Geotargeting Issues
-
Hi,
I am having a problem with geotargeting. I have gTLD (solmelia.com) but my international languages are in subdomains. My english version is showing in the google mexico search engine.
I need to know what I can do to show our international as well as regional languages (fr.solmelia.com) in the right search engines.
Also, having problem with mexico (es) and spain (es) causing dulipication issues and showing in both search engines.
I dont think geotargeting in webmaster tools would be the action or setting a lang attribute.
Let me know what you think I should I do.
-
Hi Antonio,
Just make sure to keep it consistent within markets and languages, at this moment you have to make a decision for your global domain structure and that depends on your marketing/business strategy and technology capabilities.
I'll use Canada as an example of URLs I have seen:
www.domain.ca (EN content)
www.domain.ca/fr (FR-ca Content)
www.domain.com/fr-ca/ (FR-ca content
fr.domain.com (FR content)
ca.domain.com/fr (FR-ca content)
I can keep giving you examples, on how easy is to create a big mess with a global structure. In the case of www.motionpoint.com we use subdomains for languages not for countries, but we keep it consistent for the whole site but Spanish, which we should have ES instead of Espanol. but that will give you the idea.
The more clear structure you have the easier is for search engines to relate your content to a language or market.
Let me know if this helps.
Blas
-
Hi Motion Point,
What do you mean standardized URL? Do you mean ccTLDs with subfolders or subdomains of regional languages?
-
Hi Antonio,
I agree with the recommendations by John Barth, however, I would suggest to have a standardized URL structure for your country & language URLs. To identify your right structure think about your .com site targeting Switzerland, you need at least 3 languages (DE,FR,IT) plus I guess English. You will need to differentiate country and language.
If you need further help please IM me.
Thanks
Blas
-
The best thing to do is set up the geotargeting in Webmaster Tools for Google, and for other search engines, set the country and language you're targeting on the HTTP headers or in a meta tag (see here).
Your English version is probably a lot more popular and has a lot more backlinks to it than your regional versions, so it will rank better as compared to your region-specific subdomains.
To make it easier to find the right version, you could make it more clear on your site how to find the different international versions. For example, if you can't read English, you won't know to click a link that says "international versions". We got around this on the site I work on by using flags in the UI, since most people are familiar with the concept of each country having a different flag. (see http://au.ixl.com/ for example).
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
-
Geolocation issue: Google not displaying the correct url in the SERP's
Hello, Im running a multi-country domain with this structure: domain.com/ar/
International SEO | | EstebanCervi
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!0 -
Lost local organic rankings and international issues
Hi Everyone, Hoping we can get some help from our fellow Mozzers (Mozee's? Mozites?) We have 3 TLD's .com.au .co.uk & .com We noticed an issue a couple of weeks ago where we suddenly lost a lot of our search rankings for keywords on the .com.au site that we'd been top with for a long time. A lot of our Australian visitors were coming through our US site. US & UK sites got increased ranking results. We fixed up what we thought were the issues (Potentially HREF Lang issues and old sitemap issues). Google Search Console is still telling us we have some HREF Lang Errors, (but this could be waiting an updated crawl as the number is decreasing) Our main domain example.com is now showing up as first result in google.com.au search and the example.com.au doesn't show up until page 4 (prior to 2 weeks ago it was number 1) Any input would be appreciated...
International SEO | | tinyme0 -
Geotargeting in Webmaster Tools - Is there an expected ranking benefit in the geotargeted region ?
Hi Is there an expected ranking benefit from geotargeting regional focused subfolders or domain mapped TLDs' in the target countries ? Or does it just prevent these pages from showing up in other regions search results ? For example i have a client with a main .com site targeting english worldwide generally, then a /tr subfolder in turkish to target Turkey. Then another subfolder /de targeting german in germany (but the de has also been domain mapped to .de top level domain too). Im leaving the main .com site non geotargeted since its job is to achieve english language results wherever possible and wandering whether to geotarget the turkish subfolder & german tld The Turkish regional subfolder & the German tld are achieving some ranking results already in their target countries googles, but also getting traffic from other countries too (which im happy to get, dont really want to stop this traffic unless there really is a local region ranking benefit for the main target country by gwt geotargeting). So should I use GWT international targeting tool or not ? Since the tld site is clearly on a german domain with german language pages and the Turkish subfolder /tr site is in Turkish the i presume Googles got no probs working this out which is demonstrated by the regional & language ranking results So I presume if achieving results in target countries already then no real need to set international taregt in GWT especially if it may stop traffic from other regions too. BUT if its likely to improve those rankings further in the main target countries googles significantly then i would happily cut off or reduce the other region traffic in favour of higher rankings and hence targeted traffic from the main target country .All Best Dan
International SEO | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
Ranking issues for UK vs US spelling - advice please
Hi guys, I'm reaching out here for what may seem to be a very simple and obvious issue, but not something I can find a good answer for. We have a .com site hosted in Germany that serves our worldwide audience. The site is in English, but our business language is British (UK) English. This means that we rank very well for (e.g.) optimisation software but optimization software is nowhere to be found. The cause of this to me seems obvious; a robot reading those two phrases sees two distinct words. Nonetheless, having seen discussions of a similar nature around the use of plurals in keywords, it would seem to me that Google should have this sort of thing covered. Am I right or wrong here? If I'm wrong, then what are my options? I really don't want to have to make a copy of the entire site; apart from the additional effort involved in content upkeep I see this path fraught with duplicate content issues. Any help is very much appreciated, thanks.
International SEO | | StevenHowe0 -
Robots.txt issue with indexation
Hello i have a problem with one of the rules for robots.txt i have a multilingual mutation of entire page on www.example.com/en/ I want to make indexable /allow/ the main page under /en/ but not indexable /disallow/ everything else under /en/* Please help me how to write the rule.
International SEO | | profesia0 -
Was Geotargeting subfolders in webmaster tools deprecated?
I know that you used to be able to geotarget subfolders on your site to certain regions. We recently made some site-scale updates to make all of our regional pages appear in the appropriate subfolder (for example:site.com/france, or site.com/germany). I recently got admin rights to our site's webmaster tools account that allows us to make these setting changes, but the geotargeting options are only available for the entire site. It still implies on the multi-region site page that you should be able to do this: http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=182192 | Subdirectories with gTLDs | example.com/de/ | Easy to set up Can use Webmaster Tools geotargeting Low maintenance (same host) | Users might not recognize geotargeting from the URL alone Single server location Separation of sites harder | Is this deprecated? Is there something I need to do to enable setting regions by subdirectories?Thanks
International SEO | | alexdoyne0 -
Geotargeting Issues
I have a different problem then most. My international website (www.solmelia.com) is showing number one in english for "SOL MELIA" in the Mexican google search engine. Plus the 3rd listing on google.com.mx is our homepage in spanish but it is showing up as a 401. We need to redirect the ccTLD (www.solmelia.es) to our current spanish version that is actually a subdomain (es.solmelia.com). Please let me know how I can fix both issues.
International SEO | | Melia0 -
Is duplicate content really an issue on different International Google engines?
i.e. Google.com v.s. Google.co.uk This relates to another question I have open on a similar issue. So if I open the same e-commerce site (virtually) on company.com and company.co.uk, does Google really view that as duplicate content? I would be inclined to think they have that figured out but I havent had much experience with international SEO...
International SEO | | BlinkWeb0