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.
URL Structure - Homepage, Country and State Pages
-
Hello,
I am creating a website (or websites if best format) that will have state-specific boating license courses for every state in the US, Canada and Australia. I would like the content to be available on the website in English, French and Spanish. I want to be the global leader in providing boat test courses.
For the (1) homepage, (2) country pages, and (3) state pages, what is best SEO format I should use for:
(a) URL structure
(b) "href lang" code
(c) rel canonical code
(d) will meta content with non-English pages need to also be in the non-English language of that page?Also, what server company do you recommend I host my website with?
I am a non-programmer and learning SEO, so any and all help will be greatly appreciated!
Thank you very much in advance!!!
-
Hi Paul,
In order to give you an answer about the best international Web structure, could you please confirm: Where's your target audience for your site? Do you want to target the audience of some specific countries (those where you will have the courses from)? Or do you want to target audience that speak a specific language abroad? Could you please confirm the country and language target for each one please?
For hreflang tags best practices you can refer to this post I wrote at the Moz blog with examples and a tool to help you generate them.
You can still using "self" referral rel canonical annotations in each one of your pages since these won't be seen as duplicated (they will be whether targeting to different languages or in the same language but to different countries) but you don't need to use cross-language or cross-country, as Google describes in their international FAQ.
It's important to note that each of your international Web versions should feature specific content optimized for each one of them in the relevant language, targeting its specific audience, from Titles, Meta Descriptions, URLs, all should be in the relevant language, with specific terms used by the visitors you want to attract. This is why doing a full initial research to identify if there's enough volume in each country and language to compensate to build independent Web versions is fundamental.
Please, take a look at this International SEO Checklist I published at the Moz blog, that will help you validate each step you need to take for an international SEO process and take a look at the slides of my MozCon presentation about International SEO, where I describe and share resources for each one of them.
Thanks!
-
Hey Paul,
The above code can be placed between and as stated above. If yur website is built in php then you can just copy and paste it above.
Please have a look here http://moz.com/blog/canonical-url-tag-the-most-important-advancement-in-seo-practices-since-sitemaps
-
There is some confusion and want to clear it up.
For URL structure, do you recommend [domain].com/[country]/[state]? Is there a better format to use? For example, [domain].com/[2 letter language code]-[2 letter country code]/[state]
For the above State page, what should I put re: "href...." if any?
Where do I insert rel canonical? On every page, including the homepage? ONLY on duplicate pages?
If I have a non-English page, is there an advantage of having the meta data in that language vs. English?
-
For the canonical you want to use Yoast if your on a WordPress site.
If not add this between and (php is required)
" />
-
I'm looking for an example. Assume domain name is boattests101.com
-
I'm not totally sure I understand what you're asking either, but I'll give it a shot:
- Best URL structure: To some extent it's just your preference, but I'd go with something like domain/country/state.html (you may use a different language than html.)
- Href lang code: I'm not familiar enough with this to comment.
- Rel canonical code: Just use the standard code <link rel="canonical" href="(insert page URL)" />
- META data: The content and the META content should be the same language. Why would it be any different?
- Hosting company: I work for a Christian hosting company, so if your a Christian, I'd be happy to host your site. I don't really have a recommendation beyond that.
Kurt Steinbrueck
OurChurch.Com -
Hey Paul,
I'm not to sure on what your asking at some parts of this question.
Are you looking for a, b and c to be explain or an 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
-
Correct Hreflang & Canonical Tags for Multi-Regional Website English Language Only having URL Parameters
Dear friends, We have a multi-regional website in English language only having the country selector on the top of each page and it adds countrycode parameters on each url. Website is built in Magento 1.8 and having 1 store with multiple store views. There is no default store set in Magento as I discussed with developer. Content is same for all the countries and only currency is changed. In navigation there are urls without url parameters but when we change store from any page it add parameters in the url for same page hence there are total 7 URLs. 6 URLs for each page (with country parameters) and 1 master url (without parameters) and making content duplicity. We have implemented hreflang tags on each page with url parameters but for canonical we have implemented master page url as per navigation without url parameters Example on this page. I think this is correct for master page but we should use URL parameters in canonical tags for each counry url too and there should be only 1 canonical tag on each country page url. Currently all the country urls are having master page canoncial tag as per the example. Please correct me if I am wrong and **in this case what has to be done for master page? **as google is indexing the pages without parameters too. We are also using GEOIP redirection for each store with country IP detection and for rest of the countries which are not listed on the website we are redirecting to USA store. Earlier it was 301 but we changed it to 302. Hreflang tags are showing errors in SEMRush due to redirection but in GWT it's OK for some pages it's showing no return tags only. Should I use **x-default tags for hreflang and country selector only on home page like this or should I remove the redirection? **However some of the website like this using redirection but header check tool doesn't show the redirection for this and for our website it shows 302 redirection. Sorry for the long post but looking for your support, please.
International SEO | | spjain810 -
Targeting Countries in the Middle East
Hi guys, I have a client based in the Middle East using a generic top level domain (.com), and they want to target multiple countries in the GCC (UAE, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar etc). I’m thinking that using the hreflang tag would be the best solution here, however the pages will mostly have the exact same content. There will only be slight changes on some pages in terms of using localised title tags [client service] followed by [targeted country], h1's and meta descriptions. Is this the correct approach? And if so should this be implemented side wide or can it be implemented on selected pages only? The site will be in English only.
International SEO | | Jbeetle0 -
E-Commerce - Country Domains versus 1 Domain?
Hi, Just wanted to get some feedback and opinions re the idea of segmenting our ecommerce site languages under various domains, like .jp for japanese, .it for italian etc... I do understand the geolocation benefits that this could bring us, but on the flipside, it would mean that we would need to grow our domain authority, link buiding per country domain, which is quite a bit of work. Has anyone ever considered or implemented this and any thoughts? Thanks!
International SEO | | bjs20100 -
Auto-Redirecting Homepage on Multilingual Site
The website has an auto-redirecting homepage on a multilingual site. Here is some background: User visits the site for first time > sent to javascript age verification page with country of origin selector. If selects "France" then served French page (.com/fr-fr/). If selects any other country, then served English page (.com/en-int/). A cookie is set, and next time the user visits the site, they are automatically served the appropriate language URL. 1st Question: .com/ essentially does not exist. It is being redirected to .com/en-int/ as this is the default page. Should this be a 301 redirect since I want this to serve as the new homepage? 2nd Question:. In the multilingual sitemap, should I still set .com/ as the hreflang="x-default" even though the user is automatically redirected to a language directory? According to Google, as just released here: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2014/05/creating-right-homepage-for-your.html "automatically serve the appropriate HTML content to your users depending on their location and language settings. You will either do that by using server-side 302 redirects or by dynamically serving the right HTML content. Remember to use x-default rel-alternate-hreflang annotation on the homepage / generic page even if the latter is a redirect page that is not accessible directly for users." So, this is where I am not clear. If use a 302 redirect of .com/ to either .com/en-int/ or .com/fr-fr/, won't I then lose the inbound link value and DA/PA of .com/ if I just use a 302? Note: there is no .com/ at this moment. Any advice is appreciated. Thanks,Alex
International SEO | | Alex.Weintraub0 -
Showing different content according to different geo-locations on same URL
We would like our website to show different content according to different Geo-locations (but in the same language). For example, if www.mywebsite.com is accessed from the US, it would show text (in English) appealing to North Americans, but, if accessed from Japan, it would show text (also in English) that appeals more to Japanese people. In the Middle East, we would like the website to show different images than those shown in the US and Asia. Our main concern is that we would like to keep the same URL. How will Google index these pages? Will it index the www.mywebsite.com (Japan version) in its Asia archives and the www.mywebsite.com (US version) in its North American archives? Will Google penalise us for showing different content across Geo-locations on the same URL? What if a URL is meant to show content only in Japan? Are there any other issues that we should be looking out for? Kindest Regards L.B.
International SEO | | seoec0 -
Multilingual Ecommerce Product Pages Best Practices
Hi Mozzers, We have a marketplace with 20k+ products, most of which are written in English. At the same time we support several different languages. This changes the chrome of the site (nav, footer, help text, buttons, everything we control) but leaves all the products in their original language. This resulted in all kinds of duplicate content (pages, titles, descriptions) being detected by SEOMoz and GWT. After doing some research we implemented the on page rel="alternate" hreflang="x", seeing as our situation almost perfectly matched the first use case listed by Google on this page http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=189077. This ended up not helping at all. Google still reports duplicate titles and descriptions for thousands of products, months after setting this up. We are thinking about changing to the sitemap implementation rel="alternate" hreflang="X", but are not sure if this will work either. Other options we have considered include noindex or blocks with robots.txt when the product language is not the same as the site language. That way the feature is still open to users while removing the duplicate pages for Google. So I'm asking for input on best practice for getting Google to correctly recognize one product, with 6 different language views of that same product. Can anyone help? Examples: (Site in English, Product in English) http://website.com/products/product-72 (Site in Spanish, Product in English) http://website.com/es/products/product-72 (Site in German, Product in English) http://website.com/de/products/product-72 etc...
International SEO | | sedwards0 -
Subdomain hosted in a different country - what are the implications?
Hello, We are looking at creating an eCommerce section to a website and we are just weighing up the options: Magento - host on hour own server - great but it can often be very slow when hosting a shared server. Shopify - hosted solution but hosting is in the US and we are in the UK and shop will be hosted on a subdomain as a result Build our own solution - time consuming and costly There are two issues that have arisen from this situation.... Is it worse for SEO to host your store in a different country or to host in your country but your store potentially run slower? I'm swaying to the side of the argument that says give your users a good and fast experience instead of worrying about where you host the store. Bearing in mind that the main website will be hosted in the UK anyway and it is just the subdomain that will be hosted in the US. Just wondered if anybody has had experience with this or if I'm missing something? All feedback greatly appreciated! Thanks, Elias
International SEO | | A_Q0 -
Targeting Different Countries... One Site or Separate?
I have a client who has 3 ecommerce sites. They are somewhat differentiated but for the most part sell the same stuff. Luckily 2 of them are quite authoritative, old and rank reasonably well. Most of the visitors and sales come from the US. He wants to start targeting Europe, Mexico and Canada. What are your suggestions for doing this? Are we better targeting on the main domains? Not really sure how to do that? Should we use a subdomain and a new store front for each geo? Should we use a .co.uk .co.mx and .co.ca each with a unique storefront? It looks like we are moving to a Magento platform so setting up multiple storefronts on a single database is not a big issue. Anyone have any experience with this?
International SEO | | BlinkWeb0
