What's the Best Strategy for Multiregional Targeting for Single Language?
-
I have a service based client who is based in the US but wants to expand to audiences in Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom. Currently, all the content is in American English with international targeting in Google Search Console set to the US. I know that is going to have to change, but I'm unsure of the best strategy. Right now there are a few basic strategies in my head.
- Remove International Targeting in GSC and let her rip
- Remove International Targeting in GSC, install copies of the site on subfolders /au/, /ca/, and /uk/, add hreflang tags, and add canonicals pointing back to original
- Remove International Targeting in GSC, install copies of the site on subfolders /au/, /ca/, and /uk/, add hreflang tags, and risk duplicate content
- Have independent writers overcharge for English translations into different dialects and add hreflang tags
It's hard to come up with a perfect solution for content differentiation by region in order to implement hreflang tags with a region (en-au, en-ca, en-gb).
Remove International Targeting in GSC and let her rip
This one is pretty simple. However, I am completely unsure of its effectiveness.
Remove International Targeting in GSC, install copies of the site on subfolders /au/, /ca/, and /uk/, add hreflang tags, and add canonicals pointing back to original
The point of adding canonicals is to avoid the duplicate content, but then my new subfolders do not get indexed. I'm unsure of what type of exposure these URLs would receive or how they would be valuable.
Remove International Targeting in GSC, install copies of the site on subfolders /au/, /ca/, and /uk/, add hreflang tags, and risk duplicate content
High risk of a penalty with duplicate content, but my targeting will be the most efficient.
Have independent writers overcharge for English translations into different dialects and add hreflang tags
This is probably the safest bet, takes the longest, and costs the most money. However, how different will the content actually be if I change truck to lorry, trunk to boot, and optimization to optimisation?
Maybe I'm missing something, but this conundrum seems extremely difficult. Weighing the cost, time, and possible result is challenging. Hit me with your best answer and thanks for taking a look at someone else's problem.
-
The correct answer is
- Quit geo-targeting in GSC
- Implement hreflang annotations. Their same implementation will avoid the risk of Google considering the "duplicate" versions as duplicate
- DON'T CANONICALIZE ALL THE VERSION TO ONE YOU CONSIDER CANONICAL. Doing that will screw all the hreflang implementation and the other countries will always see the canonical Url (for instance the US one in the UK).
- Instead, work on canonicalization but version by version as if they were (and actually they are) different websites. This means self-canonicalization and/or canonicalization toward another url in case, you know, of parameters et al
- Try the most you can to localize the different versions of English you're using. This will improve the localization signals for Google (and will be appreciated by your users). However, if you cannot afford to do that, you're still safe because of the hreflang.
- Remember that the href of the hreflang annotations must always present a canonical Url. So, if you implement the hreflang in a canonicalized Url, its href will need to present the canonical url of the canonicalized page the hreflang is being implemented. If you don't do this, you will see "no-return" error in Search Console, and Google won't consider your hreflang implementation and, yes, it will start considering your versions duplicated content.
-
Hey Charles,
We're working on the same question, though the website for us already has separate TLDs for various countries (.com for US, .ca for Canada, etc.)
Most of our work re: SEO has been focused on US - nationally, regionally and locally - so international is a bit new for us, but something that I've found a lot of consistent information on.
On to your questions (from my point of view, as you wish to take it)...
#2 and #3 options are what I would recommend doing from a technical/setup perspective, with option #4 being the recommended approach from a linguistics perspective.
There are references to use of canonicals for internationalization in GSC help docs, that would lead you to potentially want to do #2 vs #3; however, I've read a lot of input on this topic over the past few weeks, and non of the recommendations I've seen thus far say that canonicals are required.
At the end of the day, I'd lean to implementing option #3 first (remove int. targeting in GSC, do your subfolders per country, add hreflang tags and do not do canonical referencing to US version).
Depending on the outcomes from that, I'd potentially look into adding the canonicals to further over the specificity needle (I'd test this on a few pages first to see what the impact of this change would look like).
In addition to #3, I'd also go for manual translations of content by translators, allowing room for creating more "uniqueness" in terms of localization of how the content is interpreted, as well as the fact that it's native to the country for that version of the page (if I had the means and control to do so). This obviously can be a huge thing, as you mentioned re: cost, but would ultimately provide the best UX, IMO.
One possible cost-effective route for doing the translation would be to tap into local university students (junior/senior level?) via professors, and have them do for credit and/or less pay than you would a professional translator. If time isn't a huge issue for this portion, I think you could have the best of all worlds from this.
Hope this helps.
Cheers
Kyle
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
-
MultiRegional site indexing problems
Hello there!!! I have a multiregional site and dealing with some indexing problems. The problem is that google have only indexed our USA site We have: -set up hreflang tags -set up specific subdirectories https://www.website.com/ (en-us site and our main site) https://www.website.com/en-gb https://www.website.com/en-ca https://www.website.com/fr-ca https://www.website.com/fr-fr https://www.website.com/es-es ..... -set up automatic GEO IP redirects (301 redirects) -created a sitemap index and a different sitemap for each regional site -created a google webmaster's tool for each country targeted -created translations for each different language and added some canonicals to the US' site when using English content. The problem is that Google is not indexing our regional sites. I think that the problem is that google is using a US bot when spidering the site, so it will be always redirect to the US version by a 301 redirect. I have used fetch as google with some of our regional folders and asked for "Indexing requested for URL and linked pages", but still waiting. Some ideas?? changing 301 to 302? Really don't know what to do. Thank you so much!!
International SEO | | Alejandrodurn0 -
International targeting
I'm offering an international service to any country from any destination, The website main language is English and i have 4 other languages as subdirectories, https://beassistance.com https://beassistance.com/de/ https://beassistance.com/es/ https://beassistance.com/fr/ https://beassistance.com/ru/ I'm looking to target by language not country, Should i choose "unlisted" for all the subdirectories? my second question regards the meta tags , my current meta tag rel="alternate" hreflang="ru-ru" href="https://beassistance.com/ru/" /> And i'm thinking about using rel="alternate" hreflang="ru" href="https://beassistance.com/ru/" /> Is that best practice to target by the language? Update I already have Hreflang Sitemap <urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9" <br="">xmlns:xhtml="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
International SEO | | MTBE
<url><loc>https://beassistance.com</loc>
<xhtml:link<br>rel="alternate"
hreflang="en"
href="https://beassistance.com"
/>
<xhtml:link<br>rel="alternate"
hreflang="de"
href="https://beassistance.com/de/"
/>
<xhtml:link<br>rel="alternate"
hreflang="fr"
href="https://beassistance.com/fr/"
/>
<xhtml:link<br>rel="alternate"
hreflang="es"
href="https://beassistance.com/es/"
/>
<xhtml:link<br>rel="alternate"
hreflang="ru"
href="https://beassistance.com/ru/"
/></xhtml:link<br></xhtml:link<br></xhtml:link<br></xhtml:link<br></xhtml:link<br></url></urlset> <url><loc>https://beassistance.com/de/</loc>
<xhtml:link<br>rel="alternate"
hreflang="en"
href="https://beassistance.com"
/>
<xhtml:link<br>rel="alternate"
hreflang="de"
href="https://beassistance.com/de/"
/>
<xhtml:link<br>rel="alternate"
hreflang="fr"
href="https://beassistance.com/fr/"
/>
<xhtml:link<br>rel="alternate"
hreflang="es"
href="https://beassistance.com/es/"
/>
<xhtml:link<br>rel="alternate"
hreflang="ru"
href="https://beassistance.com/ru/"
/></xhtml:link<br></xhtml:link<br></xhtml:link<br></xhtml:link<br></xhtml:link<br></url> <url><loc>https://beassistance.com/fr/</loc>
<xhtml:link<br>rel="alternate"
hreflang="en"
href="https://beassistance.com"
/>
<xhtml:link<br>rel="alternate"
hreflang="de"
href="https://beassistance.com/de/"
/>
<xhtml:link<br>rel="alternate"
hreflang="fr"
href="https://beassistance.com/fr/"
/>
<xhtml:link<br>rel="alternate"
hreflang="es"
href="https://beassistance.com/es/"
/>
<xhtml:link<br>rel="alternate"
hreflang="ru"
href="https://beassistance.com/ru/"
/></xhtml:link<br></xhtml:link<br></xhtml:link<br></xhtml:link<br></xhtml:link<br></url> <url><loc>https://beassistance.com/es/</loc>
<xhtml:link<br>rel="alternate"
hreflang="en"
href="https://beassistance.com"
/>
<xhtml:link<br>rel="alternate"
hreflang="de"
href="https://beassistance.com/de/"
/>
<xhtml:link<br>rel="alternate"
hreflang="fr"
href="https://beassistance.com/fr/"
/>
<xhtml:link<br>rel="alternate"
hreflang="es"
href="https://beassistance.com/es/"
/>
<xhtml:link<br>rel="alternate"
hreflang="ru"
href="https://beassistance.com/ru/"
/></xhtml:link<br></xhtml:link<br></xhtml:link<br></xhtml:link<br></xhtml:link<br></url> <url><loc>https://beassistance.com/ru/</loc>
<xhtml:link<br>rel="alternate"
hreflang="en"
href="https://beassistance.com"
/>
<xhtml:link<br>rel="alternate"
hreflang="de"
href="https://beassistance.com/de/"
/>
<xhtml:link<br>rel="alternate"
hreflang="fr"
href="https://beassistance.com/fr/"
/>
<xhtml:link<br>rel="alternate"
hreflang="es"
href="https://beassistance.com/es/"
/>
<xhtml:link<br>rel="alternate"
hreflang="ru"
href="https://beassistance.com/ru/"
/></xhtml:link<br></xhtml:link<br></xhtml:link<br></xhtml:link<br></xhtml:link<br></url>1 -
If domain mapping subfolders to TLD's is it perceived as a fully separate entity/site therafter ?
Hi I take it once you have domain mapped a country specific subfolder to a country specific TLD (for better local region targeting reasons) Google perceives it as a completely separate entity and it no longer shares any of the parent sites domain benefits (such as domain authority etc) so from that point on requires its own dedicated link building etc ? All Best Dan
International SEO | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
What are the best practices for translation of city/state names for international SEO? (ie. New York in English vs. Nueva York in Spanish)
I'm working on international SEO / translation of a global travel site. While we have a global keyword research and translation strategy in process for each market they serve, I've run into a unique question. Overall, we are translating (and localizing) content for each market but aren't sure what to do with location names. Each country/state has cities and locations that have their own dedicated pages. I see three options for these location names (when titling a page and writing content): keep them in English, translate the names in the market languages, or use a combination of the two. The challenge with altering the location names to the market languages is that they are truly not known by those names. Though there are some instances where it may make sense…for instance **New York **in Spanish would be "Nueva York" with **‘**Nueva' being the Spanish translation of ‘new’. There are other instances, where no translation exists. If you’ve had a similar experience I'd love to hear your approach/recommendation.
International SEO | | JonClark150 -
302 Redirect based on Language Detection
Hi, Our online application, magento e-commerce, has a script that detects browser language and does a 302 redirection to the language of choice ... www.mydomain.com/en/ or www.mydomain.com/es/ What's the SEO angle on this? Should I be concerned? thanks, Ben
International SEO | | bjs20100 -
Can anyone guide me best ways to generate customer leads through the SEO Process
I want to generate leads for my client through SEO process. I have involved all kind of link baits like articles, blogs, infographics, directory submissions etc.,Basically the client is B2B service provider like payroll services, Labor compliance and Staffing Solutions to various segments
International SEO | | Virrtuo0 -
What’s the best way to convert ccTLD to global TLD?
We started out as a Canadian site targeting Canadian users. Now our site http://iCraft.ca has a lot of international buyers and sellers and .ca TLD doesn’t make sense anymore, as we are not performing well on Google.com We are doing a complete site redesign right now, which will address a lot of coding and content specific issues, but we suspect .ca domain will always hold us back in achieving good positions on Google.com. Since Google doesn’t allow ccTLDs to set geo-targeting, what are our options? a) Migrating to a brand new .com site and setting up 301 redirects for all links from iCraft.ca. Would we lose all rankings in this example and pretty much start building them from scratch? Or would PR be transferred page by page from one domain to another through 301 redirects? b) Setup a separate .com site with mirrored content to target global audience and keep .ca site to target Canada. Not sure if splitting PR for the same pages between 2 sites is a good idea. Also, how would you address duplicate content properly in our situation?
International SEO | | MarinaUX
In this video that I found here on forum http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ets7nHOV1Yo Matt Cutts says that it’s ok to have duplicate content on different ccTLDs, but he says - make sure you localize your content on those domains. What if you can’t? Most of the content on our site is meant for anyone, not just Canadian users. So, for the most part, we’d have exactly same content on .com site, as we have on .ca site. We could display prices in different currencies on product pages, but the rest of the content – blogs, forum etc. are not country-specific and can’t be localized easily. Also, it’s not clear from the video if all mirrored sites should sit on the same domain name for each country, like example.com and example.ca or is it ok to have example.com and icraft.ca? c) Is there a better option? Thanks for your help!0 -
Geo Targeting for Similar Sites to Specific Countries in Google's Index
I was hoping Webmaster Tools geo targeting would prevent this - I'm seeing in select google searches several pages indexed from our Australian website. Both sites have unique TLDs: barraguard.com barraguard.com.au I've attached a screenshot as an example. The sites are both hosted here in the U.S. at our data center. Are there any other methods for preventing Google and other search engines from indexing the barraguard.com.au pages in searches that take place in the U.S.? dSzoh.jpg
International SEO | | longbeachjamie0