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Category: International SEO

Discussions around international SEO tactics.

  • Ewerton.RD


    On a page with the domain "www.example-1.com.br" (for pt-BR) I will include the following tags: That will work?

    | Ewerton.RD
    0
  • SEONOW123


    Hello, We believe we've had some issues with hreflang tags not remaining validated due to the implementation of geoIP redirects. Previously, if a user clicked a landing page on Google search that was not targeted for their territory, they would instantly be redirected to a sub path that targets their territory using geoIP redirects. We're planning to remove the initial geoIP redirects and have messaging that prompts the user to either stay on the page they've landed on, or be redirected to page that is right for their territory. However, if a user has selected to be redirected to a sub path that is targeted for their territory, they will have a cookie preference set for the IP location they've selected, and will continue to be redirected to their chosen sub path. My question is, will a crawler follow and trigger the geo preference cookie, which could potentially cause complexities in validating hreflang tags and ranking of content for the right market. Thanks.

    | SEONOW123
    0
  • Janki99


    My English site example.com has 1300 Pages I have launched a Russian transasation of the site example.ru This site has only 20 pages so far. Doubt: I need to set hreflang for all 1300 pages or only for 20 Pages of example.com that are converted to russian? Due to the limitations of the plugins avaialable I need to MANUALLY set hreflang for all 1300 pages of example.com Please guide

    | Janki99
    0
  • omnyex


    Hello, I'm working on our website SEO optimization. We have a thousands of products pages with different structures for the languages (arg) and very depth folder path .com/[folder]/[folder]/[folder]/product1.hmtl So now I have the happiness of working on the optimization of the website with themajor risk of impacting all current ranking. But anyway, here are a few questions I have on the way. Part 1 - International URL Our websites target people per country and languages. We do not have shops per countries (not enough resources_) but we try to get at least website per languages. What could be the best option?_ Url Parameters +hreflang So we save one folder less and the proper setup. But I'm just scared it's gonna be too messy for Google URL:.com/product1**?lang=fr** Product page:link rel="alternate" hreflang="en" href=".com/product1" / Language folder + hreflang one folder more but clearer structure URL:.com**/fr/**product1 **Product **page:****link rel="alternate" hreflang="en" href=".com/product1" / Part 2 - Product URL Our website is structure per categories so the product comes after. However, I've seen a lot of websites recently removing the categories to save folders space. What should be the most efficient option? Category folder It's obviously a good practice but this + the language folder makes already 2 folders URL:.com/categoryA/product1-{targetedKW} {targetedKW} = cheap product, best price or else All in url I've never done it but it somehow makes sense URL:.com/categoryA-product1-{targetedKW} Part 3 - Keyword stuffing As I'd like to get most of it automatically done, what could be the best places to add a few KW. **Markups:**All the ones we can **Meta Descriptions:**optimize one for Google + one for twitter + one for facebook Longer to do but then from google shopping and other automatic links, we could have the perfect or, at least, best description possible **All other option:**Reuse our product name + {targetter KW1 KW2 ...} Product description_ex: content_ Buttons (click to buy)ex: button title="Buy product_name cheap" alt="Purchase product_name"Buy Product name/button Images:same than above Meta:Titles and meta description Hn

    | omnyex
    0
  • lcourse


    What is best way to display user reviews in languages different from the page language? (e.g. English reviews on a page in Spanish). For the user it would be useful to see these reviews but I am concerned about negative SEO impact.
    I would not want to invest into having them all translated by human translator. Any suggestions?

    | lcourse
    0
  • mag777


    Would using .ag with a short punchy domain like farm.ag, that was targeting a global audience be a wise decision? Versus say an 11 character descriptive ".com". Is there any benefit to using a ".ag" if the site is for agriculture? Note, this is a heavy content site so SEO important, with plans to serve different languages later.

    | mag777
    0
  • Cannetastic


    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.

    | Cannetastic
    0
  • lcourse


    I have a website which has 25 different language versions on 16 different domains. Hreflan are setup to point to different language versions. In the footer we have deeplinks to the 25 language versions. Site is not spammy but in small niche and many language versions have very few other external links. For some time this site had lost rankings for reasons that are unclear till now. I see that large international sites such as booking.com, tripadvisor, apple  all use different approaches to interlink their language versions. Interestingly Tripadvisor is nowadays loading the links to their other language versions dynamically only upon click so that these links do not show up in source code, deviating from their former implementation of static deeplinks to all language versions. Matt Cutts mentioned back in 2013 “If you have 50 different sites, I wouldn’t link to all 50 sites down in the footer of your website, because that can start to look pretty spammy to users. Instead you might just link to no more than three or four or five down in the footer, that sort of thing, or have a link to a global page, and the global page can talk about all the different verions and country versions of your website.” But in their webmaster guidelines google recommends: "Consider cross-linking each language version of a page. That way, a French user who lands on the German version of your page can get to the right language version with a single click." I assume for SEO anyway these links have no value, but for user experience it would certainly be better to provide somewhere deeplinks to other language versions. Also the fact that language versions are on different domains and have few external backlinks may increase a bit the risk in our case. I guess in doubt I would prefer to be safe and load deeplinks only upon click same as tripadvisor. Any thoughts/suggestions on best interlinking in our specific case?

    | lcourse
    0
  • muzzmoz


    I have a client with a Shopify site. It is a clone of the 'main' website which is a .co.uk domain. Client wants to use .com.au for Australia and New Zealand. All are English language. How should we structure hreflang tags? Or is there a better way to target the .com.au website at Australia/New Zealand?

    | muzzmoz
    0
  • Bee159


    Hi all, I am working on a .ie website and I was under the understanding that if you have a regional domain, like .ie you will limited to being shown in a search engine like google.ie When I go to International Targeting in Google SEarch Console it says the site is associated with: Ireland Am I limiting my ability to rank well in worldwide Google searches with this domain and if so, how can I counter this? Many thanks.

    | Bee159
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  • MTBE


    I'm using static Schema for each language subfolder in my website, Should i use the same "URL, description" for every language? or i have to use the URL and description according to the language? I'm using that schema for english should i change URL and description in the other languages? for example

    | MTBE
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  • BobAnderson


    if we are targeting the US from the UK, would it make a difference if we have an https not set to any location or one registared in the US? we are going to also use a CDN (like cloudfront) in the U.K. Would that be a good idea or an actual server in the US. I think the issue we have is the competition is strong so we need all of our ducks in a row.

    | BobAnderson
    0
  • BobAnderson


    Does anyone have any examples of a .co.uk doing ok in the US google searches, we are based in the uk and cannot decide if to try targeting with the .co.uk but with CTR also being a big factor this would be well down with searchers seeing the .co.uk. Are alternative is to gain the .com of our sites and start the process of gaining .com links etc.

    | BobAnderson
    0
  • Starcom_Search


    We are currently handling search for a global brand www.example.com/ which has presence in many countries worldwide. To help Google understand that there is an alternate version of the website available in another language, we have used hreflang tags. These hreflang tags are implemented only via the XML sitemap across all geo-locations. Under the “Search Analytics -> International Targeting” section, in Google Search Console, for the Malaysian website (www.example.com/my/), there are a number of “no-return tags (sitemaps)” errors arising. For example, for India as a geo-location, there is one ‘en-IN’ – no return tags (sitemaps) errors listed. The error is listed below: Originating URL - www.example.com/my/xyz/ Alternate URL - www.example.com/in/xyz/ When the XML sitemap for the URL – www.example.com/in/ was checked for the hreflang tags, it was noticed that the implementation of hreflang tags for the URL – www.example.com/in/xyz/ was perfectly fine and it was providing a return tag to the URL – www.example.com/my/xyz/. After the code level verification, it was identified that the implementation of hreflang tags was perfectly fine via the XML sitemap. Even though at the code level it was verified that the implementation is fine, the error still persists in Google Search Console. Kindly suggest a solution to this situation, and also advise the effects of these errors on search engine performance

    | Starcom_Search
    0
  • essential_steph


    I have a small business in the United States and would like to copy our main website for my international partners.  My website is a .com.  I think that their domains will end in their country codes: .au and .uk.  We are open to using different domains.  We plan to share blog articles and other content, but do not wish to be penalized for duplication.  I have tried to read articles on this topic, but am unfamiliar with a lot of the terms.  Is there any way to do this simply?  Many thanks, Steph

    | essential_steph
    0
  • Roverandom


    Hi, we are running a site which is a directory consisting of numbers of phone spammers. It contains descriptions, comments and so on. We are currently present in 9 countries. The websites all have the same structure, but, of course, the spam numbers in each country are different ones. If I want to tell Google that our website is available is several locations/languages, do I only put my hreflang tag on the start page then? Thanks 
    Thomas

    | Roverandom
    0
  • poliedric


    Hi everybody, I cannot find the hreflang in the source code neither in the sitemaps but Google search console is showing me the tag. Did anyone have this problem? Or does anyone know how to check it? I scanned the site and no tool detected the hreflang in it. Thank you.

    | poliedric
    0
  • Happy-SEO


    Hi Guy's, I have a question about a website that ranks between SERP 10 - 20 and often drops out of the search results. Looking at authority it should score in atleast in top 10. Netherlands + Belgium - Dutch language
    https://www.vaneyckshutters.com
    Keyword: Shutters (in all languages) Netherlands: SERP 10 - 20 and drops 
    Belgium Dutch language: Top 3 position 
    Belgium French language: Top 3 position History:
    In the past, the website was live on domain extensions: .nl (Dutch) .be (Belgium) Later they switched to .com/nl/  (Netherlands + Belgium - Dutch language) .com/fr/  (Belgium - French language) And finally they swtiched to .com (Netherlands + Belgium - Dutch language) .com/fr/ (Belgium - French language) *All switched where provided with redirects In 2016 Q3 a new website was launched provided with https://, there where some issues with redirects but that's mainly fixed now. After launching the new website the positions where terrible. The website didn't score on the keyword: Shutters, and some times not even on there own brandname. After a while it stabilised but still sometimes the website dropped out of the search results. A few weeks ago we made some technical changes and now we see drops again. Strange things Still we see strange things happening. Mainly the fact that Belgium NL and FR score good, but that could also be because of lower competition. What about the search result: site:vaneyckshutters.nl (indexed) site:vaneyckshutters.be (indexed) i came across this article, and looked at: vaneyckshutters.nl/robots.txt (present) vaneyckshutters.nl/robots.txt (present) Strange that the meta titel is ignored bij Google:
    ".com" meta title is the same as the indexed ".nl" and ".be" At some point a saw a redirect from the old website to the new:
    302 permanent redirect (made me think there was some tweaking going on) I asked a friend if he could provide some SEO advise and gave suggestions: - In the robots.txt is see "disallow:[empy]", is that smart? Canonical on home is set to: "/" but redirect without "/" x-default in alternate is missing Advise Does anyone see the issue or has an advise for us? Maybe we are missing the clues and is something going wrong on: Server/domain level (redirects) Authority level (still some 404's) Technical issues (hreflang) etc. etc. Hope someone can help us out! Thanks a million!

    | Happy-SEO
    0
  • lcourse


    To my understanding in many Asian languages city names are transcribed as they sound and this can cause confusion especially in the case of lesser known American city names. So I was planning to put in our international website versions (Chinese, Japanese, Korean etc. ) the English name in brackets after the translated city name in meta title and H1.
    However when I checked Tripadvisor and Booking.com I noticed that they do not show the English city name anywhere on their Asian language versions. Any thoughts?
    Would you recommend to  put the English city name in brackets after the translated city name or may it rather hurt our ranking and traffic?

    | lcourse
    0
  • newwaves


    On Agust 2 or 3.. I'm not sure about the exact date...
    The main URL of my website https://new-waves.net/ had been completely removed from Google search results! without getting any messages or Manual Actions on search console ?? but I'm still can find some of my site subpages in search results and on Google local maps results when I tried to check it on google
    info:new-waves.net >> no results
    site:new-waves.net >> only now I can see the main URL in results because I had submitted it again and again to google but it might be deleted again today or tomorrow as that happen before last few days
    100% of all ranked keywords >> my site URL new-waves.net had been completely removed from all results! but I'm still can see it on maps on some results My site was ranked number 1 on google search results for "digital marketing qatar" and some other keywords, but the main URL had been removed from 100% of all search results. but you can still see it on the map only. I just tried to submit it again to Google and to index it through google search console tool but still not get any results, Can any one help to know what is the reason?? and how can I solve this issue without losing my previous ranked keywords? Can I submit a direct message to google support or customer service to know the reason or get help on this issue? Thanks & Regards

    | newwaves
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  • MTBE


    I submitted each language URL as a separated website to google webmasters, I've submitted Hreflang sitemap which has language codes only(without countries codes) each page in my website has hreflang language and country code. Should i use international target option for each language to target the countries? will that hurt the language targeting? or I have to leave international targeting option unchecked for each language? My Goal to target by languages, not countries.

    | MTBE
    0
  • MTBE


    I use country and language codes in my website Can i have a herflang sitemap with language code only?

    | MTBE
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  • ccox1


    I have a service based client who is based in the US but wants to expand to audiences in Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom. Currently, all the content is in American English with international targeting in Google Search Console set to the US. I know that is going to have to change, but I'm unsure of the best strategy. Right now there are a few basic strategies in my head. Remove International Targeting in GSC and let her rip Remove International Targeting in GSC, install copies of the site on subfolders /au/, /ca/, and /uk/, add hreflang tags, and add canonicals pointing back to original Remove International Targeting in GSC, install copies of the site on subfolders /au/, /ca/, and /uk/, add hreflang tags, and risk duplicate content Have independent writers overcharge for English translations into different dialects and add hreflang tags It's hard to come up with a perfect solution for content differentiation by region in order to implement hreflang tags with a region (en-au, en-ca, en-gb). Remove International Targeting in GSC and let her rip This one is pretty simple. However, I am completely unsure of its effectiveness. Remove International Targeting in GSC, install copies of the site on subfolders /au/, /ca/, and /uk/, add hreflang tags, and add canonicals pointing back to original The point of adding canonicals is to avoid the duplicate content, but then my new subfolders do not get indexed. I'm unsure of what type of exposure these URLs would receive or how they would be valuable. Remove International Targeting in GSC, install copies of the site on subfolders /au/, /ca/, and /uk/, add hreflang tags, and risk duplicate content High risk of a penalty with duplicate content, but my targeting will be the most efficient. Have independent writers overcharge for English translations into different dialects and add hreflang tags This is probably the safest bet, takes the longest, and costs the most money. However, how different will the content actually be if I change truck to lorry, trunk to boot, and optimization to optimisation? Maybe I'm missing something, but this conundrum seems extremely difficult. Weighing the cost, time, and possible result is challenging. Hit me with your best answer and thanks for taking a look at someone else's problem.

    | ccox1
    2
  • MartinJC


    Hi All Our company is looking to expand into Europe (we are a UK based company) and we are planning to copy over our current .co.uk site to a .com one and create 301 redirects to maintain our SEO rankings. With the .com domain we were looking to use this as our main ecommerce site and then create sites for different countries in Europe. What we are unsure about is the best way to execute this in terms of the domain. Would it be best to have it setup as a domain structure such as: UK = www.example.com/gb/
    Ireland = www.example.com/ie/
    France – www.example.com/fr/ and so on. Or would we be better served creating sub domains for each country, example www.gb.example.com. Our main concerned is what is the best way to do this without hurting our SEO rankings. Thanks for the help.

    | MartinJC
    0
  • Alejandrodurn


    Hello there!!! I have a multiregional site and dealing with some indexing problems. The problem is that google have only indexed our USA site We have: -set up hreflang tags -set up specific subdirectories https://www.website.com/  (en-us site and our main site) https://www.website.com/en-gb https://www.website.com/en-ca https://www.website.com/fr-ca https://www.website.com/fr-fr https://www.website.com/es-es ..... -set up automatic GEO IP redirects (301 redirects) -created a sitemap index and a different sitemap for each regional site -created a google webmaster's tool for each country targeted -created translations for each different language and added some canonicals to the US' site when using English content. The problem is that Google is not indexing our regional sites. I think that the problem is that google is using a US bot when spidering the site, so it will be always redirect to the US version by a 301 redirect. I have used fetch as google with some of our regional folders and asked for "Indexing requested for URL and linked pages", but still waiting. Some ideas?? changing 301 to 302? Really don't know what to do. Thank you so much!!

    | Alejandrodurn
    0
  • MTBE


    I'm offering an international service to any country from any destination, The website main language is English and i have 4 other languages as subdirectories, https://beassistance.com https://beassistance.com/de/ https://beassistance.com/es/ https://beassistance.com/fr/ https://beassistance.com/ru/ I'm looking to target by language not country, Should i choose "unlisted" for all the subdirectories? my second question regards the meta tags , my current meta tag rel="alternate" hreflang="ru-ru" href="https://beassistance.com/ru/" /> And i'm thinking about using rel="alternate" hreflang="ru" href="https://beassistance.com/ru/" /> Is that best practice to target by the language? Update I already have Hreflang Sitemap <urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9" <br="">xmlns:xhtml="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
    <url><loc>https://beassistance.com</loc>
    <xhtml:link<br>rel="alternate"
    hreflang="en"
    href="https://beassistance.com"
    />
    <xhtml:link<br>rel="alternate"
    hreflang="de"
    href="https://beassistance.com/de/"
    />
    <xhtml:link<br>rel="alternate"
    hreflang="fr"
    href="https://beassistance.com/fr/"
    />
    <xhtml:link<br>rel="alternate"
    hreflang="es"
    href="https://beassistance.com/es/"
    />
    <xhtml:link<br>rel="alternate"
    hreflang="ru"
    href="https://beassistance.com/ru/"
    /></xhtml:link<br></xhtml:link<br></xhtml:link<br></xhtml:link<br></xhtml:link<br></url></urlset> <url><loc>https://beassistance.com/de/</loc>
    <xhtml:link<br>rel="alternate"
    hreflang="en"
    href="https://beassistance.com"
    />
    <xhtml:link<br>rel="alternate"
    hreflang="de"
    href="https://beassistance.com/de/"
    />
    <xhtml:link<br>rel="alternate"
    hreflang="fr"
    href="https://beassistance.com/fr/"
    />
    <xhtml:link<br>rel="alternate"
    hreflang="es"
    href="https://beassistance.com/es/"
    />
    <xhtml:link<br>rel="alternate"
    hreflang="ru"
    href="https://beassistance.com/ru/"
    /></xhtml:link<br></xhtml:link<br></xhtml:link<br></xhtml:link<br></xhtml:link<br></url> <url><loc>https://beassistance.com/fr/</loc>
    <xhtml:link<br>rel="alternate"
    hreflang="en"
    href="https://beassistance.com"
    />
    <xhtml:link<br>rel="alternate"
    hreflang="de"
    href="https://beassistance.com/de/"
    />
    <xhtml:link<br>rel="alternate"
    hreflang="fr"
    href="https://beassistance.com/fr/"
    />
    <xhtml:link<br>rel="alternate"
    hreflang="es"
    href="https://beassistance.com/es/"
    />
    <xhtml:link<br>rel="alternate"
    hreflang="ru"
    href="https://beassistance.com/ru/"
    /></xhtml:link<br></xhtml:link<br></xhtml:link<br></xhtml:link<br></xhtml:link<br></url> <url><loc>https://beassistance.com/es/</loc>
    <xhtml:link<br>rel="alternate"
    hreflang="en"
    href="https://beassistance.com"
    />
    <xhtml:link<br>rel="alternate"
    hreflang="de"
    href="https://beassistance.com/de/"
    />
    <xhtml:link<br>rel="alternate"
    hreflang="fr"
    href="https://beassistance.com/fr/"
    />
    <xhtml:link<br>rel="alternate"
    hreflang="es"
    href="https://beassistance.com/es/"
    />
    <xhtml:link<br>rel="alternate"
    hreflang="ru"
    href="https://beassistance.com/ru/"
    /></xhtml:link<br></xhtml:link<br></xhtml:link<br></xhtml:link<br></xhtml:link<br></url> <url><loc>https://beassistance.com/ru/</loc>
    <xhtml:link<br>rel="alternate"
    hreflang="en"
    href="https://beassistance.com"
    />
    <xhtml:link<br>rel="alternate"
    hreflang="de"
    href="https://beassistance.com/de/"
    />
    <xhtml:link<br>rel="alternate"
    hreflang="fr"
    href="https://beassistance.com/fr/"
    />
    <xhtml:link<br>rel="alternate"
    hreflang="es"
    href="https://beassistance.com/es/"
    />
    <xhtml:link<br>rel="alternate"
    hreflang="ru"
    href="https://beassistance.com/ru/"
    /></xhtml:link<br></xhtml:link<br></xhtml:link<br></xhtml:link<br></xhtml:link<br></url>

    | MTBE
    1
  • VeeamSoftware


    Hi Guys, I have a question about localization versions of my websites. Currently for other languages we use folders like /de/, /es/ and we have implemented hreflang. But it will be in any help if I add all those localization versions in Search Console as separate properties and specify there which language is it for? Can this help more that just leave it as it is? Thanks, Florin

    | VeeamSoftware
    0
  • SO_UK


    Hi Community, I have 2 job boards. Job board A is a .co.uk domain. Job board B is uk.com domain. Job board A displays jobs in the UK but has an international jobs section. Job board B focuses entirely on international jobs. To cut a long story short we are shutting down Job board B as we are going to just be using Job board A in future. In terms of redirection, would it be best to: 1. 301 redirect job board B domain to Job board A. (www.jobboardb.uk.com -> www.jobboarda.co.uk) or 2. 301 redirect job board b to the international jobs section on job board a (as this is the most relevant place for the user to go I am thinking to go with option 2, but I read somewhere that it wasn't best practice. Any help is much appreciated.

    | SO_UK
    0
  • hollie.r.m


    Hi, 
    What's the best way to avoid different language sub-domains competing with each other in SERPs (en.domainname, dk.domainname etc.) when using the same branded keywords across each domain? The site uses a mix of branded and non-branded keywords, but the branded ones come up A LOT, across many different pages and across all the language subdomains so I'm worried about keyword cannibalization and over-optimization. Any advice would be much appreciated! Thanks,

    | hollie.r.m
    0
  • muzzmoz


    I know these are intended for specifying different language/regional versions of one site, but can they be used to specify just ONE country (eg. "en-au")? Or does it only work to specify an ALTERNATIVE to another language/region variation?

    | muzzmoz
    0
  • PhilC-M


    Hi ! I wonder if anyone has ever experienced this problem before. One of our client is having some trouble with his multilanguage and international website. A small number of URLs contains 2 different language. Exemple : http://exemple.com/es-ar/productos/compression-baggers/empacadora-formacion-llenado-sellado/ The part in bold is in english and the rest in spanish.
    I need some help to find the source of the problem. The number of URLs like this doesn't stop to increase, but it remains under control. I temporarily implanted 302 redirects while trying to find the source of the problem and fix it. Thank you for your help.

    | PhilC-M
    0
  • MaxSydenham


    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.

    | MaxSydenham
    0
  • Starcom_Search


    Hi, We have a regional language sub-domain, which has the URI in the regional language characters (Hindi). While looking at the Search Analytics data in GSC, we get all the URLs in ASCII format. To resolve this issue, we even encoded the characters in UTF-8, by adding the following in the of the page: However, we are still getting illegible URLs in search console. It would be really great if someone could help me out with this issue. Thanks!

    | Starcom_Search
    0
  • Iannaude


    Hi, currently I have created an XML Href Lang site map for the main .com website. Lets call it projectx.com in this XML href lang file I have indicated that there is also a projectx.co.uk version of the site. Question: Would the XML HREF LANG sitemap file be uploaded to the root of the main projectx.com only? or would another version need to be uploaded to the projectx.co.uk root too? Thanks in advance!

    | Iannaude
    0
  • JMSCC


    Hi Everyone, My company decided to create a Canadian site for Canadian customers. How do I slowly transition the US site for ranking in Google.ca? I was thinking of using robots.txt to block Google.Ca from crawling the US site? Can anyone provide some advice oh how this should be managed? Thank you!

    | JMSCC
    0
  • FullSteamBusiness


    I'm looking for some expert advice regarding multilingual SEO domain selection. I have a basic question that I'd love some help clarifying. I'd love to know what you do if you were in my position..From the research I've done so far, although there are other options, the two best suites ways of us separating 2 languages within our site is: **Country specific TLD's. (.com & .fr) ** SubDomain Folders (.com & .com/fr) Would google prefer the power of the country specific domains & the cleanliness of the separation (Option 1)? Or would it value more the link authority sent to one main domain with languages separated by subdomains (Option 2)? **Question background details:**I am developing a website in French & English. The main target markets language at present is French.In the future however I'm sure equal if not more website users will use the English language.1) Languages on two separate TLD's (Top level Domains) for each country (.fr & .com). We already own both domains We use WPML on wordpress so it's easy to update both languages. Languages in sub folder .com (en) .com/fr (fr) Through link building, all 'link juice' will be directed to .com (across french & English). We want all our customers to land on .com/fr if they are in French speaking country.

    | FullSteamBusiness
    2
  • mitchell-moz


    Our global domain and our US ccTLD domain both appear for brand searches in the US. How do I recommend to our Tech team to fix this, as it skews our Organic traffic numbers between the two domains? The brand is Sportradar. (Sportradar.com / Sportradar.us )

    | mitchell-moz
    0
  • seowoody


    Hi all, I have a UK client with a .com domain, hosted on a US server, but the physical business premises is based in the UK. Their product is a really great product and available for export to the US. I want to rank them higher in the US, more specifically Google.com. I've helped them rank very well organically in the UK (google.co.uk) for some great terms, however they rank almost nowhere in google.com (gl=us) for the same terms, for example: In Google.co.uk they rank #3 for the key-phrase.
    In Google.com they rank #90 for the same key-phrase. I've got them some great US focused links with PR coverage including MSN Cars, nydailynews.com etc. I just wondered if there was any one "golden ticket" for boosting US rankings? I've read that a physical business premises located in the US helps a lot. Can anyone confirm this and if so, would a rented PO box in the US help? The site has great social signals too, growing twitter following and many FB likes/shares etc. Any other tips/advice? Thanks in advance,
    Cheers,
    Woody 🙂

    | seowoody
    0
  • EstebanCervi


    Hello, Im running a multi-country domain with this structure: domain.com/ar/
    domain.com/mx/
    domain.com/cl/
    etc I also have: domain.com/int/ for x-default
    domain.com/category/ does a 301 redirect through IP geo-location to the correspondent url, example if your IP is from Mexico, then you got redirected to domain.com/mx/category/ hreflang is correct. webmaster tool geo-location is correct. Example of the issue Im facing right now: When users from Chile do a keyword search in Google Chile, the domain ranks well but the URL that appears in the SERP is the /mx/ version, or the /int/ version or any other country version. Other times is the /cl/ version. The same happens for all the users / countries / keywords. I need to understand what Im doing wrong, because Google is not displaying in the SERP's the correct URL version for the country of the user who is doing the search. Thank you so much! I will appreciate your ideas. PS: I think I should try to change the 301 to a 302 redirect, or completely remove those redirects. Any ideas? Suggestions? Thanks!

    | EstebanCervi
    0
  • TomKelly


    I have a client with a .co.uk domain. They currently rank #1 in 13 our of 14 keywords for UK. They rank #1 for the majority of the terms in the USA but want to improve on them. What would be the best route?

    | TomKelly
    0
  • Marketing-Omoda


    We have a website for the Belgium market, serving content and products on be/nl (Dutch/Flemmish Belgium) and .be/fr (French Belgium). However, as a Dutch-based company you can see our primary focus and objective is to serve content to Dutch Belgium rather than French Belgium. I wonder if, and so, what are the downsides are of only investing in half of the site?
    Does it hurt my general .be Google rankings if we put a lot of effort in .be/nl but far less in .be/fr ? (we used to have a ccTLD .fr as well, but pulled the plug because it wasn't profitable.
    our belgium website is profitable for Dutch speaking part of Belgium but now we would like to expand, and enhance rankings. We're investing heavily in (local) brand awareness and partnerships, and content marketing for the Dutch part.

    | Marketing-Omoda
    0
  • mattdinbrooklyn


    Wanted to ask everyone a questions: So our company is going to be doing a website that is going to be full of videos. The url path will be country.domain.com/language/slug/content-id. We redirect the user when they go to the different country. So if you're in spain on a train to france your URL will change from es.domain.com/es/slug/content-id to fr.domain.com/es/slug/content-id. Each country can listen to each video in all languages. My question is with hreflang tags and canonicals. Aside from targeting users in a certain country via Google Search Console, how do I eliminate duplication and tell Google which I'd like to show up via which country. In spain I would like es.domain.com/es/slug/content-id to show in Google and would have hreflang tags on each of the es.domain pages but what about fr.domain.com/es/slug/content-id since it would show the same content? I can't canonical to one of them since I need them to show in their respective country. How do I show the difference in language and country without showing duplication?

    | mattdinbrooklyn
    0
  • mattdinbrooklyn


    Wanted to ask everyone a questions: So our company is going to be doing a website that is going to be full of videos. The url path will be country.domain.com/language/slug/content-id. We redirect the user when they go to the different country. So if you're in spain on a train to france your URL will change from es.domain.com/es/slug/content-id to fr.domain.com/es/slug/content-id. Each country can listen to each video in all languages. My question is with hreflang tags and canonicals. Aside from targeting users in a certain country via Google Search Console, how do I eliminate duplication and tell Google which I'd like to show up via which country. In spain I would like es.domain.com/es/slug/content-id to show in Google and would have hreflang tags on each of the es.domain pages but what about fr.domain.com/es/slug/content-id since it would show the same content? I can't canonical to one of them since I need them to show in their respective country. How do I show the difference in language and country without showing duplication?

    | mattdinbrooklyn
    0
  • Netleaf.ca


    Hi Moz ! We're having quite a discussion here and I'd like to have some inputs. Let me explain the situation and what we plan to do so far. One of our client has two separate markets : World and Europe. Both pages versions will be mostly the same, except for the fact that they will have their own products. So basically, we'd want to show only the European EN version to Europe and the standard EN version to the rest of the world, same goes for FR and ES. As far as IT, DE, CS and SK, they will only be present within the european version. Since we cannot target all Europe with a single hreflang tag, we might have to do it for every single european countries. Regarding this subject, SMX Munich recently had quite an interesting session about this topic with a confirmation coming from John Mueller saying that we can target a single URL more than once with different hreflang tags. You can read more here : http://www.rebelytics.com/multiple-hreflang-tags-one-url/ So having all this in mind, here's the implementation we plan to do : www.example.com/en/ Self canonical www.example.com/fr/ - hreflang = fr www.example.com/es/ - hreflang = es www.example.eu/it/ - hreflang = it www.example.eu/de/ - hreflang = de www.example.eu/cs/ - hreflang = cs www.example.eu/sk/ - hreflang = sk www.example.eu/fr/ - hreflang = be-fr www.example.eu/fr/ - hreflang = ch-fr www.example.eu/fr/ - hreflang = cz-fr www.example.eu/fr/ - hreflang = de-fr www.example.eu/fr/ - hreflang = es-fr www.example.eu/fr/ - hreflang = fr-fr www.example.eu/fr/ - hreflang = uk-fr www.example.eu/fr/ - hreflang = gr-fr www.example.eu/fr/ - hreflang = hr-fr etc… . This will be done for all european countries (FR, EN and ES). www.example.com/en/ - x-default Let me know what you guys think. Thanks!

    | Netleaf.ca
    0
  • Kepass


    Hi There, I have a problem I need an advice for. I run an e-commerce site in French. Things are going well. I also run the Spanish version of this site. We are starting to sell. But nothing like French site. I have traffic coming to the French site from Spain from visitors with Spanish language and they don't buy anything. That is strange as the conversion rate is good. Si I want to redirect them to the Spanish site. We sell phone parts. Our SEO is mainly based on brands, make, and reference numbers. So keywords are almost the same in both languages. Of course, site.es is aiming at google.es, and site.fr at google.fr So I am wondering. If I redirect these visitors to the Spanish site, Will it affect french site's SEO? Thanks

    | Kepass
    0
  • SuperShuttle


    Hey everyone, I am just now learning international SEO, and so appreciate any and all help! 1. I added supershuttle.fr to Search Console about a week ago and it still has 0 indexed pages. It is showing that pages were indexed in the sitemap, and when I check, there are 75 results in Google. Is this something I should be concerned with? Is there a setting that I'm not aware of in Search Console that I need to change? 2. Also, I read the below regarding the automatically translated pages. Would https://en.supershuttle.fr/ be considered an "automatically translated" page? Use robots.txt to block search engines from crawling automatically translated pages on your site. Automated translations don’t always make sense and could be viewed as spam. More importantly, a poor or artificial-sounding translation can harm your site’s perception

    | SuperShuttle
    0
  • Bush_JSM


    Hi Mozzers, I have a client that is rebuilding their eCommerce store. We are deliberating how to map the URL structure. My advice is and has always been to have language as the structure so the UK and US markets in English but separate pages with href=lang tags so the engines rank the correct page, the French page in French and tagged correct, German in German etc etc This way we have a clear page to optimise and build links into and the users select the currency ($ / £ / € or Ruble) They may want to have it by Currency, so rather than /UK or /US it would be /dollar, /sterling etc etc Have you any experience with both structures and what are the pros and cons as it seems clear to me language should be the way foreward They are using Magento 2 as well if that influences anything. Thanks Gareth This presents are tougher landscape to optimise for I feel and less clear for users

    | Bush_JSM
    0
  • administratorwibee


    Hi folks, We use Magento 2 for the multi-country shops (its a multistore). The URL: www.avarcas.com The first days Google indexed the proper url in each country: avarcas.com/uk avarcas.com/de ... Some days later, all the countries are just indexing / (the root). I correctly set the subfolders in Webmaster tools. What's happening? Thanks

    | administratorwibee
    0
  • NikelleClark


    Our website serves a global market and over a year ago, we launched 8 language variations of the site and implemented hreflang tags. These language variation pages are proving difficult to maintain, and in Search Console they're triggering thousands of errors. I have double checked our implementation and it's not perfect, so I understand the errors. Here's the question though... the 8 language variations of the site are receiving less than 1% of our web traffic despite 40% of our web traffic coming from countries outside of North America every month. I want to know if we can eliminate the headache of these 8 language variations altogether, remove our attempt at hreflang, and simply rely on the browser settings of the user to dictate what language the website appears in for them? If not, is there a simpler solution than hreflang and attempting to maintain a very large website in 8 languages? Thank for your input! Niki

    | NikelleClark
    0
  • DannyHoodless


    Hi All, Recently acquired a competitor company. This acquired company is small in size but is the exclusive UK distributor for a gigantic Swedish company. This is the way the current domain structure is divided. swedish-supplier.se (Not owned by us - swedish supplier ) Swedish-supplier.co.uk (owned by us, operating as the swedish supplier in the UK) New-acquired-company.com (owned by us) The supplier doesn't want us to have two websites as they keep getting confused customers. Because of this we have agreed to remove www.swedish-suplier.co.uk and solely sell the product at www.new-aqquired-company.com. However,  because of the sheer size of the Swedish supplier, a lot of traffic comes through to swedish-supplier.co.uk. My question is, how can we work together with the supplier to remove this domain and still maintain a good amount of UK traffic? Should we point swedish-supplier.co.uk back to the suppliers original translated web site and have them pass enquiries onto us or should we point it to our website? & What's the best way to go about it? Thanks, Danny

    | DannyHoodless
    0

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