Ranking problems with international website
-
Hey there,
we have some ranking issues with our international website. It would be great if any of you could share their thoughts on that. The website uses subfolders for country and language (i.e. .com/uk/en) for the website of the UK branch in English. As the company has branches all over the world and also offers their content in many languages the url structure is quite complex.
A recent problem we have seen is that in certain markets the website is not ranking with the correct country. Especially in the UK and the US, Google prefers the country subfolder for Ghana (.com/gh/en) over the .com/us/en and .com/uk/en versions. We have hreflang setup and should also have some local backlinks pointing to the correct subfolders as we switched from many ccTLDs to one gTLD.
What confuses me is that when I check for incoming links (Links to your site) with GWT, the subfolder (.com/gh/en) is listed quite high in the column (Your most linked content). However the listed linking domains are not linking at all to this folder as far as I am aware. If I check them with a redirect checker they all link to different subfolders. So I have now idea why Google gives such high authority to this subfolder over the specific country subfolders. The content is pretty much identical at this stage.
Has any of you experienced similar behaviour and could point me in a promising direction?
Thanks a lot.
Regards,
Jochen
-
Jochen, I can't say I've seen this particular issue, but you are right that it is odd. It sounds like you have everything set up technically correct, but Google WMT is crossing some wires.
I wish I could provide you with more, but I wouldn't know any potential issues without being able to look at your whole setup in GoogleWMT. I recommend having a consultant take a look. Typically, I hate recommending that (because I'm a consultant and that looks shady), but there really is no other way to know if everything is set up right and Google is just on crack, but I think that's it.
-
Thanks Patrick. I do use geo-targeting follow the best practices to the best of my knowledge. I am just very confused by those backlinks that show up in GWT for the wrong subfolder.
Thanks Patrick. I do use geo-targeting follow the best practices to the best of my knowledge. I am just very confused by those backlinks that show up in GWT for the wrong subfolder.
-
Hi there
Have you looked into setting up Webmaster Tools accounts for these specific directories and country targeting them?
I would ask look into these two resources from Moz:
International SEO
The International SEO ChecklistSeer Interactive always has some great tips here.
Also, Bing follows language meta tags, not hreflang, so you need to consider that as well.
Lastly, I would just make sure that you have country/location specific information on your site:
- Titles / meta descriptions
- Navigational elements (if different services/products for location)
- Headings
- Main body information
- Reviews
- Contact information
Just a few things to consider. Hope this all helps! Good luck!
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
-
Temporarily redirecting a small website to a specific url of another website
Hi, I would like to redirect a small website that contains info about a specific project temporarily to a specific url about this project on my main website. Reason for this is that the small website doesn't contain accurate info anymore. We will adapt the content in the next few weeks and then remove the redirect again. Should I set up a 301 or a 302? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Mat_C1 -
Why my website disappears for the keywords ranked, then reappears and so on?
Hello to everyone. In the last 2 weeks my website emorroidi.imieirimedinaturali.it has a strange behavior in SERP: it disappears for the keywords ranked and then reappears, and so on. Here's the chronicle of the last days: 12/6: message in GWT: Improvement of the visibility of the website in search. 12/6 the website disappears for all the keywords ranked 16/6 the website reappears for all the keywords ranked with some keywords higher in ranking 18/6 the website disappears for all the keywords ranked 22/6 the website reappears for all the keywords ranked 24/6 the website disappears for all the keywords ranked... I can't explain this situation. Could it be a penalty? What Kind? Thank you.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | emarketer0 -
Client rebranded with a new website but can't migrate now defunct franchise website to new website.
Hi everyone, My client is a chain of franchised restaurants with a local domain website named after the franchise. The franchise exited the market while the client stayed and built its own brand with a separate website. The franchise website (which is extremely popular) will be shut down soon but the client will not be able to redirect the franchise website to the new website for legal reasons. What can I do to ensure that we start ranking immediately for the franchise keyphrase as soon as the franchise website is shutdown. We currently have the new website and access to the old website (which we can't redirect) Thanks, T
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Tarek_Lel0 -
Why is my website not ranking? Has A grade on-site from Moz.
I have a website that I am trying to get to up the SERPs. However the site isn't appearing in the search - even when I search for the business name. The site is http://www.jl-engineering.com/ The keyword targeted is DPF Cleaning. Could anyone explain to me why the site isn't showing at all - and how to fix this? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SWD.Advertising0 -
Am I missing an issue on my website?
Are there any glaring issues that I am missing with my site? I am building links, and growing the profile but had seen a drop in rankings a couple of months ago. Is this do to a site issue or am I just missing something? www.wallybuysell.com Any help would be great.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CKerr0 -
Aggressive Loss in Rankings
I recently launched a website and used local directories, web directories and guest blogging as a means of getting links to the site. Within 60 days the site was ranking on the first page for a highly competitive keyword. It was hovering on the first page for about two weeks before it plummeted in ranking to near 200. I am not finding any crawl errors or duplicate content issues on the site. Could my links have caused this massive decrease in rankings?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mj7750 -
Why does Tripadvisor rank higher than my official hotel website?
We have an official hotel website under our brand hawaiihotels.com called www.RoyalLahaina.com. It is a resort in Hawaii. However, Trip Advisor comes before our official website but it doesnt do this for the other websites. Could anyone tell me why this is happening? It is ranking higher for royal lahaina resort
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TSpike10 -
Google Places - How do we rank
So, google places showing up on search results is great feature . . . But how can we get our results to the top? I mean I can see some terrible websites appearing at the top of the google places with their places page having no activity whatsoever. Is there a trick to this at all? What can we do to increase our ranking on Google Places because our old GOOD rankings are now appearing BELOW the map results Cheers
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kayweb0