Interlinking sites in multiple languages
-
I am working on a project where the client has a main .com site and the following additional sites which are all interlinked:
.com site targeting US
.com site targeting China
.HK site targeting Hong KongAll sites contain similar information (although the Chinese site is translated). They are not identical copies but being shopping sites, they contain a lot of similar product information.
Webmeup software (now defunct) showed that the inbound links to the main site, from the additional domains are considered risky. Linkrisk shows them as neutral.
The client wants them to be interlinked and would not want to remove the additional domains as they get a good amount of traffic. In addition, the messages and products for each country domain have been tailored to a degree to suit that audience. We can rewrite the content on the other domains, but obviously this is a big job.
Can anyone advise if this would be causing a problem SEO wise and if so, is the best way to resolve it to rewrite the content on the US and Hong Kong sites?
Alternatively would it be better to integrate the whole lot together (they will soon be rebuilding the main site, so it would be an appropriate time to do this).
-
Many thanks Andy.
-
Hi Rachel,
This is similar to another question asked just yesterday and the same could apply very well to yourself too.
HREFLANG is used in cases like this where a site could encounter duplication issues through this kind of setup. There are two areas to look at and consider here - this answers your question if you decide to keep all TLD's the same.
**Q: <a name="q16"></a>Can I use “rel alternate hreflang” across domains / across TLDs?
A: **Yes! Keep in mind that this markup is on a per-URL basis, so if there are alternate URLs across those domains, you would need to add the markup for each individual URL.You can get many questions answered here: https://sites.google.com/site/webmasterhelpforum/en/faq-internationalisation#q16
If you decided to pull everyting into just one site, then this would fit what you want to do:
- Your site content is fully translated. For example, you have both German and English versions of each page.
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/189077?hl=en
In terms of inter-linking, this seems to be down to the whim of Google, if they wish to see it as problematic or not. If you are concerned about it, leave the links in place and just add the rel=nofollow attribute - this will remove possible issues.
I hope this helps.
-Andy
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
-
301 Redirects for Multiple Language Sites in htaccess File
Hi everyone, I have a site on a subdomain that has multiple languages set up at the domain level: https://mysite.site.com, https://mysite.site.fr , https://mysite.site.es , https://mysite.site.de , etc. We are migrating to a new subdomain and I am trying to create 301 redirects within the htaccess file, but I am a bit lost on how to do this as it seems you have to go from a relative url to an absolute - which would be fine if I was only doing this for the english site, but I'm not. It doesn't seem like I can go from absolute url to an absolute url - but I could be wrong. I am new to editing the htaccess file - so I could definitely use some advice here. Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | amberprata0 -
Rel language
This site ranks well in the States and Austraila. Would rel language tags help with search for both states? https://www.dinkleboo.com/ Separating duplicate content. Or how would you go about increasing ranking? The site ranks higher in the states than Austrailia but they want to increase their presence in AU. US Position 4.9k AU Position 1.3
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AaronRainsSEO0 -
Web Site Ranking
Hi Folks, I made some changes on my website www.gemslearninginstitute.com and published it two days ago. It was ranking on Google first page for a few keywords. I did not touch the pages which were ranking on first page. Since then I am not seeing the website ranking on the Google. Does it take a few days to rank again? How can I ensure that next time if I update the website or publish some blog on my website then it should not effect the ranking. Secondly, if I would like to rank in three different cities then do I need to create separate pages for each city or how should I proceed with this. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | fslpso0 -
Working around Dev Site
I am working around development site. All pages are 'nofollow'. What can I advice on, when it come to SEO and is there any good article or checklist that I can go through. One thing I wanted to know is how can I check for broken links or meta data or any other SEO analytics if the page is 'nofollow' and I cannot crawl it with screaming frog or any other tools.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | atlanticocean0 -
My site is always in the top 4 on google, and sometimes goes to #2\. But the site at #1 is always at #1 .. how can i beat them?
So i'm sure this is a very generic question.. of course everyone wants to be #1. We are an ecommerce web site. We have all sorts of products, user ratings, and are loved by our customers. We sell over 3 million a year. So let me give you some data.. First of all one of the sites that keeps taking the #2 or #3 spot is amazons category for what we sell.. (i'm not sure if I should say who we are here.. as I don't want the #1 spot to realize we are trying to take them over!) Amazon of course has a domain authority of 100. But they never take the #1 spot. The other site that takes the #2 and #3 spot is not even selling anything. Happens to be a technical term's with the same name wikipedia page! (i wish google would figure out people aren't looking for that!) Anyways.. every day we bouce back and forth between #4 and #2.. but #1 never changes.. Here are the stats of us verse #1 from moz: #1: Page Authority: 56.8, Root Domains Linking to page: 158, Domain Authority: 54.6: root domains linking to the root domain 1.42k my site: Page Authority: 60.6, Root domains linking to the page: 562, Domain Authority: 52.8: root domains linking to the root domain: 1.03k So they beat us in domain authority SLIGHTLY and in root domains linking to the root domain. So SEO masters.. what do I do to fix this? Get better backlinks? But how.... I can't just email GQ and ask them to write about us can I? I'm open to all things.. Maybe i'm not using moz data correctly.. We should at least be #2. We get #2 every other day.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 88mph0 -
Will an inbound follow link on a site be devalued by an inbound affiliate link on the same site?
Hey guys, quick question I didn't find an answer to online. Scenario: 1. Site A links to Site B. It's a natural, regular, follow-link 2. Site A joins Site B's affiliate program, and adds an affiliate link Question: Does the first, regular follow link get devalued by the second affiliate link? Cheers!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ipancake0 -
Multiple retail sites redirected to one
Recently our company has acquired several high ranking retail websites which sell only our brand of products. We are now considering consolidating all our online sales from these different retail sites to be direct to our main website. The question we have is how do we do this without negatively affecting SEO for these high ranking retail sites?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DennyGan0 -
Migrating multiple sites and trying to save link juice
I have an interesting problem SEOmozers and wanted to see if I could get some good ideas as to what I should to for the greatest benefit. I have an ecommerce website that sells tire sensors. We just converted the old site to a new platform and payment processor, so the site has changed completely from the original, just offering virtually the same products as before. You can find it at www.tire-sensors.com We're ranked #1 for the keyword "tire sensors" in Google. We sell sensors for ford, honda, toyota, etc -- and tire-sensors.com has all of those listed. Before I came along, the company I'm working for also had individual "mini ecommerce" sites created with only 1 brand of sensors and the URL to match that maker. Example : www.fordtiresensors.com is our site, only sells the Ford parts from our main site, and ranks #1 in Google for "ford tire sensors" I don't have analytics on these old sites but Google Keyword Tool is saying "ford tire sensors" gets 880 local searches a month, and other brand-specific tire sensors are receiving traffic as well. We have many other sites that are doing the same thing. www.suzukitiresensors.com (ranked #2 for "suzuki tire sensors") Only sells our Suzuki collection from the main site's inventory etc We need to get rid of the old sites because we want to shut down the payment gateway and various other things those sites are using, and move to one consolidated system (aka www.tire-sensors.com) Would simply making each maker-specific URL (ie. fordtiresensors.com) 301 redirect to our main site (www.tire-sensors.com) give us to most benefit, rankings, traffic etc? Or would that be detrimental to what we're trying to do -- capturing the tire sensors market for all car manufacturers? Suggestions? Thanks a lot in advance! Jordan
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JordanGodbey0