Which automatic redirects to use in International SEO
-
Hi,
I need help with international SEO redirects. I'm going to have intelligencebank.com/au for Australian visitors and intelligencebank.com for the rest of the world. I would like to automatically redirect aus users that land on .com to .com/au and vice versa for non-australian users.
1. Which automatic redirects should I use:
a) java script because it will allow US based google bots to crawl my /au website (bots won't read javascript so they won't be redirected)
b) http redirects
c) 301 redirects
d) 302 redirects
e) anything else?
a) Should I still use rel alternate even though I only use english?
b) if I should add rel alternate, can I still keep my existing rel canonical tags that are use to avoid duplicate content (I use a lot of utm codes when advertising)
-
Thanks Rick. I guess I was trying to avoid popups as most people find them annoying.
I ended up coming up with a solution:
- added javascript to redirect for aussie and NZ visitors from .com to .com/au
the reason for js is that most google bots are from usa, So if I was to 301 redirect they would never been able to crawl my /au sub directory. since google bots don't read js then they will ignore these redirects and instead crawl my au directory even though they are from US.I didn't end up using rel alternate because my research showed that they are meant to be used when your language changes. In my case the language is the same.
-
Sorry my mistake.
First i would include: <rel="alternate" hreflang="en-AU" href="http://www.somedomain.com/au"></rel="alternate">
This is a great solution in sending them to the right page: www.benchmarkcorporate.co.uk - You get a popup saying "We see your from the US, would you like to go to the US website?" Whilst also having the option in the header to jump between the sites.
Thanks
Rick -
Hi,
I have specifically stated that I only use English and I don't understand how your answer relates to my question.
Answer to question 1 and 2 will be much appreciated.
-
Google recommend that you "Avoid automatic redirection based on the user’s perceived language.
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/182192?hl=en
You should have links in your HTML to tell robots which versions to go to:
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
-
Archive pages structure using a unique hierarchical taxonomy, could be good for SEO?
Hi, Preamble:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | danielecelsa
We are creating a website where people look for professionals for some home working. We want to create a homepage with a search bar where people write the profession/category (actually it is a custom taxonomy) that they need, like ‘plumbers’, and a dropdown/checkbox filter where they can choose the city where they need the plumber.
The result page is a list of plumber agencies in the city chosen. Each agency is a Custom Post Type for us. Furthermore, we are hardly working to make our SEO ranking as high as possible.
So, for example, we know that it is important to have a well-done Archive Page for each Taxonomy term, besides a well-done Results Page.
Also, we know it is bad for SEO to have duplicated pages or (maybe) similar pages, ranking for the same (or maybe also similar) keywords. Proposed Structure:
So, what we are thinking is to have this structure:
A unique hierarchical taxonomy that INCLUDES the City AND the profession! That means that our taxonomy ‘taxonomy_unique’ has terms like: ‘Rome’, ‘Paris’, ‘Dublin’ as father and also terms like ‘Plumbers’, ‘Gardeners’, ‘Electricians’ which are sons of some City father! So we will have the term 'Plumbers' son of 'Rome' and we will have also the term 'Plumbers' son of 'Paris'. Each of these two taxonomy terms (Rome/Plumbers and Paris/Plumbers) will have an archive page that we want to make ranking for the keywords ‘Plumbers in Rome’ and ‘Plumbers in Paris’ respectively. It is easier to think of it imagining the breadcrumbs. They will be:
Home > Rome > Plumbers
and
Home > Paris > Plumbers Both will have: a static content (important for SEO), where we describe the plumber profession with a focus on the city, like ‘Find the best Plumbers in Rome’ vs ‘Find the best Plumbers in Paris' a 'dynamic' content - below - that is a list of Custom Post Types which have that taxonomy term associated. Furthermore, also 'Rome' and 'Paris' are taxonomy terms that have their own archive page. In those pages, we are thinking to show the Custom Post Types (agencies) associated with that taxonomy term as a father OR maybe just a list of the 'sons' of that father, so links to those archive pages 'sons').
In both cases, there should be also a static content talking maybe about the city and the professionals it offers in general. Questions:
So what we would like to understand is: Is it bad from an SEO perspective to have 2 URLs that look like this:
www.mysite.com/Rome/Plumbers
and
www.mysite.com/Naples/Plumbers
where the static content is really similar and it is something like that:
“Are you looking for the best plumbers in the city of Rome”
and
“Are you looking for the best plumbers in the city of Naples”? Also, these kinds of pages will be much more than 2, one for each City.
We are doing that because we want the two different pages to rank high in two different cities, but we are not sure if Google likes that. On the other hand, each City will have one page for each kind of job, so:
www.mysite.com/Rome/Plumbers
www.mysite.com/Rome/Gardeners
www.mysite.com/Rome/Electricians
So the same question, does Google like this or not? About 'Rome' and 'Paris' archive pages, does Google prefer a list of Custom Post Types that have that father term associated as taxonomy, or a list of the archive pages 'sons', with links to those pages? What do you think about this approach? Do you think this structure could be good from an SEO perspective, or maybe there could be something better alternatively? Hoping everything is clear, we really appreciate anyone dedicating its time and leaving feedback.
Daniele0 -
Redirecting traffic to https
Hey! i was wondering, should i force all traffic to https address? i know that overall a better secured website will rank better since it earns more trust from users which means less bounce rate and the list of benefits is endless..
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SharonEKG
but should i FORCE ALL traffic to a https? or maybe only force a http to https? or not at all?2 -
Redirect closed shop to main shop, or keep the domain and content alive and use it for link building?
Hello, We used to have two shops selling our products, a small shop with a small selection of only our best quality products (domain smallshop.com), and a big shop with everything (bigshop.com). It used to make sense (without going into full detail), but it's not relevant anymore, and so we decided to stop maintaining the small shop, because it was time consuming and not worth it. There is some really good links pointing to smallshop.com, and the content is original (the product descriptions are different between both shops). So far, we just switch the "add to cart" button on the small shop into a link to the same product on the big shop, and did links from the small shop to the big shop also on categories pages. So the question is: in your opinion, is it better to do that, keep the small shop and content alive and build links to our big shop, or do 301 redirections and shut down completely the small shop ? Thanks for your opinion!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Colage0 -
Multilingual Redirection
Hey there awesome Mozzers, I have a site that it automatically redirects people by using geolocation ( i know that probably is not good ) to the various languages of the site. I just wanted to know Is 301 or 302 the best option? ( I've heard that for language re-directions 302 is the best case scenario ) My main page for example is www.example.com and it automatically redirects with a 301 to www.example.com/en for any language that is not there. What is the best case scenario? Leave it to redirect to /en or just leave it go to the root page www.example.com.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Angelos_Savvaidis0 -
Microsite Subfolder URL vs Redirected TLD for best SEO
We have a healthcare microsite that is in a subfolder off a hospital site.They wanted to keep their TLD and redirect from the subfolder URL. Even with good on-page SEO, link building, etc., they're not organically ranking as well as we think they should be. ie. They have http://our-business-name.com vs. http://hospital.org/our-business-name/ For best SEO value, are they better off having only their homepage as TLD and not redirect any interior pages but display as subfolder URL? ie. Keep homepage as http://our-business-name.com but use hospital urls for interior pages http://hospital.org/our-business-name/about/ Or is there some better way to handle this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | IT-dmd0 -
301 redirects for a redesign.
About to completely redo a client's site and I want to make sure I don't loose our link juice. The current site is a old template site from another provider. They host it and we do not have access at all to the site itself, so there will be no transferring of the site from server to server because they feel the site is their property. Basically the site is a monthly service not a product. So this will be a completely new website, including new URL structure. So my question is how do keep the link juice flowing to the new site? I know I need to use 301 redirects, but do I rebuild those old URLs on my site and redirect them to their new counterpart or what? The link profile is not that impressive, maybe 15 back links (all mainly going to the homepage). But they all are local and coming from pretty good domain authority. But its keeping us ahead of our competition. Back story: This is one of my local search clients, we now have them ranking #1 across the board in the local packs. After analyzing the traffic, they are losing 75% of all traffic because of the sites design. So a new site is a must. I build a lot of websites, but have never worried about the back link profile before now. Thanks for all your help!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | masonrj0 -
SEO for interior page
Is it possible to be penalized on an interior page but not the whole website? Here's why I ask, I have a page: www.thesandiegocriminallawyer.com/domestic-violence.html that is not ranking well (p. 21 of Google) while the rest of the site ranks well (b/w p.1 to p.3). I checked the link profile in opensiteexplorer, ahrefs, and majesticseo but can't find any problems. I have also checked the HTML code, CSS, keyword optimization, but can't find any problems there either. Can anyone give me insight into why this might be happening? Of course, I'm working under the assumption that this page SHOULD be ranked higher for "San Diego Domestic Violence Attorney" - at least higher than page 21.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mrodriguez14400 -
Is there any SEO advantage to sharing links on twitter using google's url shortener goo.gl/
Hi is there any advantage to using <cite class="vurls">goo.gl/</cite> to shorten a URL for Twitter instead of other ones? I had a thought that <cite class="vurls">goo.gl/</cite> might allow google to track click throughs and hence judge popularity.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | S_Curtis0