Multiple geographic targeting in Europe
-
I have a site that is applicable to German speaking people in central europe. If I were to geotarget the site in google webmaster tools to Germany, would that prevent users in Switzerland or Austria seeing the site in their search results.
-
I'm using a .de domain, so google does the geo targeting by default. I have several region specific sites that have a high degree of content overlap, so I use <link rel="alternate" tags to prevent duplicate content issues. I also do ip based redirections so users are sent to the most relevant site.
the urls in question are
http://fiik.com (this only does the ip based redirection)
http://fiikelectric skateboards.com - USA
http://fiikelectric skateboards.com.au - Australia
http://fiikelectric skateboards.co.uk - UK and english speakers in europe
http://fiikelectric skateboards.de - Central Europe, German speakers, not built yetmaybe the best approach would be to use a .com or .eu domain, so geotargetting isn't forced, the rely on the <link rel="alternate" tags to do language based targeting.
-
I agrre with Robert, It will not prevent sites from showing is SERPs for other locations but it will definatly goingto give more importance to the geographic area you have defined.
If you have other site for other geographic locations so you can send them to the targeted website by tracking their IP address (not sure how SEO effective it will be).
Hope this helps!
-
Daniel,
It will not prevent the site/page from showing in SERPs for Switzerland or Austria. But, it will likely limit how often that happens. So, if you want to be sure people see the result in any of the countries where German is more prevalent as a language do not use the geo targeting.
If you can give us more details re the site (generic or cc tld, more than one language on the site, etc.) we can probably give you better assistance.
Best
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
-
Can you target the same site with multiple country HREFlang entries?
Hi, I have a question regarding the country targeting aspect of HREFLANG. Can the same site be targeted with multiple country HREFlang entries? Example: A global company has an English South African site (geotargeted in webmaster tools to South Africa), with a hreflang entry targeted to "en-za", to signify English language and South Africa as the country. Could you add entries to the same site to target other English speaking South African countries? Entries would look something like this: (cd = Congo, a completely random example) etc... Since you can only geo-target a site to one country in WMT would this be a viable option? Thanks in advance for any help! Vince
International SEO | | SimonByrneIFS0 -
Multiple Domains
I have a .com domain which sells digital and physical products. I was thinking about doing a .co.uk domain just for the physical products. So far im just getting very confused with how to do this with google plus. Whats the best way to do this? Have a .com for worldwide and a .co.uk for just UK.
International SEO | | theindic0 -
How to fix the duplicate content problem on different domains (.nl /.be) of your brand's websites in multiple countries?
Dear all, what is the best way to fix the duplicate content problem on different domains (.nl /.be) of your brand's websites in multiple countries? What must I add to my code of websites my .nl domain to avoid duplicate content and to keep the .nl website out of google.be, but still well-indexed in google.nl? What must I add to my code of websites my .be domain to avoid duplicate content and to keep the .nl website out of google.be, but still well-indexed in google.nl? Thanks in advance!
International SEO | | HMK-NL3 -
Global SEO - How quickly/aggressively should one expand into multiple countries?
SITUATION: Our client is a global company lacking the global presence, so naturally the idea is performing international/global SEO in each country. For benchmarking purposes, our plan is to focus on a select number of keywords (ie 8-15) for each country and begin link building within each respective country. All SEO effort (ie. link building) will be for sub-folders (ie. www.client.com/subfolder/) on the same top level domain. Note, each country may have multiple languages, so each language will be broken out as it's own unique SEO campaign with it's very own strategy and link building efforts. For example: Mexico has 2 languages (English & Spanish) and will be considered 2 separate campaigns. PROBLEM: The client wants to be extremely aggressive and perform SEO on 3 new countries every month. This amounts to 36 new countries/SEO campaigns per year. Assuming each country has 2 languages each, we are looking at 6 SEO campaigns per month, or 72 per year. Our concern is that since all SEO effort will be performed on the same top level domain, we may be growing too fast and the search engines may consider the addition of these new pages and links to be too 'spammy'. We'd love to hear some feedback or personal experience on what might be considered a "safe" or "healthy" expansion into different countries. Thanks!
International SEO | | ByteLaunch0 -
Multi Language / target market site
What is the best way to deal with multiple languages and multiple target markets? Is it better to use directories or sub-domains: English.domain.com Portuguese.domain.com Or Domain.com Domain.com/Portuguese Also should I use language meta tags to help the different language versions rank in different geographic areas e.g. Are there any examples of where this has been done well?
International SEO | | RodneyRiley0 -
Google Directory Listings in multiple countries
I was doing some competitive link research and one of the sites I was looking at has links in multiple Google Directories of other countries. By that I mean a listing in: www.google.pl www.google.hu www.google.pt www.google.co.nz www.google.ie www.google.com.sg www.google.vg and a few others It seemed kind of odd because the site getting these links is a ranch in Oregon. Here is the Open Site Explorer info. I'm a bit of a noob so I've never seen this before. Are these kinds of links worth pursuing? If so, how did they get these multiple listings?
International SEO | | AaronParrish0 -
Geo Targeting for Similar Sites to Specific Countries in Google's Index
I was hoping Webmaster Tools geo targeting would prevent this - I'm seeing in select google searches several pages indexed from our Australian website. Both sites have unique TLDs: barraguard.com barraguard.com.au I've attached a screenshot as an example. The sites are both hosted here in the U.S. at our data center. Are there any other methods for preventing Google and other search engines from indexing the barraguard.com.au pages in searches that take place in the U.S.? dSzoh.jpg
International SEO | | longbeachjamie0 -
Google Webmaster Tools - International SEO Geo-Targeting site with Worldwide rankings
I have a client who already has rankings in the US & internationally. The site is broken down like this: url.com (main site with USA & International Rankings) url.com/de url.com/de-english url.com/ng url.com/au url.com/ch url.com/ch-french url.com/etc Each folder has it's own sitmap & relative content for it's respective country. I am reading in google webmaster tools > site config > settings, the option under 'Learn More': "If you don't want your site associated with any location, select Unlisted." If I want to keep my client's international rankings the way it currently is on url.com, do NOT geo target to United States? So I select unlisted, right? Would I use geo targeting on the url.com/de, url.com/de-english, url.com/ng, url.com/au and so on?
International SEO | | Francisco_Meza0