Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
How to interlink 16 different language versions of site?
-
I remember that Matt Cutts recommended against interlinking many language versions of a site.
Considering that google now also crawls javascript links, what is best way to implement interlinking?I still see otherwhise extremely well optimized large sites interlinking to more than 10 different language versions e.g. zalando.de, but also booking.com (even though here on same domain).
Currently we have an expandable css dropdown in the footer interlinking 16 different language versions with different TLD. Would you be concerned?
What would you suggest how to interlink domains (for user link would be useful)?
-
Gianluca. that is excellent news. Just curious since this is quite an important issue for us.
Do you speak from own experience with a similar case?
I did not find anywhere other references that contextual links should be fine. Do you remember anybody who wrote about it in the past?Just noticed that tripadvisor actually removed now all their contextual links to alternative language versions that they used to have in their footer. Instead they now implemented a flag drodpown where contextual links are not showing up anymore in the sourcecode.
-
If they are contextual links, then you should not have any problem and can maintain them as they are.
No need "to hide" them to Google.
-
Gianluca, thanks.
The footer links are currently contextual deep links.
Since I am interlinking here 16 TLD, I was just concerned that google may penalize this and that I better hide the links from google. -
There are two good ways to do interlinking between different country sites:
-
The first one is offering somehow similar to the one you described, but not making it sitewide (as saying, not having the footer links always linking to the home pages), but contextual linking, which means that domain.com/page-a will link in the footer to domain.co.uk/page-a, domain.it/pagina-a, domain.es/pagina-a et al.
-
Doing like Apple does. Having in the footer a link to a country selector page, where you can find all the link to all the different websites. This option is conservative, in the sense that you have just one page linking to all the international sites, hence you don't have to fear Google deciding to penalize sitewide interlinking.
-
-
Hi there
The most natural way I can think to do this from a linking perspective - I would have a URL that is the "main" URL of the website. I would have on this page a way for users to select their country or language for the most optimal experience.
Otherwise, I would read the following:
International SEO (Moz)
The International SEO Checklist (Moz)You should read these anyway. The resources above will tell you how to properly tag your websites for regional targeting, and also how to let Google know in WMT which regions should see what version of your site.
Hope this 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
-
Changing the language of the website meta title and description?
Hello, Moz community! I'm planning to change the language of my website title and description from English to rank better for queries on the local language. Do you think this would increase the local language ranking? And in case I need to switch back to English, let's say in 2021, would it be difficult to regain the current rankings? Please let me know if you have any thoughts on this. Thank you!
International SEO | | vhubert2 -
Best practice for Spanish version of English website?
I'm doing an audit for a site that has all of its English pages under the same roof with Spanish pages in Wordpress. It is intended for Chicago, not Mexico. I suspect this is not a good thing, but I only have instinct to rely on here. What is the best practice for having the same website in two languages? http://www.enhancedform.com/ and http://www.enhancedform.com/spanish/
International SEO | | realpatients0 -
Language Usage for SEO in Hong Kong
Hi guys, I was wondering if you could help me with an SEO query for language usage in Hong Kong? Specifically, I'm aware that in mainland China it's preferred to use simplified Chinese. However, in Hong Kong, if you want to rank well in Google and Yahoo! HK, should you be use traditional or simplified Chinese in your web content? Any guidance would be much appreciated.
International SEO | | ecommercebc0 -
What is the proper way to setup hreflang tags on my English and Spanish site?
I have a full English website at http://www.example.com and I have a Spanish version of the website at http://spanish.example.com but only about half of the English pages were translated and exist on the Spanish site. Should I just add a sitemap to both sites with hreflang tags that point to the correct version of the page? Is this a proper way to set this up? I was going to repeat this same process for all of the applicable URLs that exist on both versions of the website (English and Spanish). Is it okay to have hreflang="es" or do I need to have a country code attached as well? There are many Spanish speaking countries and I don't know if I need to list them all out. For example hreflang="es-bo" (Bolivia), hreflang="es-cl" (Chile), hreflang="es-co" (Columbia), etc... Sitemap example for English website URL:
International SEO | | peteboyd
<url><loc>http://www.example.com/</loc></url> Sitemap example for Spanish website URL:
<url><loc>http://spanish.example.com/</loc></url> Thanks in advance for your feedback and help!0 -
Two versions of a website with different languages - Best way to do it?
I'm working on a website for a Swedish artist and her page is in Swedish, everything is in Swedish on the site, even though it's not a lot of text on the site. We would like to have the site in English too, or another version of the site in English on a separate domain, what's the best way to proceed from here? The domain name is a .se (swedish domain), would it be better to create a another domain and host the english version of the site on a .com domain? Or will we bump into problems with duplicate content if we create a replica of the swedish site in english. We're using wordpress and I know that there's translation plugins out there, is that a good option? I'm a bit clueless on how to proceed and would love some help or guidance here.
International SEO | | Fisken0 -
SEO for Subdomains for different languages .com/fr, .com/es
Hi All, I was wondering how best to to approach optimisation of a site that exists on a single .com domain, but has different subfolders for different languages. The site is a .com and it has subfolders for French, Spanish, Russian and English. The business is situated in France and the vast majority of clients are French and English speakers. I've read that it's possible to geo target these subfolders using webmaster tools however I believe this is an inferior method of optimisation than having tld's. Just wondered if anyone had experience of htis and could provide any advice ? As they won't be rebuilding the site for another year or so I wondered if there were any quick wins? My second question is to do with how best to set these campaigns up within SEO Moz. would it be better to track at a subdomain or subfolder leverl (for different languages)? If someone could advise I would greatly appreciate it! Thanks, vantresca
International SEO | | vanvallejo0 -
Targeting Different Countries... One Site or Separate?
I have a client who has 3 ecommerce sites. They are somewhat differentiated but for the most part sell the same stuff. Luckily 2 of them are quite authoritative, old and rank reasonably well. Most of the visitors and sales come from the US. He wants to start targeting Europe, Mexico and Canada. What are your suggestions for doing this? Are we better targeting on the main domains? Not really sure how to do that? Should we use a subdomain and a new store front for each geo? Should we use a .co.uk .co.mx and .co.ca each with a unique storefront? It looks like we are moving to a Magento platform so setting up multiple storefronts on a single database is not a big issue. Anyone have any experience with this?
International SEO | | BlinkWeb0 -
Google Webmaster Tools - International SEO Geo-Targeting site with Worldwide rankings
I have a client who already has rankings in the US & internationally. The site is broken down like this: url.com (main site with USA & International Rankings) url.com/de url.com/de-english url.com/ng url.com/au url.com/ch url.com/ch-french url.com/etc Each folder has it's own sitmap & relative content for it's respective country. I am reading in google webmaster tools > site config > settings, the option under 'Learn More': "If you don't want your site associated with any location, select Unlisted." If I want to keep my client's international rankings the way it currently is on url.com, do NOT geo target to United States? So I select unlisted, right? Would I use geo targeting on the url.com/de, url.com/de-english, url.com/ng, url.com/au and so on?
International SEO | | Francisco_Meza0