Will German meta data help an English USA-based site get found in Germany?
-
I think I already know the answer to this, but I'd love a second opinion.
If you add German meta data to some web pages will it help those pages turn up in search results in Germany?I'm assuming not. It's an English, USA based site, doing well here for English searches - and I don't want to mess that up.
A German site is being planned, but this client is hoping the English site could be found in the meantime.
~Caro
-
Thank you Erica, that confirms my suspicions.
-
You'll likely end up confusing Google about which country it should rank the site in, and it could negatively affect your US rankings and still get you no traction in Germany. You really need to build a German site.
-
Thank You Gyorgy,
Our long term plan is to have a complete German Website optimized for german and on a german domain. But my client was hoping that, in the meantime, we could get our english pages found in Germany, and without risking our USA SEO achievements.
-
I assume the US site has a target country specified in its Google Search Console. The answer depends on the competition and the SEO budget, but I suspect that you'd have a hard time making those German language pages ranking in google.de.
If you have an international SEO strategy to use one domain for every country (e.g. /us/ and /de/ folders) then it's a different story.
If you'd have only a few German pages on the US website, then don't bother. Launch the German website on a German domain and start a separate SEO campaign for the German market.
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
-
On Site Errors
HI Folks I'm monitoring a small Australian site bluetea.com.au . Currently I have a SEO specialist who does month onsite maintenance work for this site. However each month I continue to see errors in webmaster tools... as an example, currently webmaster tools suggest we have 21 short meta dic and 26 duplicate title tags..... Examples given are Short Meta Discp /cleaning-products-and-our-health/toxic-cleaners/ /colour-consultant/fushia-door/ /portfolio/parisian-apartment-black-kitchen/parisian-apartment-black-kitchen/ Duplicate title tags <a id="zip_0-anchor" class="zippedsection_title"></a>concrete-kitchen | Blue Tea Kitchen Designs /kitchen-trends-and-material-innovation/concrete-kitchen-2//kitchen-trends-for-2013/concrete-kitchen/<a id="zip_1-anchor" class="zippedsection_title"></a>Potts Point Kitchen | Blue Tea Kitchen Designs/portfolio/potts-point-kitchen//portfolio/potts-point-kitchen/pott-point-kitchen/My SEO tells me that he has solved all these issues but after one or two months they still remain in webmaster tools... can anybody help me understand why?Thank you
On-Page Optimization | | PHD0 -
Moving content from one site to another
I have a couple established, content rich sites with some content that I would like to move over to a new site. My question is what steps I need to take to ensure that neither my older sites nor newer sites are penalized for duplicate content. The purpose for moving the content is to add some depth to the new site for users, as well as possibly optimize it all for SEO. There is a fair amount of content involved, about 50 posts and pages per site, so I'd like to know if the potential problem with duplicate content might be serious enough that I should think twice. What do you recommend?
On-Page Optimization | | LeeAbrahamson0 -
Question Regarding Site Structure
I have a quick question regarding site structure that I hope some of you guys could share your opinion on. I watched a white board friday from Rand a little while back where he explains that you need to try and make the site structure as flat as possible. He was saying try having no more that 3 links from the home page to get to the desired location. My question is this. I am looking at a site that has a pretty complex structure that I am trying to clear up as much as possible without making any of there rankings suffer. So they have www.domian.com/general-category/district/town/ and sometimes www.domian.com/general-category/district/town/item-specifics Now i know it is not good as it is, but they are dubious about changing too much as they have some serious traffic coming to the site. But, my question is that all the pages can be found from the home page through the menus/sub-menus. But do these count as a direct link from the home page. Also a problem is that because of this mozbot has detected that there are too many links from the home page and suggested that it should be below 200. But should I make these menu links no index or no follow. Obviously, by doing this, if the link does count as direct from the home page it wont after doing this. Thanks Jenson
On-Page Optimization | | jensonseo0 -
Meta Keywords, Should I just remove them?
howdy guys, I am helping my father out with his SEO for his company. I am taking over the SEO helm so to speak and have to do a complete on site make over( offsite as well eventually soon) He has on every page meta keywords that are just stuffed with "money keywords" and they are the same on every page, Should i just delete them entirely and leave that attribute blank? Hope to hear back soon, thanks.
On-Page Optimization | | david3050 -
Why has my site gone from 3rd to 21st in Google...HELP
Hi there, Web Address: www.websitedesign-miltonkeynes.com Okay I stared my own web development business about 8 - 9 months ago and decided that I was going to target a small number of local keywords that were relevant to my business and geographical area. So I decided to target the keywords below and and started to get good traffic, I never have bought links and have not copied any content although I know i should try and add more content to my website. mk web design, software Milton Keynes, web design Milton Keynes, web design mk, web designer Milton Keynes, web designers Milton Keynes & website design milton Keynes However recently my website has dropped massively in the SERP's and wanted to know what has caused this (i know Penguin) and what I can do to improve. I have listed below my rankings to show you the drop: 24th April 2012 15th May 2012 mk web design 3 11 software milton keynes 1 8 web design milton Keynes 12 50 web design mk 5 53 web designer milton keynes 10 0 web designers milton keynes 6 37 website design milton keynes 3 21 I decided to change my homepage Page Title a week ago to make sound less spammy but this has made no difference and wanted some help on what has happened so i do not do this again and what I can do to improve. Thanks in advance. Darren Bowden
On-Page Optimization | | Tarqs0 -
Do I need a Meta description for every page?
HI Guys, We have just developed a new website and I'm looking to add meta descriptions with relevant key words to the pages . As the site has over 80 pages it is quite an undertaking and i was wandering if pages, such as the shopping cart and FAQ's etc, need meta descriptions as well? Thanks in advance : ) Pete
On-Page Optimization | | dawsonski0 -
Is is it true that Google will not penalize duplicated content found in UL and LI tags?
I've read in a few places now that if you absolutely have to use a key term several times in a piece of copy, then it is preferable to use li and ul tags, as google will not penalise excessive density of keywords found in these tags. Does anyone know if there is any truth in this?
On-Page Optimization | | jdjamie0 -
Keyword use in meta description
Anyone know if its important that the target keyword is used AT THE START of the meta description, or is it enough that it is anywhere in the description...? I have a few big ones that are at the end of the description and I was wondering if I should move them up to the front... Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | inhouseninja0