Change of language
-
Hi everyone,
We bought a domain which had content in German for over 8 years. So the rankings it had were in another search engine aswell.
So i've changed the language of the content + targetting in webmaster tools to Dutch. (i've created unique content, in case your wondering)
Now we don't rank in the targetted search engine, nor in the search engine the website was previously ranked.My question is how can we fix this so we are going to get indexed and ranked for the targetted search engine.
Thanks in advance.
-
Hi Gianluca,
Thanks for your answer. And sorry for the delayed response.
I'll ask John Mueller for an answer.Thanks again.
-
If the links where totally unrelated to the actual site, what I would probably do should be to check in webmaster help forum a direct answer from John Mueller (or, better, asking him directly on Google+).
In fact, once there was an option for "disavowing" the links a domain just bought had, but since almost one year the link to that option has disappeared from GWT.
The use of the disavow tool usually is for site that have been penalized.
-
Hi Gianluca,
Thanks for yet another answer.
I did consider it, however i taught it wouldn't influence the rankings.
Which leads me to a follow up question, if you dont mind?
Should i disavow those old links to help rank for the correct Google.Thanks again for taking the time to answer the question.
-
HI and sorry for the delay...
haven't you considered that that domain is still ranking in Google.de because of its old link profile?
In fact, it can be possible that links it earned in its past existence as a German website may be the cause of its still good rankings in .de.
On the contrary, the percentage of links from dutch sites may be too small to allow the site to rank properly in google.nl.
That's all I can tell you, without knowing the site name.
-
Hi Gianluca,
Thank you for your response!
It is ranking but in the German index. That could be because it is an old domain?
-
Hi Stefan,
what I don't understand is if your site, now in dutch and targeting Netherlands, is actually indexed but not ranking, or if it also not indexed at all.
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 will google respond to allowing multilingual search terms for a single language website?
We would like to set up a website in English language only and promote this in various European countries. As said the website will only be available in English language, but we will keep translations (google translate) in backend. When a user in France then enters search query in French language in browser, a search can be done in French content, but we will present relevant content in English. Does anyone have any experience with that? Will it be allowed given the fact that the result (in English language) will probably not include any of the terms that was searched on (in French language).
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | hansdef0 -
What is the "Homepage" for an International Website With Multiple Languages?
BACKGROUND: We are developing a new multi-language website that is going to have: 1. Multiple directories for various languages:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mirabile
/en-us, /de, etc....
2. Hreflang tags
3. Universal footer links so user can select their preferred language.
and
4. Automatic JS detection of location on homepage only, so that when the user lands on /, it redirect them to the correct location. Currently, the auto JS detection only happens on /, and no other pages of the website. The user can also always choose to override the auto-detection on the homepage anytime, by using the language-selector links on the bottom. QUESTION: Should we try to place a 301 on / to point to en/us? Someone recommended this to us, but my thinking is "NO" - we do NOT want to 301 /. Instead, I feel like we should allow Google Access to /, because that is also the most authoritative page on the website and where all incoming links are pointing. In most cases, users / journalists / publications IMHO are just going to link to /, not dilly dally around with the language-directory. My hunch is just to keep / as is, but also work to help Google understand the relationship between all of the different language-specific directories. I know that Google officially doesn't advocate meta refresh redirects, but this only happens on homepage, and we likewise allow user to override this at any time (and again, universal footer links will point both search engines and users to all other locations.) Thoughts? Thanks for any tips/feedback!2 -
Language Tunnel - Help!
Hi, First post here. A few months back (before they were my client), my client updated their site to include a language tunnel. It looks like some other updates were made as well to "prettify" the site's URLs. Unfortunately, after this update, lots of well-ranking landing pages are now completely gone with no redirects in place. Normally, I would just give them a list of these old pages and say "301 Redirect" to X page. However, as part of this site update, they added country code into the mix. So now, instead of just 6 or 7 languages, we are looking at 30-40 permutations of language and country (with some countries having multiple languages). The functionality of the new site is fine, but all of the old 404s are not being kind to the search engine traffic. My question is: what's the best way to resolve this problem? These old pages usually specify a language code (but no country code). So, for example, I am thinking of redirecting all of the Spanish 404 urls to a Spanish "country tunnel". However, this is obviously not the same as what we had before, where the actual pages were indexed. Since my old pages no longer exist and I've got this country problem now (to stand in the way of a straightforward redirect), is there any way to appease the SEO gods on this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | navdm0 -
Should We Add the W3.org Language Tag To Every Page Or Just The Home Page?
Greetings, We have five international sites around the world, two of which are in difference languages. Currently we have the following line of html code on the home page of each of the sites: Clearly, we need to change the "en" portion for the sites that aren't in English, but, should we include that meta tag in each of the site's pages, or will the home page suffice. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CSawatzky0 -
After reading of Google's so called "over-optimization" penalty, is there a penalty for changing title tags too frequently?
In other words, does title tag change frequency hurt SEO ? After changing my title tags, I have noticed a steep decline in impressions, but an increase in CTR and rankings. I'd like to once again change the title tags to try and regain impressions. Is there any penalty for changing title tags too often? From SEO forums online, there seems to be a bit of confusion on this subject...
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Felix_LLC0 -
Language Subdirectory homepage not indexed by Google
Hi mozzers, Our Spanish homepage doesn't seem to be indexed or cached in Google, despite being online for over a month or two. All Spanish subpages are indexed and have started to rank but not the homepage. I have submitted sitemap xml to GWTools and have checked there's no noindex on the page - it seems to be in order. And when I run site: command in Google it shows all pages except homepage. What could be the problem? Here's the page: http://www.bosphorusyacht.com/es/
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | emerald0 -
Redirect aspx files to a different path structure on a different domain using a different server-side language?
Without getting into the debate/discussion about which server-side language should or should not be used, I am faced with the reality of moving an old ASP.NET site to a Coldfusion one with a different domain and different folder structure. Example: www.thissite.com/animals/lion.aspx --> www.thatsite.com/animals/africa/lion.cfm What is the best way to redirect individual .aspx pages to their .cfm counterparts keeping in mind that, in many cases, the folder paths will be different? If it would mean less work, I am hoping this can be done at the server level (IIS 6) rather than modifying the code on each now-defunct page. And on a related note, how long should any redirects be kept in place? My apologies if this has been answered in this forum in the past, but I did do a lot of searching first (both here and elsewhere) before posting this query.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | hamackey0 -
Changing keyword target on home page? Will it work?
I have a site that is in the financial services niche and has around 20 pages talking about different services. I want to change the goal of the site and now just target Insurance. The current home page is a simple introduction to the website, I was going to change this to target the insurance keyword and put around 500 words content on the front page. I was also going to change the Page Title, Description and H1 tags too. My question is will the front page then rank for that keyword once google recrawls the site? Could I damage the PR of the site or any other factors from changing the front page. Here are some stats about the site 11 years old PR 3 Page Mozrank 5.58 Page Moztrust 5.61 Domain Mozrank 2.29 Domain Moztrust 3.17 Thanks for your help guys
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JohnPeters0
