Which will rank higher: Non-mobile friendly site in native language vs. mobile friendly global site in English?
-
Hi, we are currently implementing a mobile site, e.g. m.company.com. The global mobile site will only be available in English.
We have local subsites of the desktop site, e.g. company.com/fr. The local subsites are not mobile friendly.
If a user does a search for a brand term in France, **which site will rank higher in SERPs? **If it will be the global site, is there anything we can do (other than making them mobile friendly) to make the local sites rank higher?
Would it be the mobile-friendly site, even though it is only in English, because the local site would be penalized for not being mobile friendly? Or would it be the local site, because Google will give priority to the fact that it's in French, which matches the language of the person searching?
-
No, it doesn't change my answer, but it's a good distinction to make. It sounds like the international expansion is in process. If the client needs geo-targeted content (sounds like they might), the countries need to be treated differently. Each subfolder as it's own site really. But it sounds like the translation is a good place to start for the time being.
For the mobile, my answer remains the same. There isn't anything other than making the translated content mobile or responsive that will help the traffic.
-
Thanks Kate. The content is very similar between countries, to the degree where I thought it was translated verbatim at first. Looking deeper, I see that there is some slight variation between offerings.
The client is only using language codes: en, it, fr - except in China, where they have two versions of the site (zh-hans and zh-en. The second code, zh-en, is incorrect).
All the content is set up under subdirectories, e.g. site.com/en rather than microsites en.site.com.
Does this change your judgment?
-
Lots going on here. First, let me clarify, your client's desktop content is only translated? They don't change the content and the offerings don't change by country? There is a very important distinction here. Language and country are two different things.
Regardless, if the mobile site is only in English, because of mobilegeddon, if they think they are penalized, it's because they lost mobile traffic or are seeing declines. This is only because there is not good mobile content in the users language. Once that is available, I expect the traffic will rise. It's not a penalty like duplicate content isn't a penalty, it is just not optimal.
For anyone doing brand searches, I think the answer is it depends. If Google thinks the user is okay with the English mobile site, they will show that. If the user has only ever searched in their particular language, and that's not available on mobile, they might show the desktop local site (better but not perfect) or they might test showing the English mobile site. I think you'll see both over time until the mobile issue is fixed.
-
In the Abercrombie case, the site that comes up in the search results is the EU mobile site, with German language. When I click on it, it seems that they are automatically redirecting me to abercrombie.com; not the English version of m.eu.abercrombie.com. I find automatic redirects annoying - in this case, I'm intentionally trying to hit the German site and I can't.
We are in development of the new global mobile site. The existing desktop site is being "punished" for not being mobile-friendly. Hence why we are creating a mobile site in the age of responsive design
-
Hi Jennifer,
How can you still be in development and in the same time be "punished" for not having a mobile version?
To answer your question - Abercrombie is doing something similar as your client is doing. On the desktop version they have 5 languages - the mobile version is only English. If you search on Google.de (desktop) - you get the German version. If you search Google.de on mobile - the titles in the search results are German - however the site which is displayed when you click on the links is the one that is optimised for mobile (= English version)
I guess this will be similar in your case - desktop searches will go to the translated version - the mobile searches will go to the mobile version (even if it's not in the language of the searcher).
Dirk
-
According to the client, the site is being penalized for not being mobile friendly; but there could be other reasons. The desktop site has 10-12 versions, set up as subdirectories.
If the native language site will come up first, the client is fine with doing nothing. If not, they want us to redirect the users as you described. But since we're still in development, we're not sure what the answer is.
Do you think it's most likely that the native language site would come up first?
The long-term plan is to create responsive sites, for better SEO and UX, so this is just a temporary interim solution.
-
Your site will in no way become penalized for not being mobile friendly. "mobilgeddon" was an effort to get more people to switch to mobile friendly designs and is still only a factor within Google's algorithm. You should be thinking about switching to mobile (responsive ideally) for a better user experience - not because of Google.
You mentioned that the global mobile version will only be available in English. Does this mean you have other languages on the desktop site? If so I would rely exclusively on the non-mobile pages utilizing the hreflang tag (https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/189077?hl=en) and then when you eventually make the other language pages mobile friendly switch the hreflang to point to those page.
Pointing your users in a different company expecting their native language to the mobile english only version I suspect would create extremely high bounce rates. You would be best off (IMO) just sending them to the non-mobile but correct language desktop page regardless of search being desktop vs mobile.
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
-
What are the SEO implications of having a website hosted in Singapore (as a subdomain of the global website) when the website is targeting the UK audience?
What are the SEO implications of having a website hosted in Singapore (as a subdomain of the global website) when the website is targeting the UK audience? Will it be hard to get it to rank? Will there be problems with search console?
International SEO | | ToniFarrington-Allthingsweb0 -
What strategy is better for a multilingual site for the SEO point of view?
Hi everyone, in a case for a site with two languages like spanish and english, how would do you deal with it? I can see 4 cases, which is better?? 1. With differents domains: mydomain.es (for spanish version) and mydomain.com (for english version). 2. With subfolder mydomain.com/es/ and mydomain.com/en/ 3. With Subdomain: es.mydomain.com and en.mydomain.com 4 With URL translation (any url is translated in ther languages but not use of subdomain or subfolder): mydominain.com/hola and mydomiain.com/hello Thanks very much for your answers (i love this forum). 🙂
International SEO | | webtematica0 -
Include mobile and international versions of pages to sitemap or not?
My pages already have alternate and hreflang references to point to international and mobile versions of the content. If I add 5 language desktop versions and 5 language mobile versions as https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2620865?hl=en explains, my sitemap will get bulky. What are the pros and cons for referencing all page versions in sitemap and for include just general (English/Desktop) version in sitemap?
International SEO | | poiseo0 -
Any practical examples of ranking 1 domain in multiple countries?
Hi, I've done a fair amount of research on international SEO including here on MOZ but was hoping some fellow Mozzers might have some practical examples of how they have got 1 domain to rank in multiple countries, ideally US & UK. Im possibly looking at getting a high authority domain which ranks great on US into the UK engines. I want to keep to the 1 domain to benefit from the high authority and for logistical reasons. Thanks in advance, Andy
International SEO | | AndyMacLean0 -
International SEO: best practices for local variants of the same language?
We are translating our site into 17 different languages, including local variants of the same language (i.e. Mexican Spanish and Spain Spanish, Canadian English and British English, etc). Should we add all of these local variants to our site? We don't have the marketing / link building budget (or business need) to put these all on separate ccTLDs, so we are using country-specific subfolders instead (example.com/es/). The translations will be of exceptional quality. Our main goal is to pull in some additional traffic from these translations. If we add these local variants, do you think we can expect to see traffic from these different countries (additional traffic from Canada, England, etc)? Any advice / input would be appreciated.
International SEO | | nicole.healthline0 -
Have I over-optimized (on-site optimization using SEOMoz tool)?
Hey all, Quite new to SEO although I tried to educate myself as much as I could. I just spent (really) a lot of time doing the onsite optimization of a few key pages of a website in 3 languages (in which I'm more or less conversational - with the help of Google Translate). I know content should not be misleading and feel natural. I think the result is natural but I'm not sure... I optimized as much as I could so as to reach an "A" grade as per SEOMoz tool for each page, for 1-4 keywords per page. I feel sometimes I stretched a bit, but not sure what "stretching" is given my lack of experience. So I was wondering if some of you could tell me what they thought and if there was some obvious don'ts in my work. Here are a few key pages I have optimized: The homepage: http://goo.gl/00Fti The search results page: http://goo.gl/b1fxE The property page: http://goo.gl/t2GdY The destinations page: http://goo.gl/0Kc0l Note that the other versions of the page - Italian & Spanish - may be more awkward, so I welcome your opinions for these as well (dropdown on top of the page to change the language). Thanks!!
International SEO | | Philoups0 -
Best domain for spanish language site targeting ALL spanish territories?
hi, we're have a strong .com domain and are looking to launch a site for spanish speakers (ie latin america + spain). we already have various subdirectories for some foreign language sites (eg. ourdomain.co.uk, us.ourdomain.com, ca.ourdomain.com, ourdomainchina.com, ourdomainindia.com etc) we already have a B2B site ourdomain.com-es which will remain the same. I'm thinking best practice would be to launch translated copy for the following: ourdomain.com/es ourdomain.com/cl ourdomain.com/mx ourdomain.com/pt etc etc firstly is this the best option? secondly, i'm really interested to hear whether there is a less time/resource intensive route that would give us visibility in ALL spanish speaking territories? Also - if we go with just one of the above (eg ourdomain.com/cl) how likely are we to get traction in other spanish speaking territories? any help much appreciated!
International SEO | | KevinDunne0 -
International SEO with .com & ccTLD in the same language
I've watched http://www.seomoz.org/blog/intern... and read some other posts here. Most seem to focus on whether to use ccTLD, subdomains or subfolders. I'm already committed to expanding my US-based ecommerce to Canada with a .ca ccTLD. My question is around duplicate content as I take my .com USA ecommerce business to canada with a second site on a .ca URL. With the .com site's preference set to USA, and the .ca site's geo preference (automatically) set to Canada, is it a concern at all? About 80% of the content would be the same. FYI, .com ranks OK in Canada now and I want .ca to outrank it in Canada. I know 'localizing' content within the same language is important (independent of duplicate content), but this might not be viable in the short run given CMS limitations. Any direct experience to help quantify the impact here between US and Canadian ecommerce? Adding: I'm not totally confident here. From this google webmaster central post it seems that canonical tags aren't needed. I tend to think nothing is truly neutral and want to be confident regarding whether to use canonicals or not. Is it helpful, harmful or harmless? My site already has internal canonical tags and having internal and external would be a pain I think. @Eugene Byun used it successfully, but would the results have been the same without? Thanks!
International SEO | | gravityseo0