Does IP filtering have a negative impact on SEO?
-
If a large site has multiple regions (Australia, USA, UK, France), how will IP filtering to a particular area affect SEO.
e.g: Ilive in the UK an if I visit the said website I would automatically be redirected to the UK subfolder of the site whereas somebody searching in Australia would be redirected to the AUS folder.
Will there be any detrimental affect on SEO and will the search engines still be able to crawl the entire site no matter which data centre is being used?
-
Perfect, thank you both for your help.
-
I do this on most of my sites and haven't seen anything bad happen. In fact a quick trip to Google.fi (just to check) shows mysite.com/fi/ followed by mysite.com (with inline sitelinks) and then mysite.com/fi/page and mysite.com/page, so seems fine.
Other subfolders with less links going into them (Germany for example) have mysite.com and mysite.com/de/
So UK IP directs them to site.com/uk, AUS IP to site.com/aus, yeah?
A couple of considerations.
- Allow users to select what language they want once they're on the site (and make it obvious how to change). To get this to work make sure you check the referral header and if it's from site.com don't impliment the IP redirect.
Having a drop down in the header also means Google can get to all of your language subfolders.
- Set your targeted country in webmaster tools. You can do this for subfolders quite easily.
There should be no problem even with same language (English) content as long as you do this.
A bit of further reading for you
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2010/03/working-with-multi-regional-websites.html
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/new-info-from-google-and-yahoo-tilts-the-geotargeting-balance
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/international-seo-where-to-host-and-how-to-target-whiteboard-friday
If you need any specifics, let me know
-
I would never recommend multiple domains for the same content. it will generate duplicate content and will harm you more then help you.
I think you should do the following, check the IP look it up and then ASK! the user if he/she wants to go to the Australian version or stay at the American version. Or maybe have dynamic content that makes the user aware of the Australian office.
I would personally have all of the TLD's point to different sites with different content. That way you can GEO target, have the sites located localy and use local TLD's all of witch will help you out greatly in your SEO efforts.
Here's to hoping my reply made sense
-
Thanks for your response.
The site currently sits on a .com domain and is split by 8 regions all in English. They are looking to go into non-english speaking countries but not yet.
In Google.com.au when searching for the brand the .com version comes up top with United States next to the URL and the AUS part of the site is below, even though they are geo located. What they are thinking of doing is if they click on the USA link it will check to see if they are in Australia and forward them to the Australian sub-section.
There has been talk about ccTLDs but this would be a massive amount of work and is not currently possible due to the amount of duplicated work that would be involved from their point of view.
I am trying to back up any response that I give ensure the correct path is taken.
Would you recommend not to use IP filtering?
-
actually it will affect SEO in a positive way, since google will notice that the hosting server is located in the region it targets. BUT and there are several:
- You will have unhappy visitors, what if I visited your site while I was travelling in Spain, since I don't understand a word Spanish I wouldn't be a very happy camper.
- Google will only see one of your languages since it has a fixed IP.
The right way to do it:
- have a separate domain name for each country. Eg: Danish target group .dk English UK .co.uk English US .com German .de and so on
- Have a well written (translated by a translator not google translate) version for each language
- Give the visitor the opportunity to select the language he/she want to read, don't force them, guide them.
- have your different languages hosted in the target areas.
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 Mobile directory
I was wondering, What if I went with international sub-directory route (not ccTLD), for example: sitename.com/fr (fr being france)...But the question is, what's the best practice for MOBILE?sitename.com/mobile/frORsitename.com/fr/mobileORm.sitename.com/fr Again, ccTLD is not an option (currently, sites are in ccTLD but we are now transitioning to sub folders)Now, the next question is WHY is it best practices for it to be sitename.com/mobile/fr or sitename.com/fr/mobile or m.sitename.com/fr ? Please cite source. Thanks!
International SEO | | ggpaul5620 -
Is this hurting our SEO: company1.uk.com, company1.ru.com, company1.de.com, etc...?
Hello I work for a company which is using this kind of subdomains, that look like domains such as company1.uk.com, company1.ru.com, company1.de.com, but they are obviously not. We also own company1.com where the main site in English lies. We are one of the leader portals in one financial sector, and I am wondering if our SEO can be hurted by these fake "domains". I understand that we get some effect from the other domains hosted under this domain, and they are probably not as high quality as ours and they are probably unrelated. **- Would you recommend us to stop using these and use subdomains? So change: "company1.de.com" and use "de.company1.com" instead? Should we expect an increase in traffic after this change?** Any help will be appreciated.
International SEO | | forex-websites0 -
Need advice - International SEO strategy
Hello Moz ! I've been working for some months on a very interesting SEO project. I even opened some discussions on it (Multi Regional website - Folder strategy, Multi Company websites) with amazing feedbacks from the community. INITIAL PROJECT Set up an international website with different subsidiaries name, 1 person to manage the whole web, different locations / regions / languages and same products. INITIAL IDEAS For the beginning of the project we opened a main website in .com with subfolders for the other subsidiaries .com/es ... However our business is mainly in English so we decided to focus harder (closing the .com/uk, using a unic com/blog, opening more pages etc.) on the main domain in .com CURRENT ISSUE How to rank locally our services with: Main domain in .com Last Google updates against link building Most of customers searching in English in different countries Company working in more than 80 countries, through 13 subsidiaries **IDEA ** I was thinking about using our blog to focus 3 months on a thematic around one service (blog post with link to the services article on our website, guest blogging with link to a blog post, discussions on Linkedin around the thematics, etc.) QUESTION What could be the best strategy to rank locally our products in this case ? Hope you can share your best advise. I guess I'm not the unique one to face this issue. So it'll be good to make a good strategy for all our community 🙂 Tks a lot ! Florian
International SEO | | AymanH0 -
Backlinks to URLs with Language Parameters (for Chinese version of website) and SEO?
Hey all, We run a large eCommerce site in Australia and are preparing to launch to the Chinese market. Our site has been fully converted to Chinese and displays the version of the site detected as default in the user's browser unless they manually select otherwise. This is done by appending the parameter "?la=zh" onto the end of the URL, so for example the Chinese version would be: **www.example.com/australia?la=zh ** This then forces the product catalogue to display the relevant language version. My question is, for SEO purposes and back links in particular, since they aren't really a "true URL" (i.e: strictly speaking they aren't different "pages", just the same page being populated with different characters), would getting links from Chinese websites to the URL "www.example.com/australia?la=zh" really be viewed as any different from just "www.example.com/australia"? Do they pass the same amount of juice and is the difference detected by the engines (thinking mainly about Baidu in particular but of course Google as well)? Feedback from anyone with experience in SEO for multi-lingual sites would be much appreciated, thanks.
International SEO | | ExperienceOz0 -
Local SEO in Canada
I am trying to do some local optimization for some clients in Canada and it got me thinking, are there different best practices and different sites I want to use when working in Canada?
International SEO | | rbrianforrester0 -
Best way to enter Canada, SEO-wise?
We are thinking of splitting our e-Commerce site into a Canadian site w/ localized content, a potential French version and for additional relevance w/ localized currency. What would be the best way to go about this if we were wanting to gain traction as soon as possible on the organic side? Split the domain into domain.com and domain.com/ca/ (subfolders) Split the domain into ca.domain.com and domain.com Or split the domain into domain.com & wirelessemporium.ca Also, what are some key best practices we need to keep in mind to avoid duplicate content issues, etc?
International SEO | | eugeneku0 -
Does the location of my Domain Registrar affect SEO?
Does the location of my Domain Registrar affect SEO? For example, if my hosting company is in the U.S., but the domain registrar is overseas. Also, is it better to have both services be met by one company?
International SEO | | greenfoxone0 -
Targeting France Best SEO practices
I've got a client with a large e-commerce site with a .com domain and they want to start targeting France. Other than building another site in Frence with a .fr domain, what would be the best course of action? I know that the obvious option would be to build a separate French site with a .fr domain but is there another more cost effective way? I tried doing a search for one of their key-phrases using the Google Global app (Google.fr) and they are ranking in pretty much the same position as for Google.co.uk. Your thoughts on this would be greatly appreciated.
International SEO | | FishEyeSEO0