Geo - Targeting in Webmaster Tools
-
Hey guys,
I was hoping somebody might be able to help me?
If I create a French sub directory of a website example "brandname.eu/fr" and submit this in webmaster tools to target France will the French version of the website appear in the search results?
What other factors are necessary for this to work?
Note: The website ideally will not be hosted in France.
Cheers
Rob
-
Yes, you can go ahead with that as this will be an additional signal for search engine and also positively affect the speed at which site will be accessed by the users from the targeted country.
-
Hi Cyril,
Thank you for your reply!
If I was able to purchase a French IP address with my hotsting provider for the french version of the website would that help increase its rankings or should what you have suggested be enough?
cheers,
Rob
-
1.By geotargeting you are providing Google an indication that /fr is targeted for french audience but this alone is not enough and you may still see Google.fr showing your .eu in SERP result.
What extra needs to be done?
1. Get some local listings for your subdirectory
2. If you have the exact version of the .eu site on /fr you may use rel="alternate" hreflang="x"
This annotations help Google serve the correct language or regional URL to searchers.
3. You may also add this meta
4. Gain some backlinks from .fr sites for your /fr pages
5. Provide option to Internally navigate users to other languages through the language menu
6. Based on Geo I.P filter you may also display a lightbox saying something like : "Hey, we have a french version of our website, would you like to use it?
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
-
Baidu Webmaster Tools: How to setup in "Site Properties" the field "Affiliate subject"?
Hi ,
International SEO | | lcourse
finally I managed to setup my site in Baidu Webmaster Tools with the help of a freelance staff member in China. Site is verified and sitemap submitted. In section "Site Properties", field "Affiliate subject" I can't figure out after extensive search what I need to setup here for a foreign company without any presence and without company registration in China. Anybody can help? When I click on this field, it indicates "Site association subject is a necessary link for mobile resources to enter search." so my site will not show up in mobile results without it? Grateful for any tips on how to resolve this piece of puzzle of the baidu setup.
Thanks0 -
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 -
International SEO - Mixing country targeting and language targeting in GWT.
Hi all! I want to start with International SEO process for my ecommerce. We sell worldwide with a .com domain, although the business is mainly focused in Spain. We maintain three languages, spanish, english and french with a non suitable structure. Now, after read a lot about it, I'm considering to use subdirectories for each language, /es/, /en/ and /fr/. And heres it's my first doubt: Could I avoid /es/ from spanish language as it's the default one? I've understood from recents Q&A that it's not needed although more user friendly. I'm trying to avoid tons of 301 from old urls for my main language. Anyway I want to know the best approach regardless complexity. My second doubt is about country targeting. After some research, I consider that it'd be interesting target country for /fr/ subdomain but language for /en/. Do you see any problem mixing both strategies? I know I also need to add the hreflang tag to guide googlebot. But I prefer to clarify these points first. Thanks a lot! Best regards.
International SEO | | footd1 -
Keyphrase ranking a geo-redirected site in Google
Hi all This is the situation. I have a client who runs a number of ccTLD sites (all exact match brand name domains), including a .com which they use for the US. This is a hair care product and due to Advertising Standards Authority (UK) restrictions, they cannot use a certain phrase to promote their products - 'hair loss' on the domain.co.uk site. However, in the US, there is no such restriction and can use wording this on the site. A brand name search in google.co.uk brings up .co.uk as 1st result and .com as 2nd result, so the .com is indexed in google.co.uk. Any non-US user visiting domain.com will be redirected to their ccTLD site. Here's my question - could I feasibly get the domain.com site ranking in google.co.uk for certain 'hair loss' based keyphrases, considering the fact that I can mention it in the copy on there but not on the domain.co.uk site. Would I need to remove any Geographic Target in the WMT account for domain.com? Or is this a form of Google cloaking and could see the site penalised? Thanks
International SEO | | Coolpink0 -
Small question about geo targeting
I have geo targeted my domain for my country in Google's Webmaster Tool. Does it mean that I have blocked visitors from other countries.
International SEO | | ksbnok0 -
Was Geotargeting subfolders in webmaster tools deprecated?
I know that you used to be able to geotarget subfolders on your site to certain regions. We recently made some site-scale updates to make all of our regional pages appear in the appropriate subfolder (for example:site.com/france, or site.com/germany). I recently got admin rights to our site's webmaster tools account that allows us to make these setting changes, but the geotargeting options are only available for the entire site. It still implies on the multi-region site page that you should be able to do this: http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=182192 | Subdirectories with gTLDs | example.com/de/ | Easy to set up Can use Webmaster Tools geotargeting Low maintenance (same host) | Users might not recognize geotargeting from the URL alone Single server location Separation of sites harder | Is this deprecated? Is there something I need to do to enable setting regions by subdirectories?Thanks
International SEO | | alexdoyne0 -
New web design targeting UK & France
Hi I have a couple of topics I would like to clarify. My existing website is on .ie & we are now expanding into France & UK We have decided to take the route of example.com with subfolders for example.com/ie example.com/uk & example.com/fr just like thishttp://app.wistia.com/stats/278112 provided by SEOmoz Should we 301 redirect our existing .ie site to the .com or the .com/ie? When building links should links be built to .com or each .com .com/fr etc Also are there any good resources out there about International SEO? Thank you 🙂
International SEO | | Socialdude1 -
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