Should I establish a Webmaster Tools site per language?
-
Our company services multiple regions. Our website is setup for France, International (en-gb), Spanish, United States and China. The websites share a common template and format and menu tree but each has unique content.
Should I use a single Google Webmaster Tools site for all of these or establish each of them as a unique website?
-
In theory - yes, but here is how look in practicle:
http://www.stateofdigital.com/google-broken/
Just check examples with "bandwagon" or "carro". I'm not sure how this happen but i can often see similar results since our Bulgarian language is close to Russian. So in bulgarian SERP i can see sometimes russian results. Of course result is relevant, just different country.I also have site related to Greek language. But this site can be visited from Cyprus and other worldwide locations due keywords. I can attach SearchConsole and Analytics screenshots if you don't believe it.
-
What is currently taking place is that in the US I am competing with my international english website for top spot and the international english website often wins. I was hoping that I could assign international targetting to each and that the effort would help Google point users to the most relavent content but according to https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/62399?hl=en:
"This setting is only for geographic data. If you're targeting users in different locations—for example, if you have a site in French that you want users in France, Canada, and Mali to read—don't use this tool to set France as a geographic target. A good example of where it would be useful is for a restaurant website: if the restaurant is in Canada, it's probably not of interest to folks in France. But if your content is in French and is of interest to people in multiple countries/regions, it's probably better not to restrict it."
So, to answer my previous question it looks like this will often lock the results into the country.
-
I'm not sure because Canadian Quebec users for example can see .fr results in their SERP. Same can happen with Latin/South America and .es results. Just because language...
-
Thank you for your answer. In our case the following applies:
"If your website is using different folders with gTLDS (example.com/de;example.com/es;example.com/fr) - yes you can verify them and setup to specific geo-location."
For now, we won't be implementing HREFLANG tags but I am considering assigning each website in Webmaster Tools an International Targeting setting. If I assign this value, for example the french website to France, I shouldn't necessarily see the French website show up less in, let's say, Canadian French searches, correct?
-
- If your website is is using different ccTLD (.de/.es/.fr) domains - yes you can verify them and set to specific geo-location.
- If your website is using different gTLDS subdomains (de.example.com/es.example.com/fr.example.com) - yes you can verify them and setup to specific geo-location.
- If your website is using different folders with gTLDS (example.com/de;example.com/es;example.com/fr) - yes you can verify them and setup to specific geo-location.
- If your website is using url parameters (example.com/?hl=de;example.com/?hl=es;example.com/?hl=fr) - no you can verify them only once and setup to only one geo-location.
Whatever your structure is - please use hreflang to avoid duplicate content and provide even better experience for users and bots:
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
-
Potential new URL structure for my ecommerce site
At the moment my site suffers from a flat product category structure where over 600 items fall into one category alone. This category is then filtered using a faceted search which appends query strings to the category URL and changes the products displayed on the page. At the moment our product category URL is as follows, www.domain.com/category/greeting-cards and this holds all cards including occasions such as anniversary, birthdays etc and also themes such as animal cards, contemporary cards etc I have proposed changes to my developer to change this structure to include subcategories. I can now go two subcategories deep. For example, "greeting cards > occasions > birthday cards" or "greeting cards > themes > animals". This is reflected in the new URL structure, which has been proposed, www.domain.com/greeting-cards/occasions/birthday-cards. In this URL do I need "occasions" in the URL as I don't think it adds much value to the user? Would I be better of having www.domain.com/greeting-cards/birthday-cards. If a user searches for "birthday cards" then I think this would be more relevant?
On-Page Optimization | | joe-ainswoth0 -
On Site Question: Duplicate H2...
Hi All A few on-site audit tools pull information on duplicate H2 tags on pages. This implies it's a bad thing and should be fixed - is that the case? On one of my sites the tag-line is in H2 in the header, so appears on every page... Just wondering if this is something worth fixing. Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | GTAMP0 -
Does no-follow for pages affect site ranking?
Hey, I have a question. On my site, it's divided into the main site and the blog is in a subfolder of same domain. Within the main site (same domain), there are MANY checkout pages and other internal pages we use though all with "NO FOLLOW" on each. Despite it having "NO FOLLOW", will it affect our blog rankings in any way or domain ranking?"
On-Page Optimization | | Mirian0 -
Can someone explain this to me in simple language? Basically what do I have to do?
Accessible to Engines Easy fix <dl> <dt>Crawl status</dt> <dd>Status Code: 200
On-Page Optimization | | Devinder
meta-robots: None
meta-refresh: 0;url=http://akaalpet.com/default.aspx
X-Robots: None</dd> <dt>Explanation</dt> <dd>Pages that can't be crawled or indexed have no opportunity to rank in the results. Before tweaking keyword targeting or leveraging other optimization techniques, it's essential to make sure this page is accessible.</dd> <dt>Recommendation</dt> <dd>Ensure the URL returns the HTTP code 200 and is not blocked with robots.txt, meta robots or x-robots protocol (and does not meta refresh to another URL)</dd> </dl>0 -
Variable alt tags per page
I have a site where most of the pages don't use images. i use the logo on each page as part of the header. As the header is on each page, if i added a keyword into the alt tag, relevant to the specific page as below Would that be bad SEO? Thanks, Farky
On-Page Optimization | | FarkyRafiq0 -
Multi-language domain strategy crossroad
I've come to a crossroads with a multilingual domain strategy. Most of you know, Canada has two official languages; English & French. I'm trying to decide on two domain structures to handle languages: 1. Create sub-directory folders for both languages: www.sitename.ca/en/ www.sitename.ca/fr/ Take into account that all page names will be in their respective language. or 2. Create a single sub-directory folder for French only: www.sitename.ca www.sitename.ca/fr/ I'm leaning towards Option #2 because English is our target and want to give those pages more "weight" rather than pushing them down another level (flatter site structure for primary pages). Yes, I could also have all French pages at the root but I think having them a) in one sub-directory is easier to manage and b) SE (specifically Google) likes the division better for languages. I'm just not sure if there's a point to doing it for English too. Note: There'll be several hundred pages for each language. What's best practice (of course) and is there a difference if any....or was this just long winded for nothing? Thanks for any insights.
On-Page Optimization | | Bragg0 -
Tool for Generating Sitemap/ URL List
HI, I'm looking for a tool that'll generate a URL list for a site. I looked at this thread here http://www.seomoz.org/q/online-sitemap-generator which came up when I searched for sitemap generator. However, I don't need a sitemap per se, and I don't need to submit it to Google - just a list of pages is what I need.If it updated automatically, that would be useful as well. Anyone know of a tool, on or offline? Or anyone used Xenu and know if it's what I'm looking for? Or is there a simple solution that I'm missing? Thanks.
On-Page Optimization | | 5225Marketing0
