local site outranked by the most powerful version (usually the English-USA one).
-
In every case you must always implement the hreflang the self-referral annotation (the one you're on, as you defined it).
- Do we risk penalty by having identical or almost identical content for same language websites (could be UK and the global .com one) if we use the alternate hreflang tags? I'm aware that we should use the native spellings and sentences in each country.
No! The hreflang annotation is substantially telling Google that the versions are different and target different users/countries. Even though the differences are very tiny, they are very important (eg.: currencies)
- Would the sitemap solution be better in our case?
It depends. Both the sitemaps and code solutions are valid. The problem of the sitemaps solutions is that it may be harder to update the sitemaps.
- We have the same link structure for all websites, but the sub-directories can differ due to their language (like /articles/ is /artikler/ in danish) - is that an issue?
No! On the contrary, that's the correct thing to do. In fact, also the URLs must be localized.
- Will hreflang="en" function as global english? (so searching users that we don't have a local website for will see that).
Yes, but not with the consequences you are thinking. The "en" only hreflang annotation is telling Google to show that URL to all the English speaking users all over the world (this suggestion is override if exists, for instance, another en-US hreflang annotation).
For having also Spanish users seeing the generic English version of the website, then you should use the hreflang x-default annotation (see here: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com.es/2013/04/x-default-hreflang-for-international-pages.html)
-
- Should the alternate hreflang tags show every existing language versions including the one you're on or only show the alternative versions?
Yes, show all versions including the one that the user is on
2. Do we risk penalty by having identical or almost identical content for same language websites (could be UK and the global .com one) if we use the alternate hreflang tags? I'm aware that we should use the native spellings and sentences in each country.
Google wouldn't penalize this as duplicate content as there really isn't a duplicate content penalty. But, they'll try to pick the best version to rank. They won't rank all of them for all searches.
3. Would the sitemap solution be better in our case?
I'd still use hreflang. Your case sounds like exactly why hreflang was created.
4. We have the same link structure for all websites, but the sub-directories can differ due to their language (like /articles/ is /artikler/ in danish) - is that an issue?
I don't think so, but it's hard to say without digging in. Again, I'd use hreflang wherever appropriate.
5. Will hreflang="en" function as global english? (so searching users that we don't have a local website for will see that).
Here's from the official documentation from Google:
"
It's a good idea to provide a generic URL for geographically unspecified users if you have several alternate URLs targeted at users with the same language, but in different locales. 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, and everyone else to see the homepage. In this case you should specify the generic English-language (en) page for searchers in, say, the UK. You can annotate this cluster of pages using a Sitemap file or using HTML link tags like this:
"
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
-
Multilingual website - Url problem (sitemap)
At this moment our website both uses the language in the url like "en" and localizes the url itself ("books" in english and "boeken" in dutch). Because of the history of making our website multilingual we have a system that takes the browser language for the localization if the url doesn't contain a language like "en". This means: www.test.com/books = browser language www.test.com/en/books = english language www.test.com/boeken = browser language www.test.com/nl/boeken = dutch language Now for the sitemap this makes it a little troublesome for me because which hreflang is used for which url? 1) The first thing I thought of was using x-default for all urls that get the language of the browser. <code><url><loc>http://www.test.com/books</loc></url></code> But as you can see we now got 2 times x-default. 2) Another solution I thought of was just use the localization of the url to determine the language like: <code><url><loc>http://www.test.com/books</loc></url></code> But now we got 2 of each language for the same page. 3) The last solution I thought of was removing links without a language in the url (except for the homepage, which will still have an x-default) like: <code><url><loc>http://www.test.comen/books</loc></url></code> But for this solution I need to put 301's at pages that are "deleted" and also need to change the system to 301 to the right page. Although the last point isn't really a problem I'm kind of worried that I will lose some of the "seo points" with a 301. (When we changed our domain in the past we had a bad experience with the 301 of our old domain) What do you think would be the best solution for SEO? Or do you have any other suggestions or solutions I haven't thought of.
International SEO | | Anycoin0 -
Sitemap for multilanguage website
Hello sorry silly question but prefer to be sure 🙂 I have an international website with different subfolders .com/es .com .com/fr etc All of them have independant sitemap, but i'd like to add in .com/robot.txt a sitemap with language. Do you know how I can do this ? Tks a lot !
International SEO | | AymanH0 -
Transfer a website from WP to Joomla
Hello guy's, We have a WP website and we are moving soon to a new site that will be in Joomla.
International SEO | | WayneRooney
Our website is very big and we are ranking with more then 400 keys in all the tshirts industry in the UK.
The new website will be with the same url's and the same domain so we will not lose any of the ranking.
Within this domain we have the blogs as well and a lot of pages. I'd like to get some tips about how to make the transition as smooth as we can to avoid problems with Google ? We have more then 700 visitor a day so we can not take any risks regarding to this. Any help is welcome !!!0 -
Shall I automatically redirect international visitors from www.domain.com to e.g. www.domain.com/es? What is best SEO practice?
We have chosen the one domain approach with our international site having different language versions in subdirectory of main domain:
International SEO | | lcourse
www.domain.com/es
www.domain.com/it
etc. What is SEO-wise best practice for implementing international index pages. I see following options: entering www.domain.com will display without redirection the index page in language of user (e.g based on IP or browser) in www.domain.com
Example: www.booking.com entering www.domain.com will always show English index page.
Additionally one may display a message in the header if IP from other country with link to other language version.
Example: www.apple.com entering www.domain.com will always redirect automatically to country specific subdirectory based on IP
Example: www.samsung.com Any thoughts/suggestions on what may be best solution from a SEO perspective? For a user I believe options 1) & 3) are preferable.0 -
Best process to 301 ecommerce store?
Hi, We have decided to segment our products and languages on to different country tlds. I know how to 301, but I am curious as to how I should actually do this, in what order to do it. Let's call the existing site with all products on OLDsite, and the new tld, where the products will also appear NEWsite. I am thinking of: Setting up NEWsite, but no sitemap. On launch of NEWsite, 301 all products on OLDsite to NEWsite (they will no longer appear on OLDsite) After some time, add sitemap, google verification in GWT, etc... on NEWsite. My thinking is that if I launch NEWsite and notify Google it will index the same products and content as OLDsite, and not necessarily check the 301 right? Which could lead to dupe content issues... Any ideas? We are only redirecting part of the site, so not all of it. Thanks!
International SEO | | bjs20100 -
How do I get a UK website to rank in Dubai?
We are trying to get a UK-based children's furniture website to rank in Dubai. We have had a couple of orders from wealthy expats in Dubai and it seems to be the correct target market. Does anyone have any specific knowledge of this area? We are promoting the same website as for the UK market. Also does anyone know any user behaviour stats on expatriates using search engines? Do they carry on using the version of Google they are used to, or do most change to the local version of Google? Thanks in advance
International SEO | | Wagada0 -
Best way to enter Canada, SEO-wise?
We are thinking of splitting our e-Commerce site into a Canadian site w/ localized content, a potential French version and for additional relevance w/ localized currency. What would be the best way to go about this if we were wanting to gain traction as soon as possible on the organic side? Split the domain into domain.com and domain.com/ca/ (subfolders) Split the domain into ca.domain.com and domain.com Or split the domain into domain.com & wirelessemporium.ca Also, what are some key best practices we need to keep in mind to avoid duplicate content issues, etc?
International SEO | | eugeneku0 -
What is the best NAP format to use?
Canadian client with a suite number in a shopping center. Does it matter if the NAP is the way it's displayed on Google Maps? Canada Post (or in the US, USPS)? Or does it only matter that all the citations are as similar as possible to one another? Canada Post says: 400-3033 IMMEL ST
International SEO | | rayvensoft
ABBOTSFORD BC V2S 6S2 But if I look that up on maps.google.com, it defaults to: 3033 Immel St Abbotsford, BC V2S 4L3, CanadaAnd the client does not appear in the list of about 20+ businesses at this address.Which should I use for Places (and I assume any other citation)?1