Page Authority for localized version of website
-
Hello everyone,
I have a case here were I need to decide which steps to take to improve page authority (and thus SEO value) for the German pages on our site. We localized the English version into German at the beginning of 2015.
www.memoq.com - English
de.memoq.com - German
By October 2015 we implemented href tags so that Google would index the pages according to their language. That implementation has been successful. There is one issue though: At that time, all our localized pages had only "1" point for Page Authority ("PA" in the Moz bar). At the beginning we though that this could be due to the fact that localization was done using subdomains (de.memoq.com) rather that subfolders (www.memoq.com/de). However, we decided not to implement changes and to let Google assess the work we had done with the href tags.
Its been a while now, and still all our German pages keep having only "1" point for page authority. Plus we have keywords for which we rank in the top 10 in English (US Google Search), but this not the case for the translated version of the keywords for German (Germany Google search).
So my question basically is:
Is this lack of page authority and SEO value rooted in the fact that we used subdomain instead of subfolder for the URL creation. If so is it likely that Page Authority for German pages and SEO value will increase if I change the structure from subdomains to subfolders?
Or is it that the problem in PA is rooted somewhere else that I am missing?
I appreciate your feedback.
-
Correct. I just confirmed that it is how Mozscape handles the hreflang tag. We do not yet transpose the actual value of the canonical version onto the hreflang variant. You should, in theory, assume the Page Authority of your homepage is identical with the Page Authority of the de.* variant. At least, that appears to be the way in which hreflang is supposed to be handled.
-
HI,
Thanks for your quick reply and expect your next answer. So the subdomain/subfolder issue is not the actual reason for the "1" point for every German page?
-
Page Authority is based on the links pointing to the page. There are only a handful of links on the web which point to your de.* version of your site, so it wouldn't have any independent Page Authority. Now, my guess is that MozScape simply does not currently project PA through to all of the hreflang variants. I am double checking on this now and should have an answer for you soon.
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
-
Home Pages of Several Websites are disappearing / reappearing in Google Index
Hi, I periodically use the Google site command to confirm that our client's websites are fully indexed. Over the past few months I have noticed a very strange phenomenon which is happening for a small subset of our client's websites... basically the home page keeps disappearing and reappearing in the Google index every few days. This is isolated to a few of our client's websites and I have also noticed that it is happening for some of our client's competitor's websites (over which we have absolutely no control). In the past I have been led to believe that the absence of the home page in the index could imply a penalty of some sort. This does not seem to be the case since these sites continue to rank the same in various Google searches regardless of whether or not the home page is listed in the index. Below are some examples of sites of our clients where the home page is currently not indexed - although they may be indexed by the time you read this and try it yourself. Note that most of our clients are in Canada. My questions are: 1. has anyone else experienced/noticed this? 2. any thoughts on whether this could imply some sort of penalty? or could it just be a bug in Google? 3. does Google offer a way to report stuff like this? Note that we have been building websites for over 10 years so we have long been aware of issues like www vs. non-www, canonicalization, and meta content="noindex" (been there done that in 2005). I could be wrong but I do not believe that the site would keep disappearing and reappearing if something like this was the issue. Please feel free to scrutinize the home pages to see if I have overlooked something obvious - I AM getting old. site:dietrichlaw.ca - this site has continually ranked in the top 3 for [kitchener personal injury lawyers] for many years. site:burntucker.com - since we took over this site last year it has moved up to page 1 for [ottawa personal injury lawyers] site:bolandhowe.com - #1 for [aurora personal injury lawyers] site:imranlaw.ca - continually ranked in the top 3 for [mississauga immigration lawyers]. site:canadaenergy.ca - ranks #3 for [ontario hydro plans] Thanks in advance! Jim Donovan, President www.wethinksolutions.com
Technical SEO | | wethink0 -
My SEO friend says my website is not being indexed by Google considering the keywords he has placed in the page and URL what does that mean?
My SEO friend says my website is not being indexed by Google considering the keywords he has placed in the page and URL what does that mean? We have added some text in the pages with keywords thats related the page
Technical SEO | | AlexisWithers0 -
My website's pages are not being indexed correctly
Hi, One of our websites, which is actually a price comparison engine, facing indexing problem at Google. When we check “site:mywebsite.com “, there are lots of pages indexed which are not from mywebsite.com but from merchants websites. The index result page also shows merchant’s page title. In some cases the title is from merchant’s site but when the given link is accessed it points to mywebsite.com/index. Also the cache displays the merchant’s product page as the last indexed version rather than showing ours. The mywebsite.com has quite few Merchants that send us their product feed. Those products are listed on comparison page with prices. The merchant’s links on comparison page are all no-follow links but some of the (not all) merchant’s product pages are indexed against mywebsite.com as mentioned above instead of product comparison page of mywebsite.com How can we fix the issue? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | digitalMSB0 -
Duplicated rel=author tags (x 3) on WordPress pages, any issue with this?
Hi,
Technical SEO | | jeffwhitfield
We seem to have duplicated rel=author tags (x 3) on WordPress pages, as we are using Yoast WordPress SEO plugin which adds a rel=author tag into the head of the page and Fancier Author Box plugin which seems to add a further two rel=author tags toward the bottom of the page. I checked the settings for Fancier Author Box and there doesn't seem to be the option to turn rel=author tags off; we need to keep this plugin enabled as we want the two tab functionality of the author bio and latest posts. All three rel=author tags seem to be correctly formatted and Google Structured Data Testing Tool shows that all authorship rel=author markup is correct; is there any issue with having these duplicated rel=author tags on the WordPress pages?
I tried searching the Q&A but couldn't find anything similar enough to what I'm asking above. Many thanks in advance and kind regards.0 -
Website ranking went from page one to not in top 50 overnight. Help/suggestions?
One of our customer's websites initially ranked very well. For approximately 3 months it sat atop of Google for their optimized keywords. Suddenly, on November 17th, the ranking dropped and they were no longer in the top 50 for any keywords. We went through Google Webmaster tools and found no violations, so we emailed Google to see if we violated something and if they would reconsider. They responded "We reviewed your site and found no manual actions by the webspam team that might affect your site's ranking in Google." This is a site built on WordPress, so we turned off a majority of plugins in case one was somehow affecting the site. They have an incredible amount of business partners that link their website from their partner's website menus, so they have about 15,000 links all with anchor text "insurance." (every page on partner site is seen as a different link). Think this is affecting it? Maybe Google sees it as artificial? (P.S. This has been set up this way for a while before they came on with us). The site ranks on page one of Bing and Yahoo, but nowhere in top 50 for Google. Any suggestions? Appreciate the help!
Technical SEO | | Tosten0 -
Duplicate pages
Hi Can anyone tell me why SEO MOZ thinks these paes are duplicates when they're clearly not? Thanks very much Kate http://www.katetooncopywriter.com.au/how-to-be-a-freelance-copywriter/picture-1-58/ http://www.katetooncopywriter.com.au/portfolio/clients/other/ http://www.katetooncopywriter.com.au/portfolio/clients/travel/ http://www.katetooncopywriter.com.au/webservices/what-i-do/blog-copywriter/
Technical SEO | | ToonyWoony0 -
How to attach at text to image that other websites use from my website
I often have other websites link to my website. They will do this with an image that they pull off of my website. (actually my website continues to serve the image). These inbound links are great, but they don't have alt text. Is there a way for me to attach alt text to the images, or is this something the other website needs to code themselves?
Technical SEO | | EugeneF0