How to make Google consider my international subdomain relevant?
-
We have recently started to look deeper into international SEO. We have search engine optimized our international landing pages, title tags and meta descriptions with keywords etc. so each of the international language we support is SEO'ed for the local market.
We support 12 languages, and each of them are located on a subdomain. That means if we say our site is helloworld.com, a person from Germany that lands on this site can switch to German and will then be redirected to de.helloworld.com and all content will be in German.
Our problem is that we develop cloud-based software, we have a significant amount of traffic, but whenever we get media coverage or people link to us from anywhere in the world they always link to the root domain which in this case then would be helloworld.com. That means if I go to google.de and type in the exact meta description or title tag we use in German, the Google search engine can't even find us because "I assume" Google don't consider our de.helloworld.com relevant because nobody has ever linked to this site.
I would appreciate very much if anyone can give me some advice on how I can address this issue.
Thanks a lot!
Allan
-
Yes I did, already replied last week. Sent my PM again to make sure you've got it.
-
Hi Martijn,
Did you receive the PM I sent you?
Best wishes,
Allan
-
Can you PM me the site we're talking about in this case? Quite hard otherwise to give you other initiatives for your specific case.
-
Hi Martijn,
It has now been a few months, unfortunately these actions didn't solve the problem, we're still not being indexed on the international Google sites such as Google.fr, .de, .es etc. Any suggestions to other initiatives we can take to change that?
Thanks for your help.
Best wishes,
Allan
-
Hi Martijn,
Thanks a lot for the prompt response to my question. We'll look into these changes, the only thing I don't really understand is her suggestions about when not to use geotargeting in the video. She gives an example when you don't want to use geotargeting on your website and that is when you want to target a particular language versus region. I understand that we might miss out on the French speaking leads that live in Canada if we geotarget our site for France, but if that's the trade-off compared to not reaching anyone who speaks French which is the case with our current international SEO structure I'm fine with that!
However, I assume your first suggestion to look into Rel="alternate" v.s. href lang deals with that situation where you target language and not region.
Thanks again Martijn, I appreciate your help very much, and I promise I'll drop you a line when we "hopefully" can see the impact.
-Allan
-
Hi Allan,
They're several options which could provide you with a possible solution. But of course I can't guarantee that any of these options will actually solve your problem.
- Rel="alternate" v.s. href lang: these tags will tell Google on which pages the relevant pages in that language can be found.
- Google Webmaster Tools geotargeting: with the geotargeting you're able to target your sub domain on a specific country.
I would give both a try and hopefully you can drop a comment here in a couple of weeks with hopefully positive progress.
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
-
My Website Not Showing In Google English Search Results
My website is not visible on Google English. Selecting the language of Google in Hindi, Spanish, etc., my pages are visible in search results.
International SEO | | Jude_Wix0 -
How to best set up international XML site map?
Hi everyone, I've been searching about a problem, but haven't been able to find an answer. We would like to generate a XML site map for an international web shop. This shop has one domain for Dutch visitors (.nl) and another domain for visitors of other countries (Germany, France, Belgium etc.) (.com). The website on the 2 domains looks the same, has the same template and same pages, but as it is targeted to other countries, the pages are in different languages and the urls are also in different languages (see example below for a category bags). Example Netherlands:
International SEO | | DocdataCommerce
Dutch domain: www.client.nl
Example Dutch bags category page: www.client.nl/tassen Example France:
International domain: www.client.com
Example French bags category page: www.client.com/sacs When a visitor is on the Dutch domain (.nl) which shows the Dutch content, he can switch country to for example France in the country switch and then gets redirected to the other, international .com domain. Also the other way round. Now we want to generate a XML sitemap for these 2 domains. As it is the same site, but on 2 domains, development wants to make 1 sitemap, where we take the Dutch version with Dutch domain as basis and in the alternates we specify the other language versions on the other domain (see example below). <loc>http://www.client.nl/tassen</loc>
<xhtml:link<br>rel="alternate"
hreflang="fr"
href="http://www.client.com/sacs"
/></xhtml:link<br> Is this the best way to do this? Or would we need to make 2 site maps, as it are 2 domains?0 -
Google adwords keyword tool - Can anyone recommend a free service that is similar?
Hi everyone, As many of you know the Google keyword tool is going away unless you have an active campaign. Can anyone recommend a tool that is similar and free? We do international SEO so it is really important for me to get keyword suggestions in several languages. Thanks Carla
International SEO | | Carla_Dawson0 -
Ranking well internationally, usage of hreflang, duplicate country content
I'm trying to wrap my head around various options when it comes to international SEO, specifically how to rank well in countries that share a language, and the risk of duplicate content in these cases. We have a chance to start from scratch because we're switching to a new e-commerce platform, and we were looking into using hreflang. Let's assume an example of a .com webshop that targets both Austria and Germany. One option is to include both language and region in the URL, and mark these as such using hreflang: webshop.com/de-de/german-language-content (with hreflang de-de)
International SEO | | DocdataCommerce
webshop.com/de-at/german-language-content (with hreflang de-at) Another option would be to only include the language in the URL, not the region, and let Google figure out the rest: webshop.com/de/german-language-content (with hreflang de) Which would be better? The risk of inserting a country, of course, is that you're introducing duplicate content, especially since for webshops there are usually only minor differences in content (pricing, currency, a word here and there). If hreflang is an effective means to make sure that visitors from each country get the correct URL from the search engines, I don't see any reason not to use this way. But if search engines get it wrong, users will end up in the wrong page and will have to switch country, which could result in conversion loss. Also, if you only use language in the URL, is it useful at all to use hreflang? Aren't engines perfectly able to recognize language already? I don't mention ccTLDs here because most of the time we're required to use a .com domain owned by our customer. But if we did, would that be much better? And would it still be useful to use hreflang then? webshop.de/german-language-content (with hreflang de-de)
webshop.at/german-language-content (with hreflang de-at) Michel Hendriks
Docdata Commerce0 -
Google Webmaster Tools - Geographic target - Time till change
One of my clients is targeting UK customers. They have UK IP address. I then noticed that they had their Geographic target set to "Target users in: United States". I advised them to change this. Anyone know: How this could have been set, the client says they didn't do it? How long will it take for Google to see this has been changed? Thanks in advance. Justin
International SEO | | GrouchyKids0 -
International SEO: abcJP.com OR abcJapan.com
The ccTLD .jp is not available. What URL should I use instead? MybrandJP.com or MybrandJapan.com *Mybrand is a four-letter acronym
International SEO | | FXDD0 -
Best URL for international domain
Hello SEomozers We have a site with this structure: -www.xyz.com US customers, limited content in12 languages, -global.xyz.com for International customers, full content in 12 languages. The global site is the hub for the rest of the world. We are creating a new site from scratch and want to consolidate the two domains in one by using subfolders, such as: www.xyz.com for USA, www.wyz.com/jp for US customers reading in japanese and www.xyz.com/int-jp for customers from Japan (international - will set geo location with webmastertool) What do you think would be the best naming convention for the international?
International SEO | | FXDD
www.xyz.com/int-jp or
www.xyz.com/eu-jp or
www.xyz.com/eu/jp or
www.xyz.com/ ...any other suggestions?0 -
International (greek) characters in the URL
For one of our sites we are considering restructuring the urls. This is about a Greek site and we are toying between the following options: a) English URLS e.g. www.domain.com/cars b) Greek URLs e.g. www.domain.com/αυτοκίνητα c) "Greeklish" URLs (Greek words spelled with latin characters) www.domain.com/aftokinita Normally we would imagine option b is the best since it would reinforce the main and most relevant keyword that is already present within the page content. We see many people search in google using greeklish (e.g. they are lazy to switch the keyboard locale all the time). Since we would also like to capture this part of the SE traffic but cannot obviously write in "greeklish" within our main page content maybe option c is a good compromise?
International SEO | | achatzakis0
