Change of language
-
Hi everyone,
We bought a domain which had content in German for over 8 years. So the rankings it had were in another search engine aswell.
So i've changed the language of the content + targetting in webmaster tools to Dutch. (i've created unique content, in case your wondering)
Now we don't rank in the targetted search engine, nor in the search engine the website was previously ranked.My question is how can we fix this so we are going to get indexed and ranked for the targetted search engine.
Thanks in advance.
-
Hi Gianluca,
Thanks for your answer. And sorry for the delayed response.
I'll ask John Mueller for an answer.Thanks again.
-
If the links where totally unrelated to the actual site, what I would probably do should be to check in webmaster help forum a direct answer from John Mueller (or, better, asking him directly on Google+).
In fact, once there was an option for "disavowing" the links a domain just bought had, but since almost one year the link to that option has disappeared from GWT.
The use of the disavow tool usually is for site that have been penalized.
-
Hi Gianluca,
Thanks for yet another answer.
I did consider it, however i taught it wouldn't influence the rankings.
Which leads me to a follow up question, if you dont mind?
Should i disavow those old links to help rank for the correct Google.Thanks again for taking the time to answer the question.
-
HI and sorry for the delay...
haven't you considered that that domain is still ranking in Google.de because of its old link profile?
In fact, it can be possible that links it earned in its past existence as a German website may be the cause of its still good rankings in .de.
On the contrary, the percentage of links from dutch sites may be too small to allow the site to rank properly in google.nl.
That's all I can tell you, without knowing the site name.
-
Hi Gianluca,
Thank you for your response!
It is ranking but in the German index. That could be because it is an old domain?
-
Hi Stefan,
what I don't understand is if your site, now in dutch and targeting Netherlands, is actually indexed but not ranking, or if it also not indexed at all.
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
-
Confusing mixture of cross-domain and multi-language - HREFLANG
Hi Mozzers, I am working for an international client, in a highly regulated industry. As such, their international set-up is slightly confusing. They currently operate websites across multiple countries (with ccTLDs), as well as a global .com. E.g: domain.co.uk domain.it domain. es domain.com etc. Additionally, they offer multiple languages across each of these domains, which often cross over. E.g: domain.co.uk/en/, domain.co.uk/fr/, domain.co.uk/de/ domain.es/en/, domain.es/es/ domain.it/en/, domain.it/it/ domain.com/en/, domain.com/es/, domain.com/fr/, domain.com/de/ They are not currently using HREFLANG of any sort. Using EN as an example, this results in 6 URLs showing the same content, albeit for different languages/locations: Main URL domain.co.uk/en/category-A/ hreflang="en-GB" Multi-lingual variants from same domain... domain.co.uk/fr/category-A/ hreflang="fr-GB" domain.co.uk/de/category-A/ hreflang="de-GB" Cross domain variants from other ccTLDs... domain.es/en/category-A/ hreflang="en-ES" domain.it/en/category-A/ hreflang="en-IT" domain.com/en/category-A/ hreflang="en" Can anyone cleverer than myself confirm that the above would be the most effective set-up for this scenario, with each URL referencing each other in this way?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Pan12340 -
URL change - Sitemap update / redirect
Hi everyone Recently we performed a massive, hybrid site migration (CMS, URL, site structure change) without losing any traffic (yay!). Today I am finding out that our developers+copy writers decided to change Some URLs (pages are the same) without notifying anyone (I'm not going into details why). Anyhow, some URLs in site map changed, so old URLs don't exist anymore. Here is the example: OLD (in sitemap, indexed): https://www.domain.com/destinations/massachusetts/dennis-port NEW: https://www.domain.com/destinations/massachusetts/cape-cod Also, you should know that there is a number of redirects that happened in the past (whole site) Example : Last couple years redirections: HTTP to HTTPS non-www to www trailing slash to no trailing slash Most recent (a month ago ) Site Migration Redirects (URLs / site structure change) So I could add new URLs to the sitemap and resubmit in GSC. My dilemma is what to do with old URL? So we already have a ton of redirects and adding another one is not something I'm in favor of because of redirect loops and issues that can affect our SEO efforts. I would suggest to change the original, most recent 301 redirects and point to the new URL ( pre-migration 301 redirect to newly created URL). The goal is not to send mixed signals to SEs and not to lose visibility. Any advice? Please let me know if you need more clarification. Thank you
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bgvsiteadmin0 -
Can I change a URL on a site that has only a few back links?
I have a site that wants to change their URL, It's a very basic site with hardly any backlinks. http://www.cproofingandexteriors.com/ The only change they want to make is taking out the 'and'.. so it would be cproofingexteriors.com they already own the domain. What should I do?? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MissThumann0 -
Same language, Different countries. What would be the best way to introduce it?
Hello, We have a .com magento store with the US geo targeting We're going to launch a different versions soon, one for the US, and another one for Canada (we're going to add a Spanish and French versions later as well) The stores content will be same, except currency and contact us page. What would be a better strategy to introduce it to Google? What is better URL structure? example.com/ca/ , example.com/en-ca/ , or ca.example.com/ ? Should we stay with the original www.example.com/ (example.com) and just close an access to /ca/ and /us/ / or use rel=canonical / or use "alternate" hreflang to avoid duplicate content issues? Thanks in advance
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Meditinc.com0 -
My Site name changed. Why does sometimes new name, sometimes old name show in Google.
My website name has changed in the title, but only shows up sometimes in the SERPs. What can I do to ensure the new name is the name that always shows up? It's been a month since the change and we have submitted a new sitemap. Here's one example: http://www.building.govt.nz/blc-building-act. In Google (for New Zealand building code) it shows up as Building Act - Department of Building and Housing. Any ideas?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DanielleNZ0 -
Keywords Ranking Varies When Search changes Location/City (Not Google Places)
We have a client that are ranking well on most Australian cities for competitive keywords except Google Sydney. If you toggled the cities on the search field when you search for a keyword, their places are almost exactly the same except for Sydney on which they can't be found at all in the Top 100 results. The keywords are not city specific, they are general commonly searched keywords about health. This is not a Google Places issue. The search result shows the right landing pages of the site for their respective keywords. Any ideas or experience on this kind of situation. Much appreciated Louie
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | louieramos0 -
On Page Rankings dropped without any changes
What could have factored into some of my key words dropping from an A to a C on my on page rankings. I am not sure how it happened because there were not any chages made. Thanks, Boo
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Boodreaux0 -
We are changing ?page= dynamic url's to /page/ static urls. Will this hurt the progress we have made with the pages using dynamic addresses?
Question about changing url from dynamic to static to improve SEO but concern about hurting progress made so far.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | h3counsel0