International SEO - auto geo-targetting
-
I read with interest the recent post on international SEO and the top level domain architecture approaches to local content:
http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/folders-vs-subdomains-vs-cctld-in-international-seo-an-overview#jtc135670
The issue I have is a little more complex:
-
The business sells a wide variety of products (37) but one is by far and away the biggest and most popular. This means that due to the link profile of the various country sites and HQ site, search engines categorise the site according to this product (this is easily seen with the Google Adplanner) and the other product lines suffer as a result.
-
The current architecture is to have a .com site and then individual ccTLD country sites, again with all products on each site. This creates an issue as in most countries the brand is not strong (compared to the keyword names and search volumes of the products) and so it is not that effective in generating organic traffic. The .com hogs much of the inbound links and the country sites themselves are not that well optimised for a number of reasons.
A proposed solution has been to leverage the strength of the .com and the search volume for the product names, and to produce thematic sites based on each product:
productA.brand.com
productB.brand.com
productC.brand.comIn this way, the sites, content and link profiles are aligned around the more desirable products and we can expect improved organic search performance as a result (or at least ensure relevant traffic finds the relevant content fast).
In terms of providing localised content, the plan was to use content mirroring and to then assign each content mirror to a specific geo-location using the webmaster tools console (and other SE equivilents). This is shown I think in one of Rand's videos.
ProductA.brand.com/de/de Germany site for product A with unique German content
ProductA.brand.com/fr/fr French site for product A with unique French contentThis makes economic sense to me as to utilise the ccTLDs would result in hundreds of separate sites with all the licence and server considerations that entails. For example, for product A alone we would have to produce:
productA.brand.de
productA.brand.fr
productA.brand.cn
productA.brand.jp
ect ect ectThis just would not be sustainable in license/server costs alone across 37 products and 24 countries.
However, I saw in a recent presentation at SES London that (auto) geo-targeting is risky, often doesn't work well for SEO and can even be seen as cloaking.
I think the above strategy could still work, but perhaps we should avoid the use of auto-geotargetting altogether and hope the search engines alone do their job in getting users to the right content as we optimise the unique content for each country (and if they don't, ensure our desgn, UX and country selectors do the job instead).
SEO guru consensus is to use the ccTLD if you own it, but as described above, in the real world that just isn't possible or practical given the company's strategic position.
Which leads to the final question- we do own the brand ccTLDs- if they are directed back to the content mirror for the country on the .com, is there any SEO benefit in doing so aside from directing back any link juice associated with the domain)?
-
-
Hi Keri, Steve and Russ,
I'm glad to weigh in on this if Steve needs a little more help. In short, my opinion is going to be very close to Russ, but I'm going to articulate it in a different way:
You talk about building a product based strategy rather than branding. I'd have to say that building the brand is going to be more important.
The structure that Russ proposes allows you to leverage the authority of the whole site, rather than starting from scratch. And isn't that going to be better for your best product as well as those you have deemed secondary?
-
Hi! We're going through some of the older unanswered questions and seeing if people still have questions or if they've gone ahead and implemented something and have any lessons to share with us. Can you give an update, or mark your question as answered?
Thanks!
-
As an update (and perhaps by asking reminding me of something I once read), IP delivered content isn't the way forward. Spiders by definition originate with their own IP and would therefore be directed to content for that locale.
Strategically I think the solution works (from an SEO perspective the categorization element alone is important) but IP served content is not the way forward.
The core question is still brand vs product site then... arsebiscuits!
-
I guess another element to consider if using auto-detecting an IP and serving up content is how links are made into the new site.
One excerpt (from the 'Art of SEO no less) indicates that links from the target country will serve to identify the site as being targetted for that country. Makes perfect sense.
But- if you serve dynamic content, then an inbound link could conceivably just be made to the core domain rather then the absolute link with the country mirror parameters:
i.e.
link from German site --> productA.brand.com (and then the user gets re-directed to country mirror)
or
link from German site --> productA.brand.com/de/de (absolute link)
In the first example I'm not sure where the link juice would ultimately be attributed to.
-
Hi Russ and thanks for the reply.
That is basically the current model but the products themselves are then split further across business streams which is an issue and could be improved with your suggestion.
However, the real issue is the weakness of the brand in many countries (compared to the brand value and awareness of the main products which are not unique to the company). When this is coupled with one of 37 product lines being so much more well known then the others, each local site becomes 'categorized' according to this major product.
Looking at the link profile of a particular country site (or checking it on the Google Adplanner) you see that the site categories (i.e. how the site is viewed by search engines) are based around this one product and this hinders performance for the other products served on the domain.
This is why we want to create individual domains/sites (on sub-domains) for each product, so the content and link profile will be dedicated to each individual product. In other words, a product rather then brand based site.
The worry with auto-geotargetting and serving up content based on IP via content mirrors is that this could be seen as cloaking and may affect search performance.
Although, that said, IBM seem to do a good job of serving localised content and using their ccTLD portfolio (ibm.de --> ibm.com/de/de ). The only thing is they are so clearly a brand first site and don't need to rely on search to generate traffic.
I hope that is a bit clearer- this is a nightmare topic to articulate!
-
Perhaps I have misread, but what is the problem with doing...
brand.ccTLD/productA/
Where all ccTLD's point to the same server and the only thing different between the two is that when language differences are in place, it grabs from a separate database table and language-file based on the ccTLD. This would allow you to keep just 1 server, still have keyword-optimized content, etc.
You wouldn't be able to really build off of the domain authority, but separating into sub-domains will essentially segregate the authority as well.
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
-
How To Proceed With Int'l Language Targeting if Subfolders Not An Option?
I’m currently working with my team to sort out the best way to build out the international versions of our website. Any advice on how to move forward is greatly appreciated! Current Setup: Subdirectories to target languages - i.e. domain.com/es/. We chose this because… We are targeting languages not countries Our product offering does not change from country to country Translated site content is almost identical to the english version Current Problem: Our site is built on WordPress and our database can’t handle the build out of 4 more international versions of the site. The database is slowing down and our site speed is being affected for multiple reasons (WordPress multilingual plugin being one of them). **What to do next? **My developers have said that we cannot continue with our current subdirectory structure due to the technical infrastructure issues I’ve mentioned above (as well as others I’m yet to get full details on). Now I’m left with a decision: Change to a subdomain structure Change to a ccTLD structure Is there an option 3? From what I’ve read it does not make sense to build out language targeted sites on a ccTLD structure because that limits the ability for people outside of the targeted country to find the content organically. I.e. a website at www.domain.es is targeted to searchers in Spain so someone in Columbia is less likely to find that content through the engines. Is this correct? If so, how much can it hurt organic discovery? What’s the optimal setup to move forward with in this case? Thanks!
International SEO | | UnbounceVan0 -
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 -
International SEO question domain.com vs domain.com/us/ , domain.com/uk etc.
Hi Mozzers, I am expanding a website internationally. I own the .com for the domain. I need to accommodate multiple countries and I'm not sure if I should build a folder for /us/ for United States or just have the root domain .com OPTION 1:
International SEO | | jeremycabral
domain.com/page-url -- United States
domain.com/de/page-url -- Denmark
domain.com/jp/page-url -- Japan OPTION 2:
domain.com/us/page-url -- United States
domain.com/de/page-url -- Denmark
domain.com/jp/page-url -- Japan My concern with option 2 is there will be some dilution and we wouldn't get the full benefit of inbound links compared to Option 1 as we would have geo ip redirection in place to redirect users etc. to the relative sub-folder. Which option is better from an SEO perspective? Cheers, Jeremy0 -
How to handle different content on same domain internationally?
Dear community, I have encountered a unique situation and I am unsure as how to proceed, I have a U.S. based website for intentions of this question is www.musicstore.com. The customer has decided to offer their products up for sale internationally, however, has two business requirements, one is that his international presence differs with product offering and content then the domestic version and two, that they both live on the same domain of www.musicstore.com without any reference to offering a differing international presence. Many of his products are offered for purchase directly overseas, while not against his suppliers rules, it is frowned upon. All this said, now to my question. I'm currently running a Magento two website install. With GeoIP setting which version of www.musicstore.com is presented. Do I have to worry about different content being displayed on the same exact url even though the experience is completely location based? If it is a concern, any risks I should be concerned with. I could possibly do something along the lines of www.musicstore.com/in/ while this is not ideal for the customer, if it prevents many larger issues I'd steer the customer this way. I just want my customer to be able to sell his product internationally without upsetting his suppliers or making Google go, what does this site actually have. Hopefully I explained my question well enough for those who can help to understand. Please ask if you need any more information. Any help would be greatly appreciated, thank you.
International SEO | | swarming0 -
Help: Newbie trying to optimize for several international domains
We have three domain names co.nz, com.au and com. We are very new and have been told to optimize for co.nz first before going into com.au and com. Having said that, we have outsourced an seo company to optimize our co.nz site, however I would like to optimize the com.au and the com based on the information we currently receive for co.nz. Any suggestions on how to go about doing this? I looked at our competition and it seems they have the same content across all 3 domains, but they have changed the meta tags for each domain and that's about it. Any tips or ideas on how we could possibly do better? I know its early stages.... but as a newbie some advice around this would be great! Thanks
International SEO | | edward-may0 -
International TLD Differentiation Concerns
Currently working on a project where the TLD of the parent company site is a .COM and the U.S. subsidiary is a .US. This is a first for me. What I do know. Both sites must be live Parent (.COM) targets essentially the entire international market US Subsidiary (.US) targets United States only Concerns are even with non-duplicate content will there be confusion there with the closely related domain, just a TLD change? Any suggestions are greatly, greatly appreciated!
International SEO | | dodgejd0 -
If I redirect based on IP will Google still crawl my international sites if I implement Hreflang
We are setting up several international sites. Ideally, we wouldn't set up any redirects, but if we have to (for merchandising reasons etc) I'd like to assess what the next best option would be. A secondary option could be that we implement the redirects based on IP. However, Google then wouldn't be able to access the content for all the international sites (we're setting up 6 in total) and would only index the .com site. I'm wondering whether the Hreflang annotations would still allow Google to find the International sites? If not, that's a lot of content we are not fully benefiting from. Another option could be that we treat the Googlebot user agent differently, but this would probably be considered as cloaking by the G-Man. If there are any other options, please let me know.
International SEO | | Ben.JD0 -
Best Practice for International Website with Two Versions
I have a client in the medical industry, and the company's product has been approved in various countries in Europe yet is awaiting approval in the US. That means we can share certain information in some countries that we cannot share in the US. Therefore, we plan to use an initial landing page that will ask what country the user is in (using a drop-down list to choose from if not located in the US) and then push him or her to the appropriate version of the site. Here is my question: What is the best way to ensure search engines can crawl the site beyond this landing page? Thanks for your time.
International SEO | | mollykathariner_ms0