Is this approach of returning different content depending on IP beneficial for international SEO?
-
I've decided to use sub folders for my site, and from everything I've read online it seems I shouldn't change the page content depending on IP, yet I know of a successful well funded site that hires full time SEO staff that does just that, and I'm wondering whether they know something I don’t which is helping their SEO.
From everything I've read online this is the format I think I should use:
mysite.com/red-wigs does not exist
This is the format the other site is using:
othersite.com/red-wigs (from US IP address)
othersite.com/red-wigs (from UK IP address)
The content on othersite.com/red-wigs is identical to othersite.com/gb/red-wigs when loading from a UK IP address, and a lot of URLs without /gb/ are being returned when searching google.
The benefit I can think of that they are gaining is US pages which are being returned for UK based searches will return the correct content. Are their any other gains to this approach? I'm concerned that if I use this approach for different languages then the radically differing content of othersite.com/red-wigs depending on the location of the crawler might confuse google - also generally changing content depending on IP seems to be recommended against.
Thanks
-
Canonical and hreflangs are always full url and you can't use relative addresses:
https://developers.google.com/search/docs/advanced/crawling/localized-versions?hl=en
"Alternate URLs must be fully-qualified, including the transport method (http/https), so: https://example.com/foo, not //example.com/foo or /foo"
https://developers.google.com/search/docs/advanced/crawling/consolidate-duplicate-urlsSo you need to remake your example with full URLs like:
protocol://domain (with or withour WWW.)/path/to/some/folder/Also avoid geotargeting for IP. This can went you on deep issues since Googlebot is crawling mostly from US IP. Therefore Google NEVER can see your UK links. Source:
https://developers.google.com/search/docs/advanced/crawling/locale-adaptive-pages?hl=en
"If your site has locale-adaptive pages (that is, your site returns different content based on the perceived country or preferred language of the visitor), Google might not crawl, index, or rank all your content for different locales. This is because the default IP addresses of the Googlebot crawler appear to be based in the USA. In addition, the crawler sends HTTP requests without setting Accept-Language in the request header."Regards,
Peter
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
-
Redirected traffic and SEO problem
Hi all, I have a bit of a search engine predicament and I can't find the answer anywhere. It's a bit of a complicated one so please bear with me 🙂 ... I'm a Freelance Copywriter, I recently started the business, I've also recently moved to New Zealand. As such I'm looking for business back in the U.K. (As that's where my network is), but also locally, in NZ. I've purchased both the .co.uk and .co.nz domain names (http://www.inspirecontent.co.uk and http://www.inspirecontent.co.nz) The way that the domain provider / host has set these up is for one to redirect to another. Currently if someone visits www.inspirecontent.co.nz it redirects to the U.K. Site. That's less than ideal for me, because I dont want NZ traffic (i.e potential leads) to think I'm a U.K. Based business. my questions are as follows: 1. Will the redirect to the U.K. domain prevent me from appearing in NZ search (I.e if someone searches via google.co.nz) I'm really struggling to rank at the moment, I'm working on more content but if the redirect is a problem then I need to know about it so that I can find a work around. 2. Any suggestions on the best approach to the work around? It would be great if the URLs didn't change! So that you wind up from the U.K. on the U.K site, and if you're from NZ, you land on and stay on the NZ domain, but I'm not sure how to achieve that. One option, I think, would be to have two different websites, hosted separately, but I hear that duplicated content is bad for SEO? Thanks all in advance Kind regards
International SEO | | Andrea_howey0 -
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 -
International SEO question domain.com vs domain.com/us/ , domain.com/uk etc.
Hi Mozzers, I am expanding a website internationally. I own the .com for the domain. I need to accommodate multiple countries and I'm not sure if I should build a folder for /us/ for United States or just have the root domain .com OPTION 1:
International SEO | | jeremycabral
domain.com/page-url -- United States
domain.com/de/page-url -- Denmark
domain.com/jp/page-url -- Japan OPTION 2:
domain.com/us/page-url -- United States
domain.com/de/page-url -- Denmark
domain.com/jp/page-url -- Japan My concern with option 2 is there will be some dilution and we wouldn't get the full benefit of inbound links compared to Option 1 as we would have geo ip redirection in place to redirect users etc. to the relative sub-folder. Which option is better from an SEO perspective? Cheers, Jeremy0 -
International Sites - Sitemaps, Robots & Geolocating in WMT
Hi Guys, I have a site that has now been launched in the US having originally just been UK. In order to accommodate this, the website has been set-up using directories for each country. Example: domain.com/en-gb domain.com/en-us As the site was originally set-up for UK, the sitemap, robots file & Webmaster Tools account were added to the main domain. Example: domain.com/sitemap.xml domain.com/robots.txt The question is does this now need changing to make it specific for each country. Example: The sitemap and robots.txt for the UK would move to: domain.com/en-gb/sitemap.xml domain.com/en-gb/robots.txt and the US would have its own separate sitemap and robots.txt. Example : domain.com/en-us/sitemap.xml domain.com/en-us/robots.txt Also in order to Geolocate this in WMT would this need to be done for each directory version instead of the main domain? Currently the WMT account for the UK site is verified at www.domain.com, would this need reverifying at domain.com/en-gb? Any help would be appreciated! Thanks!
International SEO | | CarlWint0 -
Can multiple hreflang tags point to one URL? International SEO question
Moz, Hi Moz, Can multiple hreflang tags point to a single URL? For example, if I have a Canadian site (www.example.com/ca) that targets French and English speakers can I have the following: or would I use: Any insight would be very helpful and greatly appreciated! Thank you in advance!
International SEO | | DA20131 -
Geo Targeting SEO Techniques for Google UK
I'm starting a new SEO project whereby I'll be targeting UK search engines only such as Google.co.uk, (I'm from the states) and I'm gathering all the information I can get on this topic Obviously, I got a CO.UK TLD, and hosting/IP is UK based, but can anyone shed light on other techniques that has worked for you, Besides of the above here is some advice I picked up so far; Regional directory listings,
International SEO | | Plorex
Inbound and outbound inks from/to UK based websites,
Geographic targeting in Google webmaster tools,
British slang... What else is there?
Much appreciated0 -
Local SEO - My Ranking depends on City of the user - Rank tracker is failing
Hello, The search results differ completly depending on the user location. The websites yoagbarcelona.org targets poeple from barcelona: Barcelona; User location Barcelona web is on the last position on first page: http://screencast.com/t/ZsIeiCeLRM User location New York 1st. http://screencast.com/t/PzaLbwWW4xx: Also SEO MOZ rank tracker is showing me that im no 1in google.es for yoga barcelona. The problem is that this is only true for users outside the region 😞 The site has very bad ranking in google places and you need to go down to page 10 until my yoga studio shows up in the maps results. I did some hardcore citation building and signed up in almost all local directories that google pulls data from within one month and optimised the google places / plus profile. Please give me some advice how I could overcome the problem.??? Especially on what part should i focus when optimising the page. ??? Are there any other good strategies for getting into google places ??? Do I need more links from local sites or how is this local serps working ???
International SEO | | stereo690 -
Keyword selection for international company
Hi everyone, I am working on a new project for a telecommunications company with its target audience in various countries around Europe and USA. They only have 1 website in English and don’t have content specific to different countries. Ineed to choose keywords for this project but I am finding it quite challenging as usually my keywords are localised. In this case I cannot restrict keywords to any particular country. At the same time I know that it would be extremely tough to rank for generic keywords. What do you suggest?
International SEO | | ICON_Malta0