I need help with international SEO for two sites?
-
I'll try to keep this clear...
I am working with an company based in Germany, they own company.com/de and company.com/en, and that's how they are currently structuring their domains. They also own companyusa.com that they really want to show up in USA only.
They want to keep company.com/en for England/english speaking Europe and company.com/de for their German audience in Germany.
They are wanting us to optimize/SEO for companyusa.com, and they want that URL to show up as the top google search in the USA for their "company" keyword. What is showing up now is www.company.com/en 1st in Google because it's been around longer and it has more domain authority.
What is the best practice for us optimize companyusa.com so that it is the top dog in the USA while not messing up the other domains? Should we merge? Subfolders all around?
Thanks for all the input.
-
Hey,
Why use a separate domain for US? Presumably you've already built up authority in the root domain so why waste that effort on a completely new domain like companyusa.com?
I would set-up sub-folders all around:
UK - company.com/en-gb/
USA - company.com/en-us/
Germany - company.com/de/
Also gives you scope to optimize for Latin America too if you ever wanted, like so - company.com/es-mx/
To ensure the correct version of the site ranks in the correct Google CC, setup each site as it's own entity in webmaster tools and set geo-location correctly per site.
Also you could implement href-lang meta tag on each page to tell Google which version of the translated content should be indexed in the country specific Google, google.de, google.co.uk etc.
Hope that helps,
Woody
-
geotarget the sites so that they show up in their respective countries search engines. The german site should show only in germany and the US site should only show up in US.
you can check your GA after geotargeting to check to see that the traffic is coming from the correct places for each site.
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
-
Migration from HTML to Wordpress - SEO Implications?
I am in the process of having a wordpress site developed to replace my current HTML site. (I currently have my website in html and a blog in wordpress in a sub directory). I am doing this in phases to try and preserve as much of my good rankings as possible. My first phase is to replicate my site with the exact same pages, meta data, and site structure. I'm hoping that google will see this as not much change and not change my rankings for the worse. I also made it a goal that my site speed tests be at least equal to what they are now. We will have to 301 all of the URLs however since it will be going from /example.html to /example. I believe my blog will also need to move into the root directory as well, so I need to 301 all of those pages. I plan to wait a couple months for Phase 2. Phase 2 involves replacing old content (photo galleries), and introducing new content (virtual tours, videos, new pages, etc.) One of my reasons for moving to wordpress is to keep up with current trends a little easier since I have very little time. (I am owner, website maintainer, SEO - all on my own). My question here is three parts. 1. Do you think this strategy will work to preserve my current rankings? 2. Do you have any lessons learned or advice to share with me to make this as smooth as possible? 3. Do I really need to wait to add new content? I might get antsy and want to do it sooner! 🙂 Thank you in advance!
Web Design | | CalicoKitty20001 -
Will SASS ruin my SEO?
Hello, I am thinking about using SASS for my website, striping the current CSS style sheets and translating it all to SASS.. will this hurt my SEO?
Web Design | | DanielBernhardt0 -
Help needed on URL structures
I am busy structuring URL's for a client and an issue i have come across is as follows: i have a URL that is a long one, we cant remove words in it so the question is which one is better structurally: root/courses/businessmanagementandadministration.aspx or root/courses/business-management-and-administration.aspx please help.
Web Design | | nick_pageone0 -
Tips on website redesign on site with messy URLs?
So I've inherited quite a messy website. It was in drupal and the owner wants it in wordpress. One of the problems is the link paths. Should I try to recreate them exactly? i.e. something/somethingelse/page/ or use redirects (which I'm not confident in doing). Also, some of the pages end in .html, others in a back slash and others without slahes, there's no consistency. Do you have any tips in general? I remember an older seomoz blogpost about successful website relaunches (with press releases and mass emails and stuff being sent out on launch to boot). Thanks!
Web Design | | seonubblet0 -
Site lost in Google
Recently I switched my from Joomla to WordPress. I did 301 re-directs ...and promptly fell from Google results after 5 YEARS at no. 1-3 Still ranking 1 in Bing and 3 in Yahoo...but nowhere near the traffic I previously had. Here is my site: http://selfdirectedira.org Any suggestions? TIA
Web Design | | tvegas0 -
Does **tag on a product description help?**
Hi, Does using the tag on a line of text in the products description help with SEO for that keyword phrase? **See here: http://www.designerboutique-online.com/tops/passarella-death-squad/passarella-death-squad-t-shirt-white/0/ I have bolded the Passarella Death Squad T-Shirt line. Would this help in any way? Cheers Will**
Web Design | | YNWA0 -
Does changing nameservers and a new site design affect SEO dramatically
We are about to change nameservers and upload a new website design design, completely rebuilt website to that new hosting, will this effect our seo efforts previously and have an effect on our SEO rankings?
Web Design | | CompleteOffice0 -
Redesign of an ecommerce site
We are thinking to redesign our ecommerce site and was wondering would we loose our google rankings in any way? That's something we don't want. We want to achieve a better and cleaner looking website. It's a more like template redesign. But adding extra functionalities. We will add upselling and crossselling features to product pages. Some products have reviews and some don't. If a product doesn't have a review random testimonials will replace the reviews. We will redirect all urls's if category structure changes. All content title, headings remain same. Any suggestions are welcome 🙂
Web Design | | Jvalops0