SEO Best Practice for a multi-language and multi-country website
-
Hello Moz Community,
I hope someone could help me identify the best action to take on an on-page optimization confusion I am currently having.
The website I am currently trying to optimize is http://www.riafinancial.com/locations/us/home.aspx. There is an option to view a country specific version of the page, or language version (there are 2 drop down menus on the top, for country or for language).
When viewing a country specific version of the page, the URL changes depending on country selected. Some country versions also updates the content to the language of that country, but some remain English. Example, when viewing the France version of the page (http://www.riafinancial.com/locations/FR/home.aspx), the content is updated to french version, but when viewing the China version (http://www.riafinancial.com/locations/CN/home.aspx), the content is in English. This is because we have not yet translated for all countries (this will eventually be all translated).
Now, when viewing by language, the URL does NOT change. Example, in http://www.riafinancial.com/locations/us/home.aspx, you can choose French, German, Italian, Polish, etc. The content of the page will change based on language chosen, but the URL (including page titles, meta-descriptions) will not change.
My question is, how should I approach this for on-page optimization? Canonical? Hreflang? Any input, feedback, recommendation, suggestion will be greatly appreciated.
Thanks!
Sharon
-
Sharon,
if i'm not mistaken this is what you are trying to do:
http://www.riafinancial.com/locations/us/home.aspx is normally in English (or American to some ;-)) and with the language selection the us part of the url changes to FR for France and CH for Chinese .. etc.
I think you will find your answer in Danny Dovers cheat sheet:
http://moz.com/blog/the-web-developers-seo-cheat-sheet-2013-editionyou can indeed target selected languages and countries with the href lang and using the double parameter (hreflang="fr-FR"). Hope this helps you and solves your problem.
Regards
Jarno
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
-
Why does Moz recommend subdomains for language-specific websites?
In Moz's domain recommendations, they recommend subdirectories instead of subdomains (which agrees with my experience), but make an exception for language-specific websites: Since search engines keep different metrics for domains than they do subdomains, it is recommended that webmasters place link-worthy content like blogs in subfolders rather than subdomains. (i.e. www.example.com/blog/ rather than blog.example.com) The notable exceptions to this are language-specific websites. (i.e., en.example.com for the English version of the website). Why are language-specific websites excepted from this advice? Why are subdomains preferable for language-specific websites? Google's advice says subdirectories are fine for language-specific websites, and GSC allows geographic settings at the subdirectory level (which may or may not even be needed, since language-specific sites may not be geographic-specific), so I'm unsure why Moz would suggest using subdirectories in this case.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AdamThompson0 -
SEO issues? New functionality added to website and now hash (in URL) - fragments
Hi All! We have new nice functionality on website, but now i doubt if we will have SEO issues. Duplicate content and if google is able to spider our website. See: http://www.allesvoorbbq.nl/boretti-da-vinci-nero.html#608=1370
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RetailClicks
With the new functionality we can switch between colors of the models (black / white / red / yellow).
When you switch with Ajax the content of other models is fetched without refreshing the page. (so the url initial part of url stays the same (for initial model) only part behind # changes. The other models are also accessible by there own url, like the red one: http://www.allesvoorbbq.nl/boretti-da-vinci-rosso.html#608=1372 So far so good. But now the questions: 1. We use to have url like /boretti-da-vinci-nero.html - also our canonical is that way But now if we access that url our system is adding automatically the #123-123 to the url to indicate which model(color) is shown. Is this hurting SEO or confusing google? Because it seems that the clean url is not accessible anymore? (it adds now #123-123) 2. Should we add some tags around the different types (colors) to prevent google from indexing that part of website? Every info would be very helpfull! We do not want to lose our nice rankings thanks to MOZ! Thanks all!
Jeroen0 -
Restructure of multi-region and multi-lingual site?
I've read through a lot of material to this point on the subject which has been helpful. In making a major decision like this I'd love another set(s) of eyes on this. A lot of the material I read is pretty dated. Thanks for your help! Background: Company is currently maintaining the following sites, some in multiple languages: company.com, company.us, company.de, company.fr, etc. (12 ccTLDs, some multi-lingual). Each site represents a physical office/distributorship in each location. Each ccTLD site (and pages) include both duplicate, and unique, localized content (intermixed). Each country office will be producing content for their ccTLD, though some content will be duplicated from the .com. In essence, there is a .com corporate site template and the ccTLDs will be customized but include a lot of the content on the .com corporate multi-lingual site. Some of the ccTLDs rank ok, some don't, all SEO strategy to date has been implemented by independent marketing companies in each country. I am working on a centralized SEO strategic approach. Approach: My initial thought was to leverage the .com domain internationally by consolidating all ccTLDs within the .com site using sub-directories. Since some regional sites are also multi-lingual, the consolidated site structure might look like this... company.com/en-us/, company.com/en-de/, company.com/de-de/, company.com/en-fr/, company.com/fr-fr/. This would allow for location-specific content to be presented in multiple languages. When I learned how much customization/localization will need to be done (each country maintaining its own blog,etc), and started evaluating things like the length of the urls for marketing purposes, the necessity to have multiple users accessing certain sections of the site, and some insight that the ccTLDs will likely rank better than the consolidated .com, research of other sites (amazon.com has ccTLDs for each country). I began to reconsider my initial strategy, and re-evaluate a .com corporate site in mult-languages with regional ccTLDs with a blend of duplicate and unique content instead. Beyond business needs, my primary concern is preventing duplicate content. I can already see issues arising between the .com corporate multi-lingual site in French, for instance, and the company.fr regional site that would contain some of the same corporate content, and a lot of its own unique localized content. I am imaging the corporate .com actually having to defer to the ccTLDs via rel=canonical to avoid duplicate content issues which doesn't seem to natural (maybe just in the case where the .com corporate site would use rel=canonical to the .us office site) I've had a lot of success consolidating sites and working to build a single, strong, trusted, authoritative domain vs. having to build that same authority, in this case, a dozen times with all the ccTLDs. I am not sure if the ability to leverage a single .com multi-regional/lingual site outweighs the benefit of a ccTLD for a site that operates in a single country. What do you think? What solution would you recommend, all things considered? Please let me know if I am missing something. I enjoyed the challenge of weighing all the factors and am at a point where I could really use some feedback from colleagues. The developers are building the site(s) in Drupal. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seagreen0 -
Help FORUM ( User generated content ) SEO best practices
Hello Moz folks ! For the very first time im dealing with a massive community who rely on UGC ( user generated content ). Their forum is finding a great deal of duplicate content/broken link/ duplicate title and on-site issue. I have Advance SEO knowledge related to ecommerce or blogging but new to forum and UGC. I would really love to learn or get ressources links that would allow me to see/understand the best practices in term of SEO. Any help is greatly appreciated. Best, Yan
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ydesjardins2000 -
Subdomains + SEO
Hi everyone, So a little background - my company launched a new website (http://www.everyaction.com). The homepage is currently hosted on an amazon s3 bucket while the blog and landing pages are hosted within Hubspot. My question is - is that going to end up hurting our SEO in the long run? I've seen a much slower uptick in search engine traffic than I'm used to seeing when launching new sites and I'm wondering if that's because people are sharing the blog.everyaction.com url on social (which then wouldn't benefit just everyaction.com?) Anyways, a little help on what I should be considering when it comes to subdomains would be very helpful. Thanks, Devon
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | EveryActionHQ0 -
Merging websites
My company (A) is about the merge with another company (B). The long-term plan is not to keep their brand or website. In terms of the merge process, I have been doing a bit of research and this is how I'm thinking about doing it so far., which is open minded about changing... On the homepage of company B, do a 302 redirect to an information page on the same website which details the merger. This will only be for a year. After a year has passed, do a 301 redirect to the homepage of company A Do 301 redirects from all other pages to similar pages on company A. For pages that don't correspond, either do a 302 to the 'merger detail page', or do a 301 to the homepage of company A. Bring across any content that is effective at driving traffic. Contact all high authority websites that have links to company B and request for them to be updated. Any tips/corrections appreciated. Stu
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Stuart260 -
Local SEO (Rankings) + UK-wide SEO (national rankings) - achieving both
Hi All, For clients wishing to sell online / generate leads nationally, yet still want to have a local online presence to attract town / county-wide customers, I've often placed Town / County locations within both the Title Tag (or just County if space is limited) and Meta Description, plus within the Hx headings, Alt-text and within the footer of every page. My question is, does adding the location of the client within these fields really infringe their attempts to rank nationally, as some nationally ranked pages have no mention of location while others have their location (Town, County or Both) shown within them? Any help, insight or feedback greatly appreciated 🙂 Happy New Year Tony
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Tony-Dimmock0 -
"Original Content" Dynamic Hurting SEO? -- Strategies for Differentiating Template Websites for a Nationwide Local Business Segment?
The Problem I have a stable of clients spread around the U.S. in the maid service/cleaning industry -- each client is a franchisee, however their business is truly 'local' with a local service area, local phone/address, unique business name, and virtually complete control over their web presence (URL, site design, content; apart from a few branding guidelines). Over time I've developed a website template with a high lead conversion rate, and I've rolled this website out to 3 or 4 dozen clients. Each client has exclusivity in their region/metro area. Lately my white hat back linking strategies have not been yielding the results they were one year ago, including legitimate directories, customer blogging (as compelling as maid service/cleaning blogs can really be!), and some article writing. This is expected, or at least reflected in articles on SEO trends and directory/article strategies. I am writing this question because I see sites with seemingly much weaker back link profiles outranking my clients (using SEOMoz toolbar and Site Explorer stats, and factoring in general quality vs. quantity dynamics). Questions Assuming general on-page optimization and linking factors are equal: Might my clients be suffering because they're using my oft-repeated template website (albeit with some unique 'content' variables)? If I choose to differentiate each client's website, how much differentiation makes sense? Specifically: Even if primary content (copy, essentially) is differentiated, will Google still interpret the matching code structure as 'the same website'? Are images as important as copy in differentiating content? From an 'machine' or algorithm perspective evaluating unique content, I wonder if strategies will be effective such as saving the images in a different format, or altering them slightly in Photoshop, or using unique CSS selectors or slightly different table structures for each site (differentiating the code)? Considerations My understanding of Google's "duplicate content " dynamics is that they mainly apply to de-duping search results at a query specific level, and choosing which result to show from a pool of duplicate results. My clients' search terms most often contain client-specific city and state names. Despite the "original content" mantra, I believe my clients being local businesses who have opted to use a template website (an economical choice), still represent legitimate and relevant matches for their target user searches -- it is in this spirit I ask these questions, not to 'game' Google with malicious intent. In an ideal world my clients would all have their own unique website developed, but these are Main St business owners balancing solutions with economics and I'm trying to provide them with scalable solutions. Thank You! I am new to this community, thank you for any thoughts, discussion and comments!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | localizedseo0