Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
International Seo - Canada
-
Our organization is currently only operating in the USA but will soon be entering the Canadian market.
We did a lot of research and decided that for our needs it would be best to use a subfolder for Canada.
Initially we will be targeting the english speaking community but eventually we will want to expand to the french speaking Canadians as well.
The question is - is there a preferred version in setting up the subfolders:
www.website.org/ca/ -- default will be english
www.website.org/ca/fr/ - french
www.website.org/en-ca/ - english
www.website.org/fr-ca/ - french
www.website.org/ca/en/ -english
www.website.org/ca/fr/ - french
Thanks
-
Hi there!
Ideally if you're going to be targeting another country the best way to go is with a ccTLD, in this case, .ca. In case you're not able then you can go with a directory and at some point switch to the ccTLD (when you're ready) with a migration, when it makes sense for your business.
You can take a look at the different criteria you can take into consideration in this post I wrote some weeks ago, where I also gave my recommendations from a web structure perspective when you target many countries with different languages for each with a generic domain. In this case it would be the following one to maintain a consistency from a country/language perspective and keep the URL structure as simple as possible for a user and crawling perspective:
USA: yourbrand.com
Canada in English: yourbrand.com/en-ca/
Canada in French: yourbrand.com/fr-ca/
In the post I mention you will find also some examples with this different structures and other best practices to follow.
Good luck with the site
Aleyda
-
Thanks Tammy for your response! We do plan on adding the hreflang tag to the different versions.
That being said - I've seen many seos advise to use set up # 2
but I’ve seen many brands do it differently
for example:
apple does it like # 1
ikea like # 3
so I wasn't sure whether there is any real difference.
Regarding tld .ca -- we do own it and plan to redirect it to our subfolder. At the moment we prefer to use that route so we don't split up our link juice among two different sites. Evnetually we can always separate them if we feel it will be better for use
-
Number one, if you also tie in the language tag within the head code. It would also, be preferential if you make sure your content is unique to each sub directory page ( even if the content is similar it should be 100% unique from the main domain and within the anchor text links coming to the /ca/ version.
Interestingly, if you obtain incoming links from .ca domains, to the /ca/ sub directory it will increase the relevance of the intent of Canada traffic.
Why would you not attempt to obtain the tld from .ca? Instead of sub-directories? Each is fine, but when you have a tld with a country specific extension, it increases your indexation rate within the Canada specific directories, citations as well as attracting incoming links.
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
-
Domain Masking SEO Impact
I hope I am explaining this correctly. If I need to provide any clarity please feel free to ask. We currently use a domain mask on an external platform that points back to our site. We are a non-profit and the external site allows users to create peer-to peer fundraisers that benefit our ministry. Currently we get many meta issues related to this site as well as broken links when fundraisers expire etc. We do not have a need to rank for the information from this site. Is there a way to index these pages so that they are not a part of the search engine site crawls as it relates to our site?
Technical SEO | | SamaritansPurse0 -
JavaScript page loader - SEO impact
Hello all,
Technical SEO | | Lvet
I am working on a site that has a bizarre page load system. All pages get loaded trough the same Javascript snippet, for example: Changing the values in the form changes the page that is loaded. The most incredible thing is that, against my expectations, pages do get indexed by Google.
My question is: "Does loading pages dynamically using JavaScript affect the overall SEO performance?" Why are pages getting indexed? Thank you for shedding light on this.
Cheers
Luca0 -
Schema for Banks and SEO
I'm researching Schema opportunities for a bank, but besides the shema markup available today (like bankorcreditunion) and developments with FIBO, I can find no answer as to the effect of tagging interest rates and such in terms of SERP/CTR performance or visibility. Does anyone have a case study to share or some insight on the matter?
Technical SEO | | Netsociety0 -
Do Letters With Accents Affect SEO?
Hi Guys, My company has a franchise of a foreign company that uses an accent/foreign letter in its brand name. We have to refer to this franchise with this symbol on our website to meet their standards. I've done some research on this but its not conclusive, so i was wondering whether anyone here can confirm this for me; Will using the letter with this symbol impair our rankings for this franchise name? Obviously as a UK business people search for this franchise with a regular letter and not the accented one. I would have thought that Google is clever enough to recognise the meaning of the accented letter by now and therefore it wouldn't affect rankings (much). Furthermore, do you think that it would make any difference to use the HTML element to represent the accent rather than copy and pasting the symbol onto our website? I would've thought this would help Google pick it up, but it might not make a difference anyway! Any help is appreciated. Thanks Sam
Technical SEO | | Sandicliffe1 -
How to SEO a Website Built off Godaddy?
I have a client whose website is built off Godaddy services. I know Godaddy is not the right choice for building a website, but what's done is done. The client has already bought the Godaddy services and there's no way I can tell him to go rebuild his website before we could optimize it for SEO. I'm already facing a lot of challenges while optimizing on-page elements. When I wanted to verify the ownership for Google Analytics and Webmaster Tool via his Godaddy account. the process failed many times. it looks like Godaddy is using some kind of caching not allowing us to modify the codes. For example, I'd applied the site verification codes for Webmasters Tool 48 hours ago, and the metatag for google site verification is not yet updated in the frontend. It's quite frustrating. What would you suggest?
Technical SEO | | suskanchan1 -
International Site Links In Footer
We have several international sites and we have them linked in the footer of our main .com site . Should we add "nofollow" to these links? Our concern is that Google could see these sites as a network?
Technical SEO | | EwanFisher0 -
200 Redirects for SEO instead of 301
We are working with a company on re-platforming our website. On a call yesterday they outlined a strategy to use 200 redirects for our top keywords instead of 301s. I am not familiar with this type of redirect and was wondering if anyone could provide some more insight.
Technical SEO | | EvergladesDirect0 -
Changing CMS, are there SEO effects?
We want to change our cms from typo3 to CMS made Simple. We have done this already for another site and it effected the rankings. Have you got experience with this? What factors are important for SEO to consider? Is it normal when you change from cms the rankings will drop?
Technical SEO | | PlusPort0