Wrong country sites being shown in google
-
Hi,
I am having some issues with country targeting of our sites.
Just to give a brief background of our setup and web domains
We use magento and have 7 connected ecommerce sites on that magento installation
1.www.tidy-books.co.uk (UK) - main site
2. www.tidy-books.com (US) - variations in copy but basically a duplicate of UK
3.www.tidy-books.it (Italy) - fully translated by a native speaker - its' own country based social medias and content regularly updated/created
4.www.tidy-books.fr (France) - fully translated by a native speaker - its' own country based social medias and content regularly updated/created
5.www.tidy-books.de (Germany) - fully translated by a native speaker - uits' own country based social medias and content regularly updated/created
6.www.tidy-books.com.au (Australia) - duplicate of UK
7.www.tidy-books.eu (rest of Europe) - duplicate of UK
I’ve added the country and language href tags to all sites.
We use cross domain canonical URLS
I’ve targeted in the international targeting in Google webmaster the correct country where appropriate
So we are getting number issues which are driving me crazy trying to work out why
The major one is for example
If you search with an Italian IP in google.it for our brand name Tidy Books the .com site is shown first then .co.uk and then all other sites followed on page 3 the correct site www.tidy-books.it
The Italian site is most extreme example but the French and German site still appear below the .com site.
This surely shouldn’t be the case?
Again this problem happens with the co.uk and .com sites with when searching google.co.uk for our keywords the .com often comes up before the .co.uk so it seems we have are sites competing against each other which again can’t be right or good.
The next problem lies in the errors we are getting on google webmaster on all sites is having no return tags in the international targeting section.
Any advice or help would be very much appreciated. I’ve added some screen shots to help illustrate and happy to provide extra details.
Thanks
UK%20hreflang%20errors.png de%20search.png fr%20search.png it%20search.png
-
We are having the same issues. We have already implemented hreflang. Is there anything else that might help solve this problem?
-
Hi Geraldine,
So, meanwhile just jumped in what would be most cost efficient implementation for the HREFLANG on your website.
Give the following article to your developer: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2620865?hl=en
Basically he will create a sitemap for each of the websites, which will indicate what is the alternate version of every single page in other languages.
You will then submit this sitemap to EACH of the Google Webmaster Tools accounts for the websites (.fr, .de, .com, etc.)
This should be the fastest and most cost efficient in your case.
Reminder: Remove the Hreflang link from current versions. It is the best to indicate alternate via only once channel.
Gr., Keszi
-
Could you write me Private Message with your email address? I need to ask a few questions to your developer in order to search for a good implementation.
-
Hi Keszi,
Thank you for the response. I've added the general Hreflang tags So just the top level part of the domain. ie
and so forth
We use Magento, it's likely I will have to get our developers to do it so I'm seeking some advice to hopefully minimise cost or do it ourselves.
Thanks again
-
Hi Geraldine,
I checked it quickly but I do not see the implementation done.
Regarding of how you could do it fast, what Content Management System are you using?
Gr., Keszi
-
Hi so we need to have the hreflang tags setup so they show the url of that page?
like this?
http://www.tidy-books.eu**/bookcases-storage**" />http://www.tidy-books.co.uk//bookcases-storage" />
http://www.tidy-books.com/bookcases-storage" />
http://www.tidy-books.com.au**/bookcases-storage**" />
http://www.tidy-books.it//mobili-librerie-contenitori-libri" />http://www.tidy-books.fr/bibliotheques" />
http://www.tidy-books.de/http://www.tidy-books.de/kinderbuecher-regal-buecheraufbewahrung-33" />Any ideas of how to do this with oout spending hours manually adding the different urls etc?Cheers -
Thanks for the answers I'm going to look into this further with you suggestions
-
Hi!
Like Jamie has mentioned it, you have a HREFLANG issue on the site.
Try implementing for each of the domains the following code:
<- default for international
<- default for US
<- default for Aus
<- default for italian language!
<- default for french language
<- default for german language!I would implement it like this.
The difference is compared to Jamie's implementation idea, is that I wouldn't put the .com version as the x-default.
All of the hreflang markups have to appear on each of the pages! For example:
Read through the articles Jamie provided, they will be a huge help to kick-start the implementation.
Gr., Keszi
-
It appears that you do not have “link rel="alternate” for all locations, I'm not sure if that’s going to fix it completely but Google will not understand if you do not associate each alternate version.
It's a good idea to provide a generic URL for geographically unspecified users if you have several alternate URLs targeted at users with the different languages, but in different locales.
E.G each separate domain with a different language should be mentioned.
Also double check language code as incorrect language codes can cause issues. Also make sure you canonical them and add a language specific sitemap. You also want to add a default for example.com is default add the following.
So in the code it would look like this
http://www.internationalseomap.com/hreflang-tags-generator/
http://moz.com/blog/using-the-correct-hreflang-tag-a-new-generator-tool
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/189077?hl=en
Hope that makes sense.
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
-
Fetch as Google
I have odd scenario I don't know if anyone can help? I've done some serious speed optimisation on a website, amongst other things CDN and caching. However when I do a Search Console Fetch As Google It is still showing 1.7 seconds download time even though the cached content seems to be delivered in less than 200 ms. The site is using SSL which obviously creams off a bit of speed, but I still don't understand the huge discrepancy. Could it be that Google somehow is forcing the server to deliver fresh content despite settings to deliver cache? Thanks in advance
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoman100 -
Google serving wrong page...
Hi, When you Google: "Los Angeles divorce attorney", you will see this site on the 5th page of the SERPS: www.berenjifamilylaw.com/blog/. For some reason, Google is serving the BLOG page as opposed to the homepage. This has been going on now for several weeks. Any tips on how to fix this? Obviously, the Homepage is more relevant and has more links going to it, so not sure why it's happening. Would you just leave it alone? Would you use robots.txt to block Google from crawling the BLOG post page? Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mrodriguez14400 -
Regional and Global Site
We have numerous versions of what is basically the same site, that targets different countries, such as United States, United Kingdom, South Africa. These websites use Tlds to designate the region, for example, co.uk, co.za I believe this is sufficient (with a little help from Google Webmastertools) to convince the search engines what site is for what region. My question is how do we tell the search engines to send traffic from other regions besides the above to our global site, which would have a .com TLD. For example, we don't have a Brazilian site, how do we drive traffic from Brazil to our global .com site? Many thanks, Jason
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Clickmetrics0 -
Is it Wortwhile to have a HTML site map for a Large Site
We are a large, enterprise site with many pages (some on our CMS and some old pages that exist outside our CMS). Every month we submit various an XML site map. Some pages on our site can no longer be found via following links from one page to another (orphan pages). Some of those pages are important and some not. Is it worth our while to create a HTML site map? Does any one have any recent stats or blog posts to share, showing how a HTML site map may have benefited a large site. Many thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CeeC-Blogger0 -
Site duplication issue....
Hi All, I have a client who has duplicated an entire section of their site onto another domain about 1 year ago. The new domain was ranking well but was hit heavily back in March by Panda. I have to say the set up isn't great and the solution I'm proposing isn't ideal, however, as an agency we have only been tasked with "performing SEO" on the new domain. Here is an illustration of the problem: http://i.imgur.com/Mfh8SLN.jpg My solution to the issue is to 301 redirect the duplicated area of the original site out (around 150 pages) to the new domain name, but I'm worried that this could be could cause a problem as I know you have to be careful with redirecting internal pages to external when it comes to SEO. The other issue I have is that the client would like to retain the menu structure on the main site, but I do not want to be putting an external link in the main navigation so my proposed solution is as follows: Implement 301 redirects for URLs from original domain to new domain Remove link out to this section from the main navigation of original site and add a boiler plate link in another area of the template for "Visit xxx for our xxx products" kind of link to the other site. Illustration of this can be found here: http://i.imgur.com/CY0ZfHS.jpg I'm sure the best solution would be to redirect in URLs from the new domain into the original site and keep all sections within the one domain and optimise the one site. My hands are somewhat tied on this one but I just wanted clarification or advice on the solution I've proposed, and that it wont dramatically affect the standing of the current sites.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MiroAsh0 -
What is wrong with my site?
I could use suggestions/input. My site is consistently being beaten by doorway pages with zero to no content. In fact, on the keyword "lawrenceville plumber" I am being beaten by a KID with a blank wordpress installation. I really need help determining what my issues are and what I can do to help. According to all of the graders, ranks, etc my site is great. I have written tons of unique content, have added a blog unique articles and self-helps. Please help! My site is www.akinsplumbing.net. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | chuckakins0 -
How to see which site Google views as a scraper site?
If we have content on our site that is found on another site, what is the best way to know which site Google views as the original source? If you search for a line of the content such as "xyz abc etc" and the other site shows before yours in search results, does that mean that Google views that site as the original source?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nicole.healthline0 -
Local hosts for sites in foreign countries?
Hi everyone. I'm going to be launching localized websites in 5 different european countries (.de, .it. etc). Must I have a local host with servers in those countries or can I use a U.S. based host? WOuld having a U.S. based host hurt SEO?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TexaSEO0