International SEO Subfolders / user journey etc
-
Hi
According to all the resources i can find on Moz and elsewhere re int seo, say in the context of having duplicate versions of US & UK site, its best to have subfolders i.e.
&
however when it comes to the user journey and promoting web address seems a bit weird to say visit us at: domain.com/en-us/ !?
And what happens if someone just enters in domain.com from the US or UK ?
My client wants to use an IP sniffer but i've read thats bad practice and should employ above style country/language code instead, but i'm confused about both the user journey and experience in the case of multiple sub folders.
Any advice much appreciated ?
Cheers
Dan
-
Thanks for your comments but im looking directly into subfolder option (since TLD not an option and sub-domain considered bad practice from what i can gather after many days research on Moz etc
As a result this is what ill issue to a clients development team in this circumstance is as follows for where sites preferred structure is sub-folders/directories:
-
Implement IP sniffing on the home page ONLY
-
Then have Sub-Folders named after the official country abbreviations which will create a better user experience than both country and language i.e. domain.com/us/ as opposed to domain.com/en-us/ or domain.com/en-gb/ etc etc. This way it will only manipulate the homepage crawling and not site-wide indexing issues.
3) Target these folders to the correct countries in Google’s and Bing’s Webmasters Tools. Use the official country and language codes in the Hreflang mark-up as per point 4.
-
Set up site maps for each subfolder and rel="alternate" hreflang= according to Google guidelines. Here's a great tool to help with correct implementation: http://www.themediaflow.com/resources/tools/href-lang-tool/
-
Specify the content language/country by adding the 'country-language' meta-tags in the html head
6) Link between each country/language version in a crawl-able and visible manner (for SE and Users)
7) Create individual profiles in GWT & Bing Webmaster Tools for each country/language sub-folder and geo-target accordingly
Create individual profiles within GAnalytics for each country/language version and configure to track internal activity between different versions
9) Localise content so has US currency, contact details, spelling etc
10) Other localisation techniques ( such as marking up contact details with schema places code)
Note RE: HrefLang & Canonicalisation:
An extra advantage of using hreflang is that it will provide a degree of canonicalisation. Should canonical tag be employed in the future never so across language versions if site expand into non English versions. More info here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Igbrm1z_7Hk
-
-
Hey Dan,
The challenges with international sites are many and varied. The 'best' international strategy really depends on your resources
Here's how I see the advantages / disadvantages of each approach:
Subfolders - ranking may be 'easier' as domain authority is consolidated, but URLs are ugly
The sub-folder approach is often utilised where there's insufficient resource to market and maintain separate international ccTLDs (e.g. .co.uk, .com, .fr etc). The advantage with the subfolder approach is that you're consolidating domain authority - so the links to /en-uk/ (NB do use en-uk NOT en-gb incidentally) pass authority to /en-us/ and vice versa.
You're building one strong site, rather than trying to build two, three (or more) strong sites. However, as you've identified URLs get long and a bit ugly.
ccTLDs - Arguably nicer for users, but might not rank
Conversely, whilst ccTLDs (.co.uk, .com, .fr etc) are nicer from a user's perspective, you may struggle to rank if you're not able to spend sufficient time and resource on marketing and building links to these domains.
If you have the time and resources, I'd probably go down the ccTLD route, but if you don't, then the subfolder route is probably best.
IP redirects
In terms of the IP sniffers etc - be careful
Googlebot typical crawls from the US, and as such is likely to be redirected by your sniffer too. Essentially you're in danger of making any non-US versions invisible as far as Google are concerned. For that reason rather than doing a hard redirect I prefer Amazon's approach - if you visit Amazon.com from a UK IP you'll see a message which says: "Shopping from the UK? Visit Amazon.co.uk.".
That way users get the nudge to direct them to the right site and the bots can still crawl and index all of your content.
-
I want to start by saying I am not a user experience expert! I can tell you that from an SEO perspective, building international sites with subfolders can be advantageous because those international sites will inherit the main domain's authority and you can have one linking strategy that can benefit all areas of the site.
As for the user journey, I can provide some ideas for what we've done in the past with our clients. The first would be to have a window display on the main domain.com page that will allow a user to choose their country, and that will then forward them to the appropriate area of the site.
Another tactic we used was to purchase domain names that are unique for each country/language that would then redirect to the appropriate area of the site. We would typically only use these domains in offline marketing material (brochures, business cards etc..) and that way you can tell your prospective customers to visit you at domainuk.com instead of domain.com/en-gb/.
I hope this helps!
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
-
International SEO - Alternatives to Automatic IP re-direct
Hello, When doing international SEO I've read that it's not good practice to automatically re-direct users to the correct part of the website based on their IP address. But what alternatives are there to this? Let's say you're targeting the US and the UK through multiregional SEO. What can you do to ensure that users from the US go to the US sub-directory and that users from the UK go to the UK sub-directory? In Moz's international SEO guide it says that: "If you choose to try to guess at the user’s language preference when they enter your site, you can use the browser’s language setting or the IP address and ask the user to confirm the choice. Using JavaScript to do this will ensure that Googlebot does not get confused. Pair this with a good XML sitemap and the user can have a great interaction. Plus, the search engines will be able to crawl and index all of your translated content." Can anyone explain this further? Any help would be much appreciated! Thanks in advance
International SEO | | SEOCT0 -
International SEO Proposal
Hi, I need to create an international seo proposal and wondered what are the best bits of international SEO I should include? I have been reading up on loads of blogs wondered if anyone had some great ideas 🙂 Much appreciated.
International SEO | | karl621 -
International SEO - Mixing country targeting and language targeting in GWT.
Hi all! I want to start with International SEO process for my ecommerce. We sell worldwide with a .com domain, although the business is mainly focused in Spain. We maintain three languages, spanish, english and french with a non suitable structure. Now, after read a lot about it, I'm considering to use subdirectories for each language, /es/, /en/ and /fr/. And heres it's my first doubt: Could I avoid /es/ from spanish language as it's the default one? I've understood from recents Q&A that it's not needed although more user friendly. I'm trying to avoid tons of 301 from old urls for my main language. Anyway I want to know the best approach regardless complexity. My second doubt is about country targeting. After some research, I consider that it'd be interesting target country for /fr/ subdomain but language for /en/. Do you see any problem mixing both strategies? I know I also need to add the hreflang tag to guide googlebot. But I prefer to clarify these points first. Thanks a lot! Best regards.
International SEO | | footd1 -
Is this hurting our SEO: company1.uk.com, company1.ru.com, company1.de.com, etc...?
Hello I work for a company which is using this kind of subdomains, that look like domains such as company1.uk.com, company1.ru.com, company1.de.com, but they are obviously not. We also own company1.com where the main site in English lies. We are one of the leader portals in one financial sector, and I am wondering if our SEO can be hurted by these fake "domains". I understand that we get some effect from the other domains hosted under this domain, and they are probably not as high quality as ours and they are probably unrelated. **- Would you recommend us to stop using these and use subdomains? So change: "company1.de.com" and use "de.company1.com" instead? Should we expect an increase in traffic after this change?** Any help will be appreciated.
International SEO | | forex-websites0 -
Link Builder Freelance/Agency in Italy_
Hi! We are looking for a link builder freelance or an SEO agency specialized in link building for the Italian market. Could you recommend any? Did anyone have any experience with a good Italian agency/freelance? Thanks!
International SEO | | jorgediaz0 -
Multiple domains for one site / satellite domains
Hi, I know this has been asked a few times before but I want to clarify everything my own head. We've recently relaunched a website for a client that combined three existing sites into one. The new site is http://www.gowerpensions.com/ I've added 301 rewrite rules to the three old domains to to point to the correct page on the new website, i.e the old contact page goes to the new one, the about page to the new about page etc, etc. The old domains are thehorizonplan.com, horizonqrops.com and horizonqnups.com. I've informed Google Webmaster Tools of the change. The client also has several other domains such as horizonpensions.com and qnupscheme.com. Am I correct in thinking I should not park these domains on top of the gowerpensions.com website as this will be seen as duplicate content? I don't think there is anything linking to these domains. They might not even be listed in Google. With the thehorizonplan.com, horizonqrops.com and horizonqnups.com domains there are existing links to them, but will parking these on top of gowerpensions.com cause a problem, or should I keep my 301 redirects forever? Would a better strategy be to make microsites on all of the satellite domains that link to the main one to create more relevant links? If this is the case then I'd need to fix any third party links to the old horizon domains. I hope that makes sense. Thanks Ric
International SEO | | BWIRic0 -
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 -
The best SEO practice for a .hk domain
We are currently working on a project which involves 3 separate .com domains in relation to a UK company selling/renting residential, commercial and investment properties within the UK. We are now working on producing a .hk site for the overseas customers. Can anyone advise what the best practice is for a .hk domain and where best to start? Should the domain be hosted in that geographical location for example? We are relatively new to this so any advise would be greatly appreciated.
International SEO | | SoundinTheory0