Language Attribute - does changing it make a difference to SEO and Search?
-
I am an SEO newbie, but learning fast.
I am based in London, UK and have a website: www.twofourseven.co.uk. I noticed that the language attribute was set to 'en-US'. I work in London as well in international locations in the Middle East and Asia.
Thinking of this I wanted to ask the experts if given that I am based in the UK, would changing the language attribute make a difference to search results? If so, would 'en' be better than 'en-GB', which might be too specific?
Thanks in advance!
-
Thanks so much for the feedback. I have the set language attribute to 'en' rather that 'en-GB'. In fact this made me check 'competitors' and saw that they mostly have theirs set to 'en'.
I know that my TLD is a co.uk, but that is something that in the short term I cannot change. The .com and .net domains are bought. I should have purchased them way back when. And there is the offline issue of printing on business cards, etc. Kind of a minor rebrand.
So I am a bit stuck with making the most of a TLD at the moment. Still I am going to have to think of other ways of making my .co.uk domain further reach into international search - further reach out into local overseas forums and influencers.
My Analytics is showing vistors from my target markets, albeit small numbers to what I would like. So further work needed.
Thanks anyway!!
-
It depends how you get your business from the Middle East and Asia.
If it's not from search, change it to 'en-GB' to increase your chances in the UK region.
At any rate, you might want to consider a generic TDL like .com .net or .org if you're going to be focusing on international marketing.
As .co.uk is a country specific TDL and therefor more difficult to rank internationally.
A great example of this is the International SEO consulting firm Distilled. They are UK based but when they went international they switched from distilled.co.uk to distilled.net
Type in the .co.uk you'll see it 301s to the .net
-
The other option is to create pages for individual markets and use the hreflang markup to differentiate for the spiders.
-
It does make a difference. I agree with your preference to set it to generic "en":
http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=189077
"If you have several alternate URLs targeted at users with the same language but in different locales, it's a good idea to provide a generic URL for geographically unspecified users. For example, you may have specific URLs for English speakers in Ireland (
en-ie
), Canada (en-ca
), and Australia (en-au
), but want all other English speakers to see your generic English (en
) page. In this case you should specify the generic English-language (en
) page for searchers in, say, the UK."
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
-
Wrong Search words coming in search console
Hey there, My website All good but, in webmaster Search console some bad Queries(search terms) coming which is totally different from website. I want to make sure, is that harmful for my website traffic, as well as keywords Ranking?? How should i stop them to be crawl, ?? can any help for this query.?? i have attached screenshot of that, please check & help out, http://prntscr.com/cmusoq Thnx in advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | poojaverify060 -
Where Does Blogging Fit Into SEO
I read an article yesterday that said blogging comes under the heading of social media, which is at the top of the so called SEO pyramid. I have taken this to mean less time should be spent in social media compared to other areas of SEO. Yet content creation was at the bottom of the pyramid (more time allocation here). Isn't blogging part of content creation? I would have thought there is a limit to what can be done for service/product & landing pages. Whereas blogs are a great way to produce more unique content for a website. Any clarification would be appreciated. Thanks - Christina
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ChristinaRadisic0 -
Followup question to rand(om) question: Would two different versions (mobile/desktop) on the same URL work well from an SEO perspective and provide a better overall end-user experience?
We read today's rand(om) question on responsive design. This is a topic we have been thinking about and ultimately landing on a different solution. Our opinion is the best user experience is two version (desktop and mobile) that live on one URL. For example, a non-mobile visitor that visits http://www.tripadvisor.com/ will see the desktop (non-responsive) version. However, if a mobile visitor (i.e. iOS) visits the same URL they will see a mobile version of the site, but it is still on the same URL There is not a separate subdomain or URL - instead the page dynamically changes based on the end user's user agent. It looks like they are accomplishing this by using javascript to change the physical layout of the page to match the user's device. This is what we are considering doing for our site. It seems this would simultaneously solve the problems mentioned in the rand(om) question and provide an even better user experience. By using this method, we can create a truly mobile version of the website that is similar to an app. Unfortunately, mobile versions and desktop users have very different expectations and behaviors while interacting with a webpage. I'm interested to hear the negative side of developing two versions of the site and using javascript to serve the "right" version on the same URL. Thanks for your time!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | davidangotti0 -
Change to SiteLinks?
Hi All, Perhaps it's been like this all along (I don't think so) but can someone tell me why some pages with Google sitelinks now look like this (see the "Coke" search) while others look like this (see the "Amazon" search image). Is this because of Rich Snippet use? One of my client's SiteLinks used to resemble the Amazon one, but now resembles the Coke one (not preferred). Any input? Thanks, Chris Elevated Synergy Group - SEO coke.png amazon.png
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Chris.Bleill0 -
Joomla Plugins for SEO
Any input on which Joomla plugins could help us to facilitate the SEO on a client's site? Wordpress has some simple all-in-ones but we're not as familiar with Joomla and it doesn't look like that's the case. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MackenzieFogelson0 -
Large Site SEO - Dev Issue Forcing URL Change - 301, 302, Block, What To Do?
Hola, Thanks in advance for reading and trying to help me out. A client of mine recently created a large scale company directory (500k+ pages) in Drupal v6 while the "marketing" type pages of their site was still in manual hard-coded HTML. They redesigned their "marketing" pages, but used Drual v7. They're now experiencing server conflicts with both instances of Drupal not allowing them to communicate/be on the same server. Eventually the directory will be upgraded to Drupal v7, but could take weeks to months the client does not want to wait for the re-launch. The client wants to push the new marketing site live, but also does not want to ruin the overall SEO value of the directory and have a few options, but I'm looking to help guide them down the path of least resistance: Option 1: Move the company directory onto a subdomain and the "marketing site" on the www. subdomain. Client gets to push their redesign live, but large scale 301s to the directory cause major issues in terms of shaking up the structure of the site causing ripple effects into getting pulled out of the index for days to weeks. Rankings and traffic drop, subdomain authority gets lost and the company directory health looks bad for weeks to months. However, 301 maintains partial SEO value and some long tail traffic still exists. Once the directory gets moved to Drupal v7, the directory will then cancel the 301 to the subdomain and revert back to original www. subdomain URLs Option 2: Block the company directory from search engines with robots.txt and meta instructions, essentially cutting off the floodgates from the established marketing pages. No major scaling 301 ripple effect, directory takes a few weeks to filter out of the index, traffic is completely lost, however once drupal v7 gets upgraded and the directory is then re-opened, directory will then slowly gain back SEO value to get close to old rankings, traffic, etc. Option 3: 302 redirect? Lose all accumulate SEO value temporarily... hmm Option 4: Something else? As you can see, this is not an ideal situation. However, a decision has to be made and I'm looking to chose the lesser of evils. Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks again -Chris
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Bacon0 -
In-House SEO - Doubt about one SEO issue - Plz guys help over here =)
Hello, We wanna promote some of our software's. I will give u guys one example bellow: http://www.mediavideoconverter.de/pdf-to-epub-converter.html We also have this domain: http://pdftoepub.de/ How can we deal about the duplicate content, and also how can we improve the first domain product page. If I use the canonical and don't index the second domain and make a link to the first domain it will help anyway? or don't make any difference? keyword: pdf to epub , pdf to epub converter What u guys think about this technique ? Good / Bad ? Is there the second domain giving any value to the first domain page? Thanks in advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | augustos0 -
SEO question
Hi i changed my page titles for a competitive keyword last week and noticed it has dropped 9 search engine ranking positions. Was ranking 37 and now it 46. Would you guys leave it and see if it starts creeping back up or change again? the page title i used was across my pages for example was Primary keyword | secondary keyword | Heading on page thanks for you help
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | wazza19850