Expanding into new country & what to do with Seach Console
-
Hi!
We're looking at expanding into new countries, and will probably go with the subfolder route. Our main website is focused on Ireland on Search Console (and probably always will be), so will this be affected if I add subfolders onto the end? And can I shop the main site from crawling the new URL's in the subfolder.
So if www.example.com is focused on Ireland, and we add www.example.com/de for Germany, can we let Google know not to index the German pages in Ireland? And will I need to do anything to the Irish version (e.g, change www.example.com to www.example.com/ie)
-
Thanks Rajesh! Very clear, will pass that on to developers!
-
As stated above, hreflangs would be your best bet. You can register sub-folders in Search Console as separate properties and you can use the global / regional targeting settings there to let Google know your targeting preferences (e.g: for /de folder, as a separate property registered in GSC, set it to German / Germany)
In terms of your main search console property (.com without any subfolders) - I would not recommend changing the targeting settings there, as that property also contains the subfolder properties so all kinds of issues could be caused
If in doubt then stick with the hreflangs like Rajesh has said
-
First you don't need to change domain for Ireland. You need to add some tags for your main and sub-folder websites like this -
1- Add lang tag on header like this -
For Germany -
if you are using English language, use this tag OR if you are using Irish language, use this - <html lang="de-de"></html lang="de-de">For Ireland -
if you are using English language, use this tag <html lang="en-ie">OR if you are using Irish language, use this - <html lang="ga-ie"></html lang="ga-ie"></html lang="en-ie">2- Add alternate tag like this -
For Germany - (example for English version)For Ireland - - (example for English version)
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 & Duplicate Content: ccTLD, hreflang, and relcanonical tags
Hi Everyone, I have a client that has two sites (example.com & example.co.uk) each have the same English content, but no hreflang or rel="canonical" tags in place. Would this be interpreted as duplicate content? They haven't changed the copy to speak to specific regions, but have tried targeting the UK with a ccTLD. I've taken a look at some other comparable question on MOZ like this post - > https://moz.com/community/q/international-hreflang-will-this-handle-duplicate-content where one of the answers says **"If no translation is happening within a geo-targeted site, HREFLANG is not necessary." **If hreflang tags are not necessary, then would I need rel="canonical" to avoid duplicate content? Thanks for taking the time to help a fellow SEO out.
International SEO | | ccox10 -
How can I restrict the domains country by country?
Hello, I have Two Domains one is xyz.co.uk and other is xyz.com Now, my main target for .com is United States, and I don't want to open that .com domain in any other country especially India. The same with the .co.uk, I dont want to open .co.uk in other countries. I did it with some developer help but it gave me redirected error in Google Webmaster. Can anyone please guide me how I can do this the proper way ? And Other issues is, how can I implement ,if any user in United States open xyz.co.uk than he should redirect to the .com version. Thank you.
International SEO | | AmitTulsiyani0 -
Google Analytics - whats best way to set up to track users on geotargeted sub folders & tlds ?
Hi ive got a client site just about to launch into 2 new territories (German Germany & Turkish Turkey) The existing/main site is in English & targets English keyword usage globally via domain.com and is not geotargeted in anyway. Analytics is set up for this on domain.com and tracking accurately and GWT is set up too. Now we have added a Turkish language site via a subfolder (domain.com/tr/) & the German site (domsain.com/de/) BUT this German subfolder will be domain mapped to a TLD (domain.de) eventually.. So what's best way to configure/set up Google Analytics to track users so can view the international sub-sites as individual sites etc ? (& GWT for that matter) ? Also after doing this i will be setting up in Moz Anlytics as separate campaigns so how do you set up so only draws in the Analytics data specific to these sub-folders ? All Best Dan
International SEO | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
Why would a site lose rankings in U.S while maintaining rankings in other English locations (Canada & Australia)
What would cause a site to lose ranking in the U.S while maintaining top (1st page) positions in other English results countries such as Canada or Australia? Is this purely penguin related because of location of backlinks or are there other significant factors that could be in play? Would this rule out Panda as a cause because it's simply an "English language" targeted algo and not location dependent like backlinks (penguin)? Appreciate any insights
International SEO | | ResumeGenius0 -
Country name displayed after domain name in google SERP
our online shop targets clients in the US and worldwide (same URL - no subdirectories - currency changes based on IP). when searching in google.ie or google.no for our site google displays in the SERPS "US" or "United States" after the URL for our site, but for most other US competitors it does not show the country in the SERPS. I deleted our google places listing 2 weeks ago, since I suspected it may be related, but no change so far. In google webmaster tools we have targeted the shop domain to United States, which may be another factor. Unfortunately we can not undo this setting since without it our google US ranking for the most relevant competitive keyword drops from position 8 to position 100+. Server location is in Germany which despite lots of US links and US contact info and USD currency appparently makes google think that the site is not targeting the US. Does anybody know what triggers the country name in the SERPS (google places or webmaster tools or other) and can give advice if there is any way to get rid of it.
International SEO | | lcourse0 -
Does hosting content for one country in another country negatively affect its SEO ranking?
Hi, my content is primarily for Australian audiences, however due to a general lack of competitive hosting infrastructure, I tend to host a lot of content in the US. A 2007 article I read implied that it's not a good idea - does anyone have a definitive 2011 answer? Cheers, Jez
International SEO | | jez0000 -
What is the best SEO site structure for multi country targeting?
Hi There, We are an online retailer with four (and soon to be five) distinct geographic target markets (we have physical operations in both the UK and New Zealand). We currently target these markets like this: United Kingdom (www.natureshop.co.uk) New Zealand (www.natureshop.co.nz) Australia (www.natureshop.com/au) - using a google web master tools geo targeted folder United States (www.natureshop.com) - using google web master tools geo targeted domain Germany (www.natureshop.de) - in german and yet to be launched as full site We have various issues we want to address. The key one is this: our www.natureshop.co.uk website was adversely affected by the panda update on April 12. We had some external seo firms work on this site for us and unfortunately the links they gained for us were very low quality, from sometimes spammy sites and also "keyword" packed with very littlle anchor text variation. Our other websites (the .co.nz and .com) moved up after the updates so I can only assume our external seo consultants were responsible for this. I have since managed to get them to remove around 70% of these links and we have bought all seo efforts back in house again. I have also worked to improve the quality of our content on this site and I have 404'ed the six worst affected pages (the ones that had far too many single phrase anchor text links coming into them). We have however not budged much in our rankings (we have made some small gains but not a lot). Our other weakness's are not the fastest page load times and some "thin" content. We are on the cusp (around 4 weeks away) of deploying a brand new platform using asp.net MVP with N2 and this looks like it will address our page load speed issues. We also have been working hard on our content building and I believe we will address that as well with this release. Sorry for the long build up, however I felt some background was needed to get to my questions. My questions are: Do you think we are best to proceed with trying to get our www.natureshop.co.uk website out of the panda trap or should we consider deploying a new version of the site on www.natureshop.com/uk/ (geo targeted to the UK)? If we are to do this should we do the same for New Zealand and Germany and redirect the existing domains to the new geo targeted folders? If we do this should we redirect the natureshop.co.uk pages to the new www.natureshop.com/uk/ pages or will this simply pass on the panda "penalty". Will this model build stronger authority on the .com domain that benefit all of the geo targeted sub folders or does it not work this way? Finally can we deploy the same pages and content on the different geo targeted sub folders (with some subtle regional variations of spelling and language) or will this result in a duplicate content penalty? Thank you very much in advance to all of you and I apologise for the length and complexity of the question. Kind Regards
International SEO | | ConradC
Conrad Cranfield
Founder: Nature Shop Ltd0 -
Google Directory Listings in multiple countries
I was doing some competitive link research and one of the sites I was looking at has links in multiple Google Directories of other countries. By that I mean a listing in: www.google.pl www.google.hu www.google.pt www.google.co.nz www.google.ie www.google.com.sg www.google.vg and a few others It seemed kind of odd because the site getting these links is a ranch in Oregon. Here is the Open Site Explorer info. I'm a bit of a noob so I've never seen this before. Are these kinds of links worth pursuing? If so, how did they get these multiple listings?
International SEO | | AaronParrish0