International SEO - Alternatives to Automatic IP re-direct
-
Hello,
When doing international SEO I've read that it's not good practice to automatically re-direct users to the correct part of the website based on their IP address. But what alternatives are there to this?
Let's say you're targeting the US and the UK through multiregional SEO. What can you do to ensure that users from the US go to the US sub-directory and that users from the UK go to the UK sub-directory?
In Moz's international SEO guide it says that:
"If you choose to try to guess at the user’s language preference when they enter your site, you can use the browser’s language setting or the IP address and ask the user to confirm the choice. Using JavaScript to do this will ensure that Googlebot does not get confused. Pair this with a good XML sitemap and the user can have a great interaction. Plus, the search engines will be able to crawl and index all of your translated content."
Can anyone explain this further?
Any help would be much appreciated!
Thanks in advance
-
Thanks for the detailed response Nick - great summary!
"If you choose to try to guess at the user’s language preference when they enter your site, you can use the browser’s language setting or the IP address and ask the user to confirm the choice. Using JavaScript to do this will ensure that Googlebot does not get confused."
I presume web developers would know how to do this?
-
Also just to add:
""If you choose to try to guess at the user’s language preference when they enter your site, you can use the browser’s language setting or the IP address and ask the user to confirm the choice. Using JavaScript to do this will ensure that Googlebot does not get confused." It's about giving the user choice and not force redirecting them aka it's ok to query the language and suggest it, but not force it.
For example, GoogleBot is mostly from USA, so it would be auto-forced to US content options which theoretically means it could miss other versions.
If you are redirected to a particularly language version, you need to give the user the option to switch...
-
Hi there,
Great question!
I must admit that some of the wording for this confused me as well...
I've pasted below some snippets from Google's official guidelines on managing multilingual websites and added my own thoughts here and there: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/182192?hl=en/
"If you choose to try to guess at the user’s language preference when they enter your site, you can use the browser’s language setting or the IP address and ask the user to confirm the choice." Let the user switch the page language If you have multiple versions of a page:
- Consider adding hyperlinks to other language versions of a page. That way users can click to choose a different language version of the page.
- Avoid automatic redirection based on the user’s perceived language. These redirections could prevent users (and search engines) from viewing all the versions of your site.
Using JavaScript to do this will ensure that Googlebot does not get confused.
"If you prefer to dynamically change content or reroute the user based on language settings, be aware that Google might not find and crawl all your variations. This is because the Googlebot crawler usually originates from the USA. In addition, the crawler sends HTTP requests without setting
Accept-Language
in the request header."Pair this with a good XML sitemap and the user can have a great interaction. Plus, the search engines will be able to crawl and index all of your translated content.
No specific answer or single quote to copy but this covers on-page annotation and XML sitemaps: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/189077
- Hope this helps as a starter!
Nick
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 - Mixing country targeting and language targeting in GWT.
Hi all! I want to start with International SEO process for my ecommerce. We sell worldwide with a .com domain, although the business is mainly focused in Spain. We maintain three languages, spanish, english and french with a non suitable structure. Now, after read a lot about it, I'm considering to use subdirectories for each language, /es/, /en/ and /fr/. And heres it's my first doubt: Could I avoid /es/ from spanish language as it's the default one? I've understood from recents Q&A that it's not needed although more user friendly. I'm trying to avoid tons of 301 from old urls for my main language. Anyway I want to know the best approach regardless complexity. My second doubt is about country targeting. After some research, I consider that it'd be interesting target country for /fr/ subdomain but language for /en/. Do you see any problem mixing both strategies? I know I also need to add the hreflang tag to guide googlebot. But I prefer to clarify these points first. Thanks a lot! Best regards.
International SEO | | footd1 -
Local Address for International Business?
Our client's business www.shanore.com is based in Ireland but targets international markets, particularly the USA. A few months ago we made the switch to HTTPS and ever since our organic traffic has steadily declined in the USA, UK, Canada etc. by roughly 30 - 40%. In Ireland, over the same period of time it's increased by around 30%. An Irish address features in the Footer and the same address is also given on Google + / Google My Business. Webmaster Tools is set to target the USA & the site is hosted in the USA. Could the presence of the Irish address somehow be overriding the Webmaster Tools geo-targeting? Why would traffic fall everywhere else apart from Ireland? Keyword rankings are also now stronger in Ireland than in other countries.
International SEO | | Johnny_AppleSeed0 -
Different urls for the homepage on an international website
Hi! I was wondering what would be the best strategy to solve duplicated content generated by the homepage and its differents URLS This is an international website. Now it only has one language working: Spanish, but the url structure is already ready to work with the language approach So we have now www.brand.com -> Spanish Homepage (canonical www.brand.com/es)
International SEO | | teconsite
www.brand.com/es -> Spanish Homepage (canonical www.brand.com/es)
www.brand.com/index.php -> Spanish Homepage (canonical www.brand.com/es) I would like to know if this is the correct approach of if we should add 301 redirects instead of canonical. Let's image that they want to active the /en language, so they will have www.brand.com
www.brand.com/index.php
www.brand.com/es
www.brand.com/en now what? I image they have to use hreflang, but I am a little lost with how this should work. 301? canonical? hreflang? Could you help me? Thank you! Victoria0 -
Help: Newbie trying to optimize for several international domains
We have three domain names co.nz, com.au and com. We are very new and have been told to optimize for co.nz first before going into com.au and com. Having said that, we have outsourced an seo company to optimize our co.nz site, however I would like to optimize the com.au and the com based on the information we currently receive for co.nz. Any suggestions on how to go about doing this? I looked at our competition and it seems they have the same content across all 3 domains, but they have changed the meta tags for each domain and that's about it. Any tips or ideas on how we could possibly do better? I know its early stages.... but as a newbie some advice around this would be great! Thanks
International SEO | | edward-may0 -
Wordpress SEO/ Ecommerce , Site with Multiple Domains ( International ) & Canonical URLs
Hi I have an ecommerce site with an integrated wordpress instance. I want to have one wordpress site that outputs to 2 domains exactly the same content , but one will have canonical URL . NZ & Australia Sites. So: Would I use the rel="Alternate" hreflang="en-nz" . I want the same content to rank well for each country and not be penalised for duplicate content. Ideas?
International SEO | | s_EOgi_Bear0 -
Are Subdomains better or SubDirectories better for an international website ?
Can anyone explain why the structure of your website: yourbrand.com/es/category is better than es.yourbrand.com for multi language and multi country website.
International SEO | | Tushar_P0 -
Shall I automatically redirect international visitors from www.domain.com to e.g. www.domain.com/es? What is best SEO practice?
We have chosen the one domain approach with our international site having different language versions in subdirectory of main domain:
International SEO | | lcourse
www.domain.com/es
www.domain.com/it
etc. What is SEO-wise best practice for implementing international index pages. I see following options: entering www.domain.com will display without redirection the index page in language of user (e.g based on IP or browser) in www.domain.com
Example: www.booking.com entering www.domain.com will always show English index page.
Additionally one may display a message in the header if IP from other country with link to other language version.
Example: www.apple.com entering www.domain.com will always redirect automatically to country specific subdirectory based on IP
Example: www.samsung.com Any thoughts/suggestions on what may be best solution from a SEO perspective? For a user I believe options 1) & 3) are preferable.0 -
Can geographic location of web server affect in SEO?
I have server in Singapore. I need to target USA and Europe for my site. Whether I need to change server? Please guide me... Can geographic location of web server affect in SEO? If Yes, how it affect in SEO?
International SEO | | MayurChavda0