International SEO Mobile directory
-
I was wondering,
What if I went with international sub-directory route (not ccTLD), for example: sitename.com/fr (fr being france)...But the question is, what's the best practice for MOBILE?sitename.com/mobile/frORsitename.com/fr/mobileORm.sitename.com/fr Again, ccTLD is not an option (currently, sites are in ccTLD but we are now transitioning to sub folders)Now, the next question is WHY is it best practices for it to be sitename.com/mobile/fr or sitename.com/fr/mobile or m.sitename.com/fr ? Please cite source. Thanks!
-
Hi Paul,
Both are a bit unconventional.
If you would use .com/fr/mobile/ then the mobile version would become part of the regular site.
if you would use .com/mobile/fr/ you would basically do the same but with the default language, non-mobile version of the site.
You would have to make absolutely sure that you ise your canonical tags to prevent duplicate content. This setup might be more difficult to check and maintain.
I would therefore never use this setup but go for "mobile.domain.com/fr/". This way both structures are clearly separated. You would still have to make sure you use canonical tags to prevent duplicate content but at least this way the mobile and non-mobile version are clearly separated.
Bas
-
The /mobile/ version will be a responsive design.
What I want to know is if there's an affect of what comes first... mobile/fr or fr/mobile?
what would be better for International?
-
Ok. To be able to score valuable positions at the searsh engines, without responsiveness is going to be very difficult.
You can decide for yourself what structure you will create for non-mobile and mobile content.
As long as it is clear that you are separating the two without creating duplicate content.
Make sure you use the canonical tag for that.
Bas
-
Exactly. It's more of an internal issue where we won't be able to do that..
-
Hi Jarred,
Why would you want a seperate URL for the mobile site? Why wouldn't you want the site to be responsive? That way, you don't have to think about a different URL.
And you don't have to worry about duplicate content.
Or is responsiveness not possible?
Bas
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
-
International corporate SEO - menu and preferences
Hi all, for internationalization we have used subfolders structure (e.g. domain.com/us/) and since we have approx 150 countries to cover, then country selector is quite a link-base, especially if pages itself can have even several hundreds of internal links as well. Currently, all links to other countries are set as rel="nofollow" and I'm planning to change them to "follow" to distribute a juice. Do you please have an experience with such internal links voluminous websites and this follow/nofollow settings? Also we are having and issue with other countries outperforming local search. So for example in US, searching for kind of "Brand America" keyword, our UK branch outperforms US. Hreflangs are set in the sitemaps and each branch (country) is set in search console correctly as well. Since there are some issues with sitemaps (e.g. not actual links, or links returning 404), I assume that google is not using these sitemaps therefore hreflang information is lost as well. Am I correct ? thank you in advance, Tom
International SEO | | execom990 -
An International SEO Conundrum
Hello all, I'm looking for opinions on this. Imagine there is a website example.com in English and the company 'Example' wanted to translate some of the pages (not not all) in to Russian. So they set up example.com/ru and translate the key pages into Russian. But half of the pages on.com/ru are left in English and there are no plans to translate them. How would you handle the pages in Engish on .com/ru? My thoughts are that they should: Canonicalise to the same versions on .com, and... Remove RU hreflang tags from the pages on .com/ru which are in English Otherwise, users searching in English with Russian browser settings could land on a page in English but then navigate to a translated page in Russian (+the menu navigation items will be in Russian) = bad UX. Not to mention they would be telling Google a page is in Russain but Google would be crawling English. So IMO, the best option is to use canonicals for this so that the .com version of the page is indexed. Then when a user lands after searching in English they will always be served English pages within that session. If English speakers/searchers land on the .com/ru page that would lead to a website half in one lang and half in another. I'm aware that Google recommends not using rel="canonical" across country or language versions of your site, but I believe they are making that recommendation based on an assumption that all pages are going to be translated to another language. In this case, there is no intention to do that, ever. Thanks for your thoughts and opinions. Cheers, Gill.
International SEO | | Cannetastic0 -
Redirected traffic and SEO problem
Hi all, I have a bit of a search engine predicament and I can't find the answer anywhere. It's a bit of a complicated one so please bear with me 🙂 ... I'm a Freelance Copywriter, I recently started the business, I've also recently moved to New Zealand. As such I'm looking for business back in the U.K. (As that's where my network is), but also locally, in NZ. I've purchased both the .co.uk and .co.nz domain names (http://www.inspirecontent.co.uk and http://www.inspirecontent.co.nz) The way that the domain provider / host has set these up is for one to redirect to another. Currently if someone visits www.inspirecontent.co.nz it redirects to the U.K. Site. That's less than ideal for me, because I dont want NZ traffic (i.e potential leads) to think I'm a U.K. Based business. my questions are as follows: 1. Will the redirect to the U.K. domain prevent me from appearing in NZ search (I.e if someone searches via google.co.nz) I'm really struggling to rank at the moment, I'm working on more content but if the redirect is a problem then I need to know about it so that I can find a work around. 2. Any suggestions on the best approach to the work around? It would be great if the URLs didn't change! So that you wind up from the U.K. on the U.K site, and if you're from NZ, you land on and stay on the NZ domain, but I'm not sure how to achieve that. One option, I think, would be to have two different websites, hosted separately, but I hear that duplicated content is bad for SEO? Thanks all in advance Kind regards
International SEO | | Andrea_howey0 -
URL structure of international hotel website
Hai all, Question about URL structure of international hotel website in Amsterdam: hotelcitadel.nl. Some information: - Target group are mainly english speaking guests from UK and US. Besides that guests from the Netherlands and some other countries. - Website in 6 languages. - No geo-targetting; just language targetting with hreflang annotations. Current situation: hotelcitadel.nl = dutch language version and hotelcitadel.nl/en = english language version We are thinking about changing this to: hotelcitadel.nl would become english version and hotelcitadel.nl/nl would become the dutch version. Reason: root domain hotelcitadel.nl has by far the most links,and making the root domain the english version could help the rankings in english speaking countries like UK and US. What do you think, would this be a wise idea? Regards, Maurice
International SEO | | mlehr0 -
International SEO - Mixing country targeting and language targeting in GWT.
Hi all! I want to start with International SEO process for my ecommerce. We sell worldwide with a .com domain, although the business is mainly focused in Spain. We maintain three languages, spanish, english and french with a non suitable structure. Now, after read a lot about it, I'm considering to use subdirectories for each language, /es/, /en/ and /fr/. And heres it's my first doubt: Could I avoid /es/ from spanish language as it's the default one? I've understood from recents Q&A that it's not needed although more user friendly. I'm trying to avoid tons of 301 from old urls for my main language. Anyway I want to know the best approach regardless complexity. My second doubt is about country targeting. After some research, I consider that it'd be interesting target country for /fr/ subdomain but language for /en/. Do you see any problem mixing both strategies? I know I also need to add the hreflang tag to guide googlebot. But I prefer to clarify these points first. Thanks a lot! Best regards.
International SEO | | footd1 -
Local Strategies For International Business
A client of mine is in a field that Google (correctly) recognizes as international, and does get traffic and leads for this but they are bound by sales covenants to sell only in regional geographic territories in their country, Other than PPC is there a strategy I can use to increase regional traffic? As mentioned, Google does not recognize this business as local.
International SEO | | waynekolenchuk0 -
B2B International Subdirectory - How Unique is Unique?
With the power to upload unique xml sitemaps for a subdirectory targeting the UK, geo-target the UK in WebmasterTools, and the ability to adjust content to adhere to en-gb standards, would it still be essential for a site to re-write all of it's content if it wanted to rank well or could we just use the same content as our en-us pages with the dialect changes and other tools mentioned above? Not interested in unique TLDs or subdomains.
International SEO | | SEOPPCDP0 -
Export sitemap or internal linking structure in a visual diagram?
Is there a FREE ONLINE tool that will Export a existing sitemap or internal linking structure in a visual diagram? I'm trying to help my clients see there existing sitemaps in a visual document and show how each page links to the next. Is there a FREE ONLINE tool that does this?
International SEO | | splashmedia0