Multi Language / target market site
-
What is the best way to deal with multiple languages and multiple target markets? Is it better to use directories or sub-domains:
Or
Also should I use language meta tags to help the different language versions rank in different geographic areas e.g.
Are there any examples of where this has been done well?
-
I would say... Best Answer!
Great job Robert
-
This seems to be the question of the day. It was answered well by Rand about a year ago in this White Board Friday
As to directories or subdomains, etc. this answers in variables as opposed to do this or do that. You should be able to decide after reading or watching.
As to language meta tags, yes you want to use them and you want to target the country in your WMT as well. Especially with language variants like US vs. UK.
Best
-
Go subfolders over subdomains if they are your options...
Have a look at apple.com - e.g.
-
Hi Rodney,
The best... Well I would say to use dedicated ccTLD for each of the target zones.
Still, if you want to go for one domain, then I would go for sub-folders (this is how we geo-target).
As fair as I know, using sub-domains is less stronger from SEO point of view, you can transfer more "juice" to sub-folders than to sub-domains.
I hope it helped,
Istvan
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
-
Managing multi-regional and multilingual sites
Hello, It's been a year since we launched our website and at first, we did it with a domain name called misitio.co. We have just bought the domain name mysite.com and my doubts are what should I do with the domains I have in other countries, for example .mx .br, should I redirect them to mysite.com or manage them independently? Thank you very much
International SEO | | Isabelcabreromunoz1 -
International Site Merge
Hello, I've never had to deal with an international site before, let alone a site merge. These are two large sites, we've got a few smaller old sites that are currently redirecting to the main site (UK). We are looking at moving all the sites to the .com domain. We are also currently not using SSL (on the main pages, we are on the checkout). We also have a m.domain.com site. Are there any good guides on what needs to be done? My current strategy would be: Convert site to SSL. Mobile site and desktop site must be on the same domain. Start link building to the .com domain now (weaker link profile currently) What's the best way of handling the domains and languages? We're currently using a .tv site for the UK and .com for the US. I was thinking, and please correct me if i'm wrong, that we move the US site from domain.com to domain.com/us/ and the domain.tv to domain.com/en/ Would I then reference these by the following: What would we then do with the canonicals? Would they just reference their "local" version? Any advice or articles to read would really be appreciated.
International SEO | | ThomasHarvey0 -
Optimizing for 3 international sites, how to avoid getting into trouble
Hi Guys As a newbie, I want to avoid any penalties or mistakes as possible that will be due to unknown and have taken some steps to educate myself around international sites and multiple domains. our aim was to target new zealand first and then branch out. Whilst we are pondering the NZ site and writing fresh unique articles for the site and the blog. And besides making the currency, language more relevant to these domains, is there anything else I could work on? I thought about making the meta tags different for the home page and adding Australia etc If we are going to spend time growing the site organically I thought I would make the most of spending the time growing all three together.... Any recommendations on how to get started and optimize the 3 alot better? Thanks
International SEO | | edward-may1 -
Same language manage many country
Hello, I would like to hear how you would handle the following situation. I make website for people with a .be domain that also want to score in .nl . Both countries speak dutch. There are however slight variations between the two countries. For some it does not matter for others it can be handy. Ex. A specific product might be called diffrent in one country then the other. The main problem is for those that have a .be domain will not score on a .nl domain and visa versa. This due geo targeting. What would you do? Imagine we already have a .be domain (.be == belgium, .nl==Netherland both speak dutch) A: Buy a .nl and copy and show the same content on .nl as .be
International SEO | | nono_1974
B: Buy a .nl and make new content (lots of work)
😄 Buy a .EU, .com adres and Geotarget nl.somedomain.eu , be.somedomain.eu . But what about the content The main problem is double content and targeting the two countries.0 -
Multi regional + multi lingual URLs
We have made the decision to start using a new ecommerce platform, which means we will have to migrate our existing webshops. Some of our new customers will be launched on the new platform straight away. Some limitations we used to have when it comes to URL structure have mostly been lifted, so I've been thinking what the perfect URL would be in terms of SEO. Since we mostly work for pan European customers, the multi regional and multi lingual aspect is a very important one, as it's important to rank well in all countries. I've always figured that even though it would be good to integrate country into the URL somehow to indicate to the engines that this content is meant for a certain country (either by using local TLDs or indicating using Webmaster Tools that a certain subdirectory or subdomain is targeting a country specifically), there are multiple countries with the same language (for instance, they speak French in France but also in Belgium), which could cause duplicate content issues: www.webshop.com/be/fr/french-product-name
International SEO | | DocdataCommerce
www.webshop.com/fr/fr/french-product-name I guess it won't matter much whether you use fr.webshop.com, www.webshop.com/fr or www.webshop.fr, it's mostly the decision IF you want to include country somehow. What do you all think, is this important? Or is the multi lingual component enough for pages to rank well in several countries? For instance, if we were to use the language component only: www.webshop.com/fr/french-product-name Would this have the potential to rank well in both the French speaking part of Belgium, as well as France? Michel0 -
Geotargeting two locations using root and /country
Hello, I am in the process of turning my UK targeted website into a global website in multiple languages. I will be using the new HREFLANG tag but I'm wondering about geotargeting. I've set this up in Webmaster Tools as: example.com = UK content
International SEO | | Seaward-Group
example.com/us = US content
example.com/de = German content
example.com/es = Spanish content
example.com/fr = French content
example.com/it = Italian content
example.com/nl = Dutch content Will the root UK content override the following sub directories that are set as a different location because its not /uk? Thank you.0 -
How can I see what my web site looks like from a different country?
I've tried a few proxy tools to try to see how my site looks from other global locations, but haven't found one that works very well yet -- or a list of reliable proxies around the world. I need to do this to test various geo-targetted ads and other optimizations. Can anyone make a recommendation? Thanks!
International SEO | | Dennis-529610 -
International SEO - auto geo-targetting
I read with interest the recent post on international SEO and the top level domain architecture approaches to local content: http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/folders-vs-subdomains-vs-cctld-in-international-seo-an-overview#jtc135670 The issue I have is a little more complex: The business sells a wide variety of products (37) but one is by far and away the biggest and most popular. This means that due to the link profile of the various country sites and HQ site, search engines categorise the site according to this product (this is easily seen with the Google Adplanner) and the other product lines suffer as a result. The current architecture is to have a .com site and then individual ccTLD country sites, again with all products on each site. This creates an issue as in most countries the brand is not strong (compared to the keyword names and search volumes of the products) and so it is not that effective in generating organic traffic. The .com hogs much of the inbound links and the country sites themselves are not that well optimised for a number of reasons. A proposed solution has been to leverage the strength of the .com and the search volume for the product names, and to produce thematic sites based on each product: productA.brand.com
International SEO | | StevieCC
productB.brand.com
productC.brand.com In this way, the sites, content and link profiles are aligned around the more desirable products and we can expect improved organic search performance as a result (or at least ensure relevant traffic finds the relevant content fast). In terms of providing localised content, the plan was to use content mirroring and to then assign each content mirror to a specific geo-location using the webmaster tools console (and other SE equivilents). This is shown I think in one of Rand's videos. ProductA.brand.com/de/de Germany site for product A with unique German content
ProductA.brand.com/fr/fr French site for product A with unique French content This makes economic sense to me as to utilise the ccTLDs would result in hundreds of separate sites with all the licence and server considerations that entails. For example, for product A alone we would have to produce: productA.brand.de
productA.brand.fr
productA.brand.cn
productA.brand.jp
ect ect ect This just would not be sustainable in license/server costs alone across 37 products and 24 countries. However, I saw in a recent presentation at SES London that (auto) geo-targeting is risky, often doesn't work well for SEO and can even be seen as cloaking. I think the above strategy could still work, but perhaps we should avoid the use of auto-geotargetting altogether and hope the search engines alone do their job in getting users to the right content as we optimise the unique content for each country (and if they don't, ensure our desgn, UX and country selectors do the job instead). SEO guru consensus is to use the ccTLD if you own it, but as described above, in the real world that just isn't possible or practical given the company's strategic position. Which leads to the final question- we do own the brand ccTLDs- if they are directed back to the content mirror for the country on the .com, is there any SEO benefit in doing so aside from directing back any link juice associated with the domain)?0