SEO Best Practice for a multi-language and multi-country website
-
Hello Moz Community,
I hope someone could help me identify the best action to take on an on-page optimization confusion I am currently having.
The website I am currently trying to optimize is http://www.riafinancial.com/locations/us/home.aspx. There is an option to view a country specific version of the page, or language version (there are 2 drop down menus on the top, for country or for language).
When viewing a country specific version of the page, the URL changes depending on country selected. Some country versions also updates the content to the language of that country, but some remain English. Example, when viewing the France version of the page (http://www.riafinancial.com/locations/FR/home.aspx), the content is updated to french version, but when viewing the China version (http://www.riafinancial.com/locations/CN/home.aspx), the content is in English. This is because we have not yet translated for all countries (this will eventually be all translated).
Now, when viewing by language, the URL does NOT change. Example, in http://www.riafinancial.com/locations/us/home.aspx, you can choose French, German, Italian, Polish, etc. The content of the page will change based on language chosen, but the URL (including page titles, meta-descriptions) will not change.
My question is, how should I approach this for on-page optimization? Canonical? Hreflang? Any input, feedback, recommendation, suggestion will be greatly appreciated.
Thanks!
Sharon
-
Sharon,
if i'm not mistaken this is what you are trying to do:
http://www.riafinancial.com/locations/us/home.aspx is normally in English (or American to some ;-)) and with the language selection the us part of the url changes to FR for France and CH for Chinese .. etc.
I think you will find your answer in Danny Dovers cheat sheet:
http://moz.com/blog/the-web-developers-seo-cheat-sheet-2013-editionyou can indeed target selected languages and countries with the href lang and using the double parameter (hreflang="fr-FR"). Hope this helps you and solves your problem.
Regards
Jarno
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
-
VTEX Infinite Scroll Design: What is On-Page SEO Best Practice?
We are migrating to the VTEX E Commerce platform and it is built on javascript, so there are no <a>tags to link product pages together when there is a long list of products. According to the Google Search Console Help document, "Google can follow links only if they are an</a> <a>tag with an href attribute." - Google Search Console Help document </a>http://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/9112205. So, if there a 1000 products, javascript just executes to deliver more content in order to browse through the entire product list. The problem is there is no actual link for crawlers to follow. Has anyone implemented a solution to this or a similar problem?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ggarciabisco0 -
If I disavow bad Backlinks of my website. If, I create Backlinks again, those websites. Did that again become count in my Backlinks?
Hi, all please tell me. If I disavow bad Backlinks of my website. If, I create Backlinks again, those websites. Did that again become count in my Backlinks?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | sourav60 -
Best way to link to 1000 city landing pages from index page in a way that google follows/crawls these links (without building country pages)?
Currently we have direct links to the top 100 country and city landing pages on our index page of the root domain.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lcourse
I would like to add in the index page for each country a link "more cities" which then loads dynamically (without reloading the page and without redirecting to another page) a list with links to all cities in this country.
I do not want to dillute "link juice" to my top 100 country and city landing pages on the index page.
I would still like google to be able to crawl and follow these links to cities that I load dynamically later. In this particular case typical site hiearchy of country pages with links to all cities is not an option. Any recommendations on how best to implement?0 -
We're planning a major website redevelopment - SEO Considerations?
We're currently planning a website rehaul, with a new site to be designed and implemented on our existing Drupal 7 platform. I've outlined the following areas to consider: Listing out top content by traffic, conversions, ranking and bounce rates to ensure top content continues to get relevant links throughout site (in particular high internal PA links!). Maintaining a specific KW target for each page Ensuring on-page SEO guidelines remain (i.e. img alt tags, headings and page titles) Having a low page load speed Ensuring architecture of site is built around our keyword methodology What else I need to be aware of? I'm predicting a drop in traffic as this tends to follow redesigns but looking to make this as minimal as possible. Sam
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Sam.at.Moz0 -
Best practices for structuring an ecommerce site
I'm revamping my wife's ecommerce site. It is currently a very low traffic website that is not indexed very well in Google. So, my plan is to restructure it based upon the best practices that helps me avoid duplicate content penalties, and easier to index strategies. The store has about 7 types of products. Each product has approximately 30 different size variations that are sometimes specifically searched for. For example: 20x10x1 air filters, 20x10x2 air filters, 20x10x1 allergy reducing air filters, etc So, is it best for me to create 7 different products with 30 different size variations (size selector at the product level that changes the price) or is it better to create 210 different product pages, one for each style/size?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | pherbio0 -
Can SPA (single page architecture) websites be SEO friendly?
What is the latest consensus on SPA web design architecture and SEO friendliness?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Robo342
By SPA, I mean rather than each page having its own unique URL, instead each page would have an anchor added to a single URL. For example: Before SPA: website.com/home/green.html After SPA: website.com/home.html#green (rendering a new page using AJAX) It would seem that Google may have trouble differentiating pages with unique anchors vs unique URLs, but have they adapted to this style of architecture yet? Are there any best practices around this? Some developers are moving to SPA as the state of the art in architecture (e.g., see this thread: http://www.linkedin.com/groups/Google-crawling-websites-built-using-121615.S.219120193), and yet there may be a conflict between SPA and SEO. Any thoughts or black and white answers? Thanks.0 -
What are best practices for anchor text diversification in a post-penguin world?
There is growing concern for this topic as the best white-hat tactics generally allow you to choose your own anchor text (eg. guest posting and infographics)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | LaunchAStartup0 -
Redirecting multiple websites to a single website
I've been trying to run several truck accessory affiliate websites for a quite a while now. I've recently decided to combine all of my affiliate websites into a single community website. This way I'll be able to focus all my energy and link building into a single place and build up a single brand. My question is, how many websites do I try to redirect to the new website at a time? Do I need to spread this out? Or is it ok if I move all of my content and websites at a single time? I have around 30 websites that I could move to this new domain. Thanks! Andy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | daenterpri0