Google Webmaster Tools - International SEO Geo-Targeting site with Worldwide rankings
-
I have a client who already has rankings in the US & internationally.
The site is broken down like this:
- url.com (main site with USA & International Rankings)
- url.com/de
- url.com/de-english
- url.com/ng
- url.com/au
- url.com/ch
- url.com/ch-french
- url.com/etc
Each folder has it's own sitmap & relative content for it's respective country.
I am reading in google webmaster tools > site config > settings, the option under 'Learn More': "If you don't want your site associated with any location, select Unlisted."
- If I want to keep my client's international rankings the way it currently is on url.com, do NOT geo target to United States?
- So I select unlisted, right?
- Would I use geo targeting on the url.com/de, url.com/de-english, url.com/ng, url.com/au and so on?
-
Very interesting answers. Thanks to all of you!
-
I agree, trying to target many locals may stuff you up.
-
I agree. Let Google decide unless you need to target a specific country.
-
My tip here is to use this geotarget feature only, and if only, you want to target ONE specific country. Otherwise, let Google decide.
-
Here is where the traffic comes from.
-
60% of the quotes come from people in the United States
-
40% of the quotes come from people in their own country, not usa.
It sounds as 'if' I GEO target url.com to US (this has the rankings), my international keywords will disappear because I am telling google that url.com is only in the US. 40% of my traffic would go away by geo targeting URL.com to the US. I see that you said URL.com/us, but then I would have duplicate content. Url.com would equal url.com/us, unless I rewrote everything. I think url.com will go as unlisted. "If" I create url.com/us with original content, then I will be competing for the same keywords.
-
-
I would set your GEO to USA as international is fairly untargeted and much of the people that typically use Google.com are US users, any of countries would typicallly use the local GEO domains.
You can set url.com and all the subdirectory locations seperately, i would consider setting url.com/US as a GEO of focused directory and then you can leave url.com as untargeted.
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 Two Subdomains Showing Up in Google Search Results
Hi I have a client that is having two subdomains showing up SERP when you Google their name. Here are the details. They have two subdomains us.companyname.com and en.companyname.com us.companyname.com is for the US and has completely different products and content than en.companyname.com en.companyname.com is the site designed for Europe and it is in English. How can I make it so that only the us. version shows up in the search results? Thanks in advance!
International SEO | | JohnWeb120 -
I have more than 4000 pages but still have a low trafic. Would love to know more to be better ranked ?
My website is a magazine about travel and fashion. But even if i have a lot of pages, I am still low in ranking. Why ? Thanks for any advice !
International SEO | | ccjourn0 -
Shall I automatically redirect international visitors from www.domain.com to e.g. www.domain.com/es? What is best SEO practice?
We have chosen the one domain approach with our international site having different language versions in subdirectory of main domain:
International SEO | | lcourse
www.domain.com/es
www.domain.com/it
etc. What is SEO-wise best practice for implementing international index pages. I see following options: entering www.domain.com will display without redirection the index page in language of user (e.g based on IP or browser) in www.domain.com
Example: www.booking.com entering www.domain.com will always show English index page.
Additionally one may display a message in the header if IP from other country with link to other language version.
Example: www.apple.com entering www.domain.com will always redirect automatically to country specific subdirectory based on IP
Example: www.samsung.com Any thoughts/suggestions on what may be best solution from a SEO perspective? For a user I believe options 1) & 3) are preferable.0 -
How does Google Serve the correct language version?
Hi guys, I'm currently working on a multi lingual .eu website with 20 lanuages which has been live now for a month now. Its is a sub directory set up so the french language version would look something like www.example.eu/fr. The English language version defaults to the home page www.example.eu. When you search for the brand name on the local search engines the home page English version appears instead of the preferred language version for each Country. 90% of the external links so far link to the homepage so I'm guessing this is the reason why. We are still waiting for the development company to create sitemap for each language using the rel=”alternate” hreflang=”x” XML Sitemap Tool. I know Google look at a number of factors when deciding what results to give a user. Can anybody share their experience or advice here? Thanks Rob
International SEO | | daracreative0 -
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 -
Non US site pages indexed in US Google search
Hi, We are having a global site wide issue with non US site pages being indexed by Google and served up in US search results. Conversley, we have US en pages showing in the Japan Google search results. We currently us IP detect to direct users to the correct regional site but it isn't effective if the users are entering through an incorrect regional page. At the top of each or our pages we have a drop down menu to allow users to manually select their preferred region. Is it possible that Google Bot is crawling these links and indexing these other regional pages as US and not detecting it due to our URL structure? Below are examples of two of our URLs for reference - one from Canada, the other from the US /ca/en/prod4130078/2500058/catalog50008/ /us/en/prod4130078/2500058/catalog20038/ If that is, in fact, what is happening, would setting the links within the drop down to 'no follow' address the problem? Thank you. Angie
International SEO | | Corel0 -
Same website in different countries, best practices for SEO?
Hey Guys, I have read several similar questions regarding mine, but none seem to truly cover my question. Basically, we have a company named Junair. We created the website for the company here in Australia (http://www.junair.com.au). As can be seen throughout the page, it mentions that it caters for both Australia and NZ (NZ has its own phone number). It does ok in the rankings at the moment, but rankings will continue to rise in the future once more links are getting picked up. Now however, the Junair team in NZ purchased the NZ domain http://www.junair.co.nz and redirected it to the Australian page. No matter which page you visit on the NZ URL, the URL will never change, and neither will the page title. They have now contacted us and asked to perform SEO on the NZ domain so the NZ domain would show up in searches on Google NZ. At the moment, when searching for "Junair" on google.co.nz, the Australian domain is coming up. How could I change this so the NZ URL would show instead? And what would be the best practices to perform SEO on the NZ URL, should I just create links pointing to http://www.junair.co.nz ? Thank you, Roderic
International SEO | | Michael-Goode0 -
SEO and Cloud Hosting
Hello, Cant find any clear answers on my issue and hope someone can help. Rather than being worried about losing local rankings with a move to the cloud, we have the opposite issue. The site is a large, international reference site with millions of visits a month. We have the site on servers hosting in UK, Europe and US. If we move the site to Amazon cloud hosting (obvious benefits aside), is there a danger of losing rankings internationally (depending on where the cloud datacentre is located)? Are their any other possible pitfalls and counters? Would be grateful for some advice on this. Thanks
International SEO | | LoweProfero-AU0