Link vs Subdomain Language redirect
-
Hi all,
I'm managing a website that uses a redirect to show different languages to the users. I mean when a user access the site from any country it sees the full domain but when it access it from Italy, France or Germany it goes to domain.com/lang=FR or IT.
I see that other sites use a technique to redirect to it.domain.com or fr.domain.com but I have doubts about which one is better.
We do an aggressive link building strategy and we have a lot of links to the root domain across the various languages. Is it better to do the link building to the it.domain.com and fr.domain.com, depending on the language source of the link instead of the root?
I'm seeing that some of our competitors are doing this but I'm afraid is going to spread the link juice across many subdomains and lose power to the root.
Thanks in advance
-
Subdomains would be a hard path, totally possible, but really tough. You need time and resources to dedicate to each subdomain to build the content (if geo-targeting, more time and resources would be needed to change and focus the content). I would suggest parameters, but that's just my 2 cents. Good luck!!
-
Hi Kate,
Sorry for the late reply.
I appreciate your answer and I recognize that we might not be doing the best separation of the users, and that's why we need to know what is the best solution.According to your Guide, we should be using Translate/HREFLANG, however I see that all the competition is doing the subdomain trick, in order to get more relevance on every specific markets.
My question still remains if we should go to a subdomain strategy (correctly redirected) or we keep the translation parameters in the URL, sending every user to the root.com/lang=IT, for ex.
Thanks
-
First of all, I don't think what you are doing is best for the user. Setting language based on IP address is assuming things that are not always true. Rather than setting language based on IP, try detecting language preference from the browser. http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8199760/how-to-get-the-browser-language-using-java-script
I would suggest checking out this guide to international strategy to determine if you need to just target language or country.
If you do end up just translating, I prefer using subfolders or parameters, not subdomains. And don't use a ccTLD like .fr or .de. Those are for geo-targeting only and require you to distinguish your content based on what country you are targeting.
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
-
How to approach link building/content in my weight loss coaching niche in a large scale way
Hello, I run a weight loss coaching business, bobweikel.com that is in it's early stages. I'm still working on making it graphically appealing I want to increase my number of national clients - it's coaching done over the phone or skype. I'm needing help analyzing my niche, specifically keywords, article content topics, link building tactics. I want to put a lot of time into it. Eventually I want to scale it up and hire other weight loss coaches and even SEO help. How do I get this dream going through gaining national clients online? There's not much traffic locally. I'm enough of an authority that, with enough time, I can create kickass content on the topics of weight loss and also the topic of NLP (NLP is the type of coaching I do, but it's little known) I'd like to add 5 best-of-the-web articles and a blog. Looking for advice. Would like to dream big. Tools I normally use (though I'm open to anything): OSE, Link Prospector, Excel Pivot Tables, Buzzstream, iPhone 5S video camera with tripod, youtube video embed, keyword discovery
Competitive Research | | BobGW0 -
Local Real Estate Site vs Larger National Sites
Hello all, I am a local realtor that created my website with an idx feed. I am on page one but at the bottom. Question is how can a local real estate website rank better in the SERPS than the larger national brands? Any tips out there from those who have worked with real estate websites and seo? I'm trying to out rank the larger sites for my main keywords. Thanks all.
Competitive Research | | bronxpad0 -
Certainty or Uncertainty of SEO / Link Building
Hey there I'm new to both SEO and Seomoz. I have this personal site I've been working on SEO wise (slowly since I started learning from 0) and I have reached a point where the only missing thing for me to do is build links. However, the competitors for my site have thousands of links. From all I've read on the web regarding SEO&LinkBuilding, including articles in this site...the old method of spamming links wherever/whenever possible is now being penalized while the practice of manual/hand-built links of higher quality and lesser quantity is rewarded. So I went ahead and approached several linkbuilding companies and one thing that struck me was the level of uncertainty regarding the chances of getting a site to get to the first page. I understand there's factors you cannot predict or control, such as what your competitors are doing on the SEO front...but ultimately, I'm curious as to how do you effectively gauge the possibility of getting to the top page of any keyword combination? Especially when dealing with clients... since apparently whoever 'guarantees' you anything is a fraud or uses blackhat techniques...how do you pitch the 'uncertainty' to the client? Likewise...how do you know if you can make it to the top page or viceversa? Cheers
Competitive Research | | Sotkra0 -
Link checking tool
I am trying to find the number of back links received from a partner for different pages of the site that I am currently working on. Site has several thousand pages. Does anybody know any tool that can pull the links to entire site from a particular source? Thanks.
Competitive Research | | gmk15670 -
Link submissions confirmed but not showing up in OSE
One of the first things I did after signing up for the 30-day seomoz trial is analyze 3 competitor's inbound links from external sites. On the Competitive Domain Analysis page, I was able to obtain links from more than half of the sites identified as their top links. All submissions were approved between 9/13 and 9/28. Now, a month later, under the Competitive Comparison section, I only have one external followed link, while the competitors have hundreds. For Top Pages, the only page that shows up is the root domain, comitzlaw.com/. For two of the competitors, 7 out of their top 10 links are from pview.findlaw.com/. I have a link from the same site, confirmed as of mid-September, yet it doesn't show up. Any ideas? I must be doing something seriously wrong.
Competitive Research | | c2g0 -
Links in the independent.co.uk
So I was doing some research in OSE and come across links in different articles on the independent.co.uk. There are more than three but I have included three below. Do a find for "blinds" on the articles. What I find interesting is that each article has a different author. Which probably rules out a friend doing a favour. As far as I can see, of all the many different types of advertising programmes the Independent has, this is not one of them. Which begs the question, how are they getting these links? http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/ashcroft--belize-the-only-thing-he-respects-is-dollars-1811725.html http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/house-and-home/gardening/shooting-stars-a-new-book-by-anna-pavord-pays-homage-to-the-glorious-bulb-1785219.html http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/reviews/outbreak-1939-imperial-war-museum-london-1776002.html What do you think?
Competitive Research | | KevinHenney980 -
Competitor with over 100,000 links to duplicate copy ranks well, anyone know why?
One of our competitors has over 100,000 links on Yahoo site explorer, most of them are from pages on their site with duplicate content and they don't seem to have a focus on gaining backlinks, but the site still ranks really well. Can anyone think of a reason why this duplicate content hasn't been penalised by Google?
Competitive Research | | RobertHill0 -
What is the right way to due a competitive Link analysis?
Trying to use the saturation report suggestion with no luck for google.com,and looking for away to benchmark either Pagerank or page authority to figure out how many links are required to overr take competitors from diversified sources. What is the process to do this to get the best results for the client.
Competitive Research | | bmcfarlane0