International SEO - differentiating Meta data
-
Hi,
We are developing a website for a company based in the US, but that also distributes to the UK.
After careful thought, we decided to go with adding subdirectories for the UK pages on the site rather than creating content on a new ccTLD (though they own that domain).
1. How much of the Title Tags, H1, content, needs to be different for UK versions of the same page. Is it enough to simply Geo tag the EN subdirectory in Webmaster Tools?
Or do the Title tags and content need to be different in order to avoid keyword cannibalization?
2. Would it be better to create a Landing Page using the ccTLD .co.uk version with information that links to the .com/en version? This would allow the users to see the .co.uk version for trust-building purposes.
Or, would it just be better to 301 redirect the .co.uk version to the .com/en?
Thanks for your help!
Erin
-
Tommy,
Thank you for the input! I really appreciate it.
Best,
Erin
-
Hi Erin,
- I believe using the Geo Tag and the ref="lang" tag for the subdirectory will be enough to tell Google that it is a page that targets people in UK. I believe that will avoid having duplicate content or keyword cannibalization even if it is the same. However, since you are targeting UK, the spelling may be different or the terms may be used differently. So keep that in mind and see if you can change the Title tag, H1 anc content a bit. For example, in US, we spell Optimization and in UK I believe they spell it Optimisation. Both have the same meaning but spelled differently in different locations.
2) I have asked a similar question before and the answer I got is that purchasing the UK ccTLD and then redirecting it to your .com page will have no benefits. The ccTLD won't rank in Google.uk. Mind as well just optimize the UK subdirectory and have it appear in the UK search engine.
Hope this helps Erin!
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
-
What is the safest way to redirect for best SEO benefits?
What is the safest way to redirect for best SEO benefits? Example: loodgieter-aanhuis.nl -> loodgieters-ambacht.nl Does someone have any technical information on how to (root) redirect for best SEO practices?
On-Page Optimization | | hans-keeren0 -
Company name in Site Meta description?
Ok. So I know that you should have your company name in the site title, but is it all that important in the site description? The reason I ask is because I am competing with another company for the #1 position (I was number 1, now #2) that has an 8 character name and mine is 22 taking away from a great deal of real estate in my 150-160 character site description in which I could provide additional information describing my company. Should I remove my name in the site description enabling me to use more descriptive keywords and actionable text such as (Find, research, contact, professional, info) etc. Thanks,
On-Page Optimization | | photoseo10 -
Meta separators
I've been told that pipes are the best separators for title tags. Can anyone tell me the best ones for H1 and H2 tags? Do I go with pipes, commas, hyphens, underscores...?
On-Page Optimization | | Greatmats0 -
Impact in SERPs of SEO onpage efforts
Hi there! Once you have made the first SEO onpage efforts....When am I supossed to have the imact in the SERPs? Is there an average "timeframe" for that? I know that is important the linkbulding stratety (among other factors). Thanks in advanced.
On-Page Optimization | | juanmiguelcr0 -
Are there to many internal links here?
This is our main Motorcycle Parts page. In my opinion there are to many links on this page. They have put links to all the top brands after products. Do you think having all these links could be hurting our rankings/ ability for google to crawl the site efficiently? The links are good for navigation, I just think there are way to many there like over 200. Here is the page you can see what i am talking about http://www.rockymountainatvmc.com/s/49/61/Motorcycle-Parts
On-Page Optimization | | DoRM0 -
Problem with Plugin: Wordpress SEO by Yoast
Hi Hi, I'm using the Plugin "Wordpress SEO by Yoast". Unfortunatelly, this plugin generates a sourcecode looking like this: name='description' content='XXXXXX.'/> Seomoz can't read this and tells me, that my pages have no description. Google doesn't matter and reads it correct. Is there anything I can do about this? Many greetings André
On-Page Optimization | | waynestock0 -
Do you ever forget the SEO basics?
We all get a little sloppy at times. Just yesterday , someone pointed out that I accidentally blocked the robots from one of our primary pages, because it was being included in a wildcard match on one of the disallow commands in robots.txt. Sometimes the mistakes are very basic. The one below is just too funny. I thought I would share the love. Search Google for "MD care" MD Care Inc. - Welcome<a id="LXPLSS_979677678U1"></a> <cite>www.mdcarehealthplan.com/</cite> This is an SEO description that will be seen by the search engines and used in the search results. The meta keywords tag is even funnier: <meta name="keywords" content="spam,the,keywords,here,like,this,and this,good" />
On-Page Optimization | | irvingw2