Redirect to 'default' or English (/en) version of site?
-
Hi Moz Community!
I'm trying to work through a thorny internationalization issue with the 'default' and English versions of our site.
We have an international set-up of:
- www.domain.com (in english)
- www.domain.com/en
- www.domain.com/en-gb
- www.domain.com/fr-fr
- www.domain.com/de-de and so on...
All the canonicals and HREFLANGs are set up, except the English language version is giving me pause.
If you visit www.domain.com, all of the internal links on that page (due to the current way our cms works) point to www.domain.com/en/ versions of the pages. Content is identical between the two versions.
The canonical on, say, www.domain.com/en/products points to www.domain.com/products. Feels like we're pulling in two different directions with our internationalization signals. Links go one way, canonical goes another.
Three options I can see:
- Remove the /en/ version of the site. 301 all the /en versions of pages to /. Update the hreflangs to point the EN language users to the / version.
- **Redirect the / version of the site to /en. **The reverse of the above.
- **Keep both the /en and the / versions, update the links on / version. **Make it so that visitors to the / version of the site follow links that don't take them to the /en site.
It feels like the /en version of the site is redundant and potentially sending confusing signals to search engines (it's currently a bit of a toss-up as to which version of a page ranks). I'm leaning toward removing the /en version and redirecting to the / version.
It would be a big step as currently - due to the internal linking - about 40% of our traffic goes through the /en path.
Anything to be aware of? Any recommendations or advice would be much appreciated.
-
Confusing Search Engine by sending two different signal about one URL. You must keep it simple by applying 301 redirect from domain.com/en to domain.com. Domain.com/en version is little confusing for user as well, they will think that domain.com has a different default Language.
-
For me redirect will be the right way.
Why? Because in another way you will have a duplicate content issue. Remember yoursite.com and www.yoursite.com will be indexed as differents pages.
Have the same Issue in the past. And I resolved the problem
1- redirections
2- setting the right URL on Search Console
(Search Console > Site Settings > Preferred domain)
3- Submit a sitemap for every language
(Search Console > Sitemaps)
4- And Finally config the language on search console
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
-
Setting up international site subdirectories in GSC as separate properties for better geotargeting?
My client has an international website with a subdirectory structure for each country and language version - eg. /en-US. At present, there is a single property set up for the domain in Google Search Console but there are currently various geotargeting issues I’m trying to correct with hreflang tags. My question is, is it still recommended practise and helpful to add each international subdirectory to Google Search Console as an individual property to help with correct language and region tagging? I know there used to be properly sets for this but haven’t found any up to date guidance on whether setting up all the different versions as their own properties might help with targeting. Many thanks in advance!
International SEO | | MMcCalden0 -
Geo-Targeting separate TLD's where both are .com domains
Hi I have a client who owns two separate TLDs for the same brand (for the sake of this post, we'll call the two sites www.site-a.com and www.site-b.com). For site www.site-a.com the website has been around for a while and is their primary site for their US operations which is their heartland, is well established in the SERPS and is where they make most of their money. As they looked to expand to the UK, they then created www.site-b.com and added the UK as a subfolder (so www.site-b.com/uk) and geo-targeted it towards the UK in Webmaster tools . The site has recently launched but they now find that, when a customer searches for their brand in the UK, they find www.site-a.com in position 1 (which, given it's tailored for a primary US audience, has a significantly lower conversion rate for UK traffic) and www.site-b.com in position 2. However, the client doesn't want to specifically geo target www.site-a.com to the USA as they feel it might affect where they appear for other international markets aside from the UK. So the question is, how can they, with the existing infrastructure, help remove www.site-a.com from the UK SERPs without adversely affecting their rank elsewhere? Hope this makes sense and thanks in advance for your help. James
International SEO | | jimmygs19820 -
Can you target the same site with multiple country HREFlang entries?
Hi, I have a question regarding the country targeting aspect of HREFLANG. Can the same site be targeted with multiple country HREFlang entries? Example: A global company has an English South African site (geotargeted in webmaster tools to South Africa), with a hreflang entry targeted to "en-za", to signify English language and South Africa as the country. Could you add entries to the same site to target other English speaking South African countries? Entries would look something like this: (cd = Congo, a completely random example) etc... Since you can only geo-target a site to one country in WMT would this be a viable option? Thanks in advance for any help! Vince
International SEO | | SimonByrneIFS0 -
Duplicate product description ranking problems (off-site duplicate content)
We do business in niche category and not in English language market. We have 2-3 main competitors who use same product information as us. They all do have same duplicate products descriptions as we. We with one competitors have domains with highest authority in this market. They maybe have 10-20% better link profile (when counting linking domains and total links). Problem is that they rank much better with product names then we do (same duplicate product descriptions as we have and almost same level internal optimisation) and they haven't done any extra link building for products. Manufacturers website aren't problem, because these doesn't rank well with product name keywords. Most of our new and some old product go to the Supplemental Results and are shown in "In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the ... already displayed. If you like, you can repeat the search with the omitted results included.". Unique text for products isn't a option. When we have writen unique content for product, then these seem to rank way better. So our questions is what can we do externaly to help our duplicate description product rank better compared to our main competitor withour writing unique text? How important is indexation time? Will it give big advantage to get indexed first? We have thought of using more RSS/bing services to get faster indexation (both site will get products information almost at same time). It seems our competitor get quicker in index then we do. Also are farmpages helpful for getting some quick low value links for new products. We have planed to make 2-3 domains that would have few links pointint to these new products to get little advantage right after products are launched and doesn't have extranl links. Sitemap works and our new product are shown on front pages (products that still mostly doesn't rank well and go to Supplemental Results). Some new product have #1 or top3 raking, but these are only maybe 1/3 that should have top3 rankings. Also we have noticed problem that when we index products quickly (for example Fetch as Google) then these will get good top3 results and then some will get out of rankings (to Supplemental Results).
International SEO | | raido0 -
Duplicate Content - International Sites - AirBNB
Good morning Just a quick question. Why does AirBNB not get penalised for duplicate content on its sites. For example, the following two urls (and probably more for other countries), both rank appropriately in the google (UK and COM), https://www.airbnb.co.uk/help/getting-started/how-to-travel
International SEO | | joogla
https://www.airbnb.com/help/getting-started/how-to-travel Their are no canonical tags, no Alternative etc If I look at the following https://www.airbnb.co.uk/s/London--United-Kingdom
https://www.airbnb.com/s/London--United-Kingdom They both have alternative to point to the other language versions which I would expect. However they also both point to them selves as canonical. Would this not be duplicate content ? Thanks for your insights Shane0 -
Include mobile and international versions of pages to sitemap or not?
My pages already have alternate and hreflang references to point to international and mobile versions of the content. If I add 5 language desktop versions and 5 language mobile versions as https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2620865?hl=en explains, my sitemap will get bulky. What are the pros and cons for referencing all page versions in sitemap and for include just general (English/Desktop) version in sitemap?
International SEO | | poiseo0 -
Multi-lingual SEO: Country-specific TLD's, or migration to a huge .com site?
Dear SEOmoz team, I’m an in-house SEO looking after a number of sites in a competitive vertical. Right now we have our core example.com site translated into over thirty different languages, with each one sitting on its own country-specific TLD (so example.de, example.jp, example.es, example.co.kr etc…). Though we’re using a template system so that changes to the .com domain propagate across all languages, over the years things have become more complex in quite a few areas. For example, the level of analytics script hacks and filters we have created in order to channel users through to each language profile is now bordering on the epic. For a number of reasons we’ve recently been discussing the cost/benefit of migrating all of these languages into the single example.com domain. On first look this would appear to simplify things greatly; however I’m nervous about what effect this would have on our organic SE traffic. All these separate sites have cumulatively received years of on/off-site work, and even if we went through the process of setting up page-for-page redirects to their new home on example.com, I would hate to lose all this hard-work (and business) if we saw our rankings tank as a result of the move. So I guess the question is, for an international business such as ours, which is the optimal site structure in the eyes of the search engines; Local sites on local TLD’s, or one mammoth site with language identifiers in the URL path (or subdomains)? Is Google still so reliant on TLD for geo targeting search results, or is it less of a factor in today’s search engine environment? Cheers!
International SEO | | linklater0 -
Est ce qu'on peut poser des questions en français ?
(can we ask questions in a language other than English?) Pour le SEO est ce qu'il faut mieux un domain avec les tirets ou sans ? Les américains aurait tendance a faire les domaines sans tirets
International SEO | | NeilInFrance
Par exemple goodseoconsultants.com Et bcp disent qu'utiliser les tirets fait "spammy" ; En France il y a plus tendance à mettre les tirets mais est ce qu'il y a une risque négatif pour le sites qui le font ? Par contre il y a plus de chances que les moteurs et les humaines comprennes les mots avec ; good-seo-consultants.com Qui a raison ? Neil0