International SEO Setuo
-
Hi Guys
i have a client who is looking to be found in multiple English speaking countries I.e .co.uk, .com and .com.au
At first I advised they would need unique content for each to avoid duplication but then the client showed me this site http://welleco.com/ this is setup via shopify on a multisite. All the sites have the same content and are all indexed.
My question is can this be done in WordPress? Via something like WPML. And would it need to have seperte hosting and a seperate site or can this be done by something like IP redirect.
Can someone advise if this is good practice or maybe suffer other ways?
Thanks in advance.
-
Cheers Guys,
Great answers here! now I come to think of it the site was already ranking high worldwide for the co.uk site. The reason for the different domains is the difffeent distributors and currencys. Definitely won’t go down this route again. Will try the canonical hack and let you know, how it goes.
regards
Neil
-
That notification seems confirming my supposition that Google is consolidating that homepage with some other of the existing ones... hence, I'd test the canonical hack I explained above.
-
Apologies it’s rejuvenated.co.nz
-
I see https://www.rejuvenated.com.au in Google's index.
-
Hi Guys,
Further to my question, thought I would give an update.
We now have hreflang, canonicals and redirects in.
We have basically emulated the setup of this site:-
which is using the same content and all pages seem to be indexed in Google.
However we have this home page
https://www.rejuvenated.com.au - which is not indexed in Google and appears in GSC in excluded URL's in index coverage as "Google chose different canonical than user". Is this a duplication issue? Why have the other pages been indexed and why is the .com home page indexed?
Regards
Neil
-
First of all, the answer given by Kate is totally correct, so consider it.
However, I will try to answer your question from a different perspective and starting from considering that there's a serious reason why your client needs to have different websites for targeting different countries where the same language is spoken (i.e.: some products are not available in every geography, or the client is marketing the services/products with different messages or, simply, the business company has also a physical presence in the targeted countries).
So, considering that starting point, we can find ourselves in 2 situations.
The first is the ideal one: the websites - albeit substantially identical in their purposes - are localized (different content or simply a different "writing" of the content from site to site, attention to the country level nuances of the language (i.e.: respecting British English orthography in the UK website).
In this case - apart geotargeting the domain (if its a generic domain name) via GSC or relying on the automatic geo-targeting the country code domain names have and earning "local" backlinks - you should implement the hreflang annotation in order to indicate to Google what URL to show to searchers depending on their language and location.
The 2nd case is more tricky and, unfortunately, more common: the websites targeting different countries but having the same identical content from site to site.
In this case, you should still need to implement the hreflang but, contrary to all written and available documentation, you should canonicalize all the duplicated website to the "canonical" one while indicating in the href element of the hreflang the canonicalized alternative URLs.
As I said, this is not "documented" in any Google help pages because it's formally the wrong way to implement the hreflang. In fact, we all know that that alternative and self-referential hrefs must always be "canonical" URLs.
However, this is a strong and valid exception, and it has been validated as such by John Mueller in a tweet answering a question by Glenn Gabe about this same situation.
Said all this, when it comes to hreflang implementation in this kind of situation, I always suggest running a test on a limited set of URLs before implementing it broadly.
Finally, you're asking if you can do it this on WordPress. Sure you can.
-
Hi!
First, I never recommend doing something just because another site does and it looks like they are getting what they want without doing the work. You never know what is going on behind the scenes.
Second, for your client, if there is nothing that needs to change on a per country basis, why make different sites for different countries? Or does something change across the countries they want to target?
Third, never use IP based redirects for geo-targeting if that is the route you go. It creates a bad user experience for travelers and search engine bots.
I recommend (without knowing much about them) that they make one site in English, it should work just fine in all of the target countries. However, if there are other reasons for being country specific, do let me know.
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
-
International SEO & redirects - do these solutions make sense?
I’m currently working on SEO for an international website with subdirectories set up for each international version. The site is has never had any SEO previously and is having a lot of indexing and visibility issues. Also geotargeting seems very off in search results. I’ve diagnosed various issues and want to check my assumptions and solutions below make sense... The root domain uses a 302 redirect to display content from the /en-GB page. (302 redirects seem to be a default language fallback setting configured in the CMS) and they’re used for most key pages. I’m concerned these redirects are contributing to a lot of the issues with incorrect indexing. The en-GB is the default language version of the site. So far, the en-GB has been set as the canonical version too. Both the root domain and this subdirectory URL display the same content. (en-US is also a near duplicate page). All other international homepages appear only on their subfolder URL. Various SEO tools have been showing redirect loops (caused by language changing parameter versions of URLs being crawled that don’t have redirects on them) and issues with hreflang and canonicals. I believe the hreflang tags and canonicals have been ignored due to relative URLs being used for each, as search results don’t always contain the desired versions of the URLs (in terms of regional version and preferred canonical versions). My questions are: Could these 302 redirects be conflicting with hreflang tags? If so, I’m thinking they should be removed (if not made 301s). GSC doesn’t like the fact these are on key pages, as redirected pages are listed in the sitemap. Will changing hreflang tags and canonical tags to absolute URLs possibly be enough to fix these issues from what you can tell? (Or will redirects need to go too?) Is the en-GB correctly set as the canonical when the root domain is also accessible, indexed and using this page’s content within the CMS too? (I feel like the root domain should be the canonical version, but not sure that works together with other language version subfolders or with a redirect in place from root to subfolder). As an extra point to the last question, GSC has recently chosen the root domain as the canonical (despite en-GB being set as user preference) and is now choosing to deindex some international versions of the homepage as a result. Hoping that getting the hreflang tags fixed and possibly redirects removed should correct this ASAP. But perhaps this also confirms en-GB should be the canonical and marked X-default too. I hope that all makes sense and sorry it’s a small collection of related questions. Really appreciate any replies.
International SEO | | MMcCalden0 -
For My International Sites only Homepage in other Language rest Pages are in English. Hreflang required here?
Hello All, For my ecommerce site at my homepage there is an Language option of 9 different countries. My main site - abcd.co.uk and other sites are like this se.abcd.co.uk, fr.abcd.co.uk, es.abcd.co.uk etc From my main site if user clicks on fr.abcd.co.uk then France site will open but when he click on any link it will redirect to my UK site. On France site homepage if user hover the cursor then links are visible of UK site only. My query is ;- Do it required here to implement hreflang? As only homepage is in different language? Do it anything wrong in google point of view? Thanks!
International SEO | | wright3350 -
Splitting a site into 2 international sites
Hi all, I have a client that currently has a .com domain that ranks in both the US and the UK for various search terms. They have identified a need to provide different information for UK and US visitors which will require 2 versions of all pages. If we set up a .co.uk domain and keep the .com obviously that will be a brand new UK site which will have zero rankings. Any suggestions as to the best way to introduce this second version of the content without losing UK rankings? Thanks
International SEO | | danfrost0 -
International Site Merge
Hello, I've never had to deal with an international site before, let alone a site merge. These are two large sites, we've got a few smaller old sites that are currently redirecting to the main site (UK). We are looking at moving all the sites to the .com domain. We are also currently not using SSL (on the main pages, we are on the checkout). We also have a m.domain.com site. Are there any good guides on what needs to be done? My current strategy would be: Convert site to SSL. Mobile site and desktop site must be on the same domain. Start link building to the .com domain now (weaker link profile currently) What's the best way of handling the domains and languages? We're currently using a .tv site for the UK and .com for the US. I was thinking, and please correct me if i'm wrong, that we move the US site from domain.com to domain.com/us/ and the domain.tv to domain.com/en/ Would I then reference these by the following: What would we then do with the canonicals? Would they just reference their "local" version? Any advice or articles to read would really be appreciated.
International SEO | | ThomasHarvey0 -
Canonical and hreflang mess of international desktop and mobile site versions
Hello, I have an interesting case and I am lost in it. There are two versions of the site: desktop and mobile. And there are also international versions: English and Spanish. I'm stuck at implementation of canonical tags. Currently my setup has the following: English (default) desktop page has these: English Mobile page has these: Spanish Desktop version: Spanish Mobile version: But I somewhat feel that I messed the things... Could you guys point me to what I did wrong and explain how to set it right? Also, if you know URLs of blog posts or articles, where similar case is explained - share with me please.
International SEO | | poiseo0 -
Wordpress international SEO Plugin - recommendations needed
Hi Mozzers, I am designing the web architecture for a international website and will be using Wordpress. Can anyone recommend a plugin that lets me SEO for all countries? I have used Yoast many times but it does not seem to work for International Web SEO Architectures. Thanks Carla Here is an idea of what I was thinking of doing Homepage.com Irish-homepage.ie or Homepage.com/ie Irish-Subpages.ie or Homepage.com/ie/subpage Irish-Subpages.ie or Homepage.com/ie/subpage Irish-Subpages.ie or Homepage.com/ie/subpage UK homepage.co.uk or Homepage.com/uk UK-subpages.co.uk or Homepage.com/uk/subpage UK-subpages.co.uk or Homepage.com/uk/subpage
International SEO | | Carla_Dawson0 -
Is International Geotargeting with Duplicate Content Effective?
A company located in Canada is currently targeting Canada through the geotargeting setting in Google Webmaster Tools. Google.ca rankings are good, but Google.com rankings are not. The company would like to gain more traction for US people using google.com. The idea on the table is to set up a subfolder www.domain.com/us/ and use WMT to designate this version for the US. Here's the kicker: the content is exactly the same. Will Google consider the US version duplicate content? Is this an effective way to target US and Canada at the same time? Is it better to forget a duplicate US site altogether and use the "unlisted" setting in WMT?
International SEO | | AliveWired0 -
International SEO whats best 2 sites co.uk and com.au ?
We have the co.uk and com.au ccTLDS and currently operate out of the UK only but plans are in place for Australia. We can't get hold of the .org or .com so it has to be the ccTLD. I want to use the same site for both countries and either host 2 identical sites (same content) or 1 site with different domain names + meta tags for the 2 countries. Whats the best way to make this happen without screwing things up?
International SEO | | therealmarkhall0