Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      Enhance Keyword Discovery with Bulk Analysis
      Moz Pro

      Enhance Keyword Discovery with Bulk Analysis

      Learn more
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Access 20 years of data with flexible pricing
      Moz API

      Access 20 years of data with flexible pricing

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. International SEO
    4. International SEO Subfolders / user journey etc

    Moz Q&A is closed.

    After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

    International SEO Subfolders / user journey etc

    International SEO
    3
    4
    2942
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • Dan-Lawrence
      Dan-Lawrence last edited by

      Hi

      According to all the resources i can find on Moz and elsewhere re int seo, say in the context of having duplicate versions of US & UK site, its best to have subfolders i.e.

      domain.com/en-gb/

      &

      domain.com/en-us/

      however when it comes to the user journey and promoting web address seems a bit weird to say visit us at: domain.com/en-us/ !?

      And what happens if someone just enters in domain.com from the US or UK ?

      My client wants to use an IP sniffer but i've read thats bad practice and should employ above style country/language code instead, but i'm confused about both the user journey and experience in the case of multiple sub folders.

      Any advice much appreciated ?

      Cheers

      Dan

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • Dan-Lawrence
        Dan-Lawrence @Hannah_Smith last edited by

        Thanks for your comments but im looking directly into subfolder option (since TLD not an option and sub-domain considered bad practice from what i can gather after many days research on Moz etc

        As a result this is what ill issue to a clients development team in this circumstance is as follows for where sites preferred structure is sub-folders/directories:

        1. Implement IP sniffing on the home page ONLY

        2. Then have Sub-Folders named after the official country abbreviations which will create a better user experience than both country and language i.e. domain.com/us/ as opposed to domain.com/en-us/ or domain.com/en-gb/ etc etc. This way it will only manipulate the homepage crawling and not site-wide indexing issues.

        3) Target these folders to the correct countries in Google’s and Bing’s Webmasters Tools. Use the official country and language codes in the Hreflang mark-up as per point 4.

        1. Set up site maps for each subfolder and rel="alternate" hreflang= according to Google guidelines. Here's a great tool to help with correct implementation: http://www.themediaflow.com/resources/tools/href-lang-tool/

        2. Specify the content language/country by adding the 'country-language' meta-tags in the html head

        6) Link between each country/language version in a crawl-able and visible manner (for SE and Users)

        7) Create individual profiles in GWT & Bing Webmaster Tools for each country/language sub-folder and geo-target accordingly

        😎 Create individual profiles within GAnalytics for each country/language version and configure to track internal activity between different versions

        9) Localise content so has US currency, contact details, spelling etc

        10) Other localisation techniques ( such as marking up contact details with schema places code)

        Note RE: HrefLang & Canonicalisation:

        An extra advantage of using hreflang is that it will provide a degree of canonicalisation. Should canonical tag be employed in the future never so across language versions if site expand into non English versions. More info here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Igbrm1z_7Hk

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • Hannah_Smith
          Hannah_Smith last edited by

          Hey Dan,

          The challenges with international sites are many and varied. The 'best' international strategy really depends on your resources 🙂

          Here's how I see the advantages / disadvantages of each approach:

          Subfolders - ranking may be 'easier' as domain authority is consolidated, but URLs are ugly

          The sub-folder approach is often utilised where there's insufficient resource to market and maintain separate international ccTLDs (e.g. .co.uk, .com, .fr etc). The advantage with the subfolder approach is that you're consolidating domain authority - so the links to /en-uk/ (NB do use en-uk NOT en-gb incidentally) pass authority to /en-us/ and vice versa.

          You're building one strong site, rather than trying to build two, three (or more) strong sites. However, as you've identified URLs get long and a bit ugly.

          ccTLDs - Arguably nicer for users, but might not rank

          Conversely, whilst ccTLDs (.co.uk, .com, .fr etc) are nicer from a user's perspective, you may struggle to rank if you're not able to spend sufficient time and resource on marketing and building links to these domains.

          If you have the time and resources, I'd probably go down the ccTLD route, but if you don't, then the subfolder route is probably best.

          IP redirects

          In terms of the IP sniffers etc - be careful 🙂

          Googlebot typical crawls from the US, and as such is likely to be redirected by your sniffer too. Essentially you're in danger of making any non-US versions invisible as far as Google are concerned. For that reason rather than doing a hard redirect I prefer Amazon's approach - if you visit Amazon.com from a UK IP you'll see a message which says: "Shopping from the UK? Visit Amazon.co.uk.".

          That way users get the nudge to direct them to the right site and the bots can still crawl and index all of your content.

          Dan-Lawrence 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
          • TopFloor
            TopFloor last edited by

            I want to start by saying I am not a user experience expert! I can tell you that from an SEO perspective, building international sites with subfolders can be advantageous because those international sites will inherit the main domain's authority and you can have one linking strategy that can benefit all areas of the site.

            As for the user journey, I can provide some ideas for what we've done in the past with our clients. The first would be to have a window display on the main domain.com page that will allow a user to choose their country, and that will then forward them to the appropriate area of the site.

            Another tactic we used was to purchase domain names that are unique for each country/language that would then redirect to the appropriate area of the site. We would typically only use these domains in offline marketing material (brochures, business cards etc..) and that way you can tell your prospective customers to visit you at domainuk.com instead of domain.com/en-gb/.

            I hope this helps!

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • 1 / 1
            • First post
              Last post

            Got a burning SEO question?

            Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


            Start my free trial


            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.

            • See all categories

            Related Questions

            • cupll.rs1

              Top 10 SEO Experts in the World

              seo experts in the world seoexperts

              Here are some of the top SEO experts in the world known for their contributions to the field, thought leadership, and innovative strategies: Rand Fishkin - Co-founder of Moz and SparkToro, widely known for his insights and contributions to SEO. Neil Patel - Co-founder of Crazy Egg, Hello Bar, and KISSmetrics, renowned for his SEO and digital marketing expertise. 3.. Brian Dean - Founder of Backlinko, famous for his advanced SEO strategies and detailed guides. Rafay Waqar - Co-founder of SEOServices and a LinkedIn influencer, he provide valuable insights into search engine algorithms and updates. Barry Schwartz - Founder of Search Engine Roundtable, known for his in-depth coverage of SEO news and trends. Aleyda Solis - International SEO consultant and founder of Orainti, recognized for her expertise in technical SEO and international SEO strategies. Bill Slawski - Director of SEO Research at Go Fish Digital, known for his deep understanding of search engine patents and algorithms. Vanessa Fox - Creator of Google Webmaster Central and author of "Marketing in the Age of Google," known for her expertise in technical SEO and analytics. Ann Smarty - Founder of Viral Content Bee and a well-known figure in the SEO community for her content marketing and link-building expertise. Cyrus Shepard - Former Head of SEO at Moz and founder of Zyppy, known for his comprehensive SEO knowledge and actionable insights.

              International SEO | | cupll.rs1
              1
            • Alex_Pisa

              "Duplicate without user-selected canonical” - impact to SERPs

              canonical international seo

              Hello, we are facing some issues on our project and we would like to get some advice. Scenario
              We run several websites (www.brandName.com, www.brandName.be, www.brandName.ch, etc..) all in French language . All sites have nearly the same content & structure, only minor text (some headings and phone numbers due to different countries are different). There are many good quality pages, but again they are the same over all domains. Goal
              We want local domains (be, ch, fr, etc.) to appear in SERPs and also comply with Google policy of local language variants and/or canonical links. Current solution
              Currently we don’t use canonicals, instead we use rel="alternate" hreflang="x-default": <link rel="alternate" hreflang="fr-BE" href="https://www.brandName.be/" /> <link rel="alternate" hreflang="fr-CA" href="https://www.brandName.ca/" /> <link rel="alternate" hreflang="fr-CH" href="https://www.brandName.ch/" /> <link rel="alternate" hreflang="fr-FR" href="https://www.brandName.fr/" /> <link rel="alternate" hreflang="fr-LU" href="https://www.brandName.lu/" /> <link rel="alternate" hreflang="x-default" href="https://www.brandName.com/" /> Issue
              After Googlebot crawled the websites we see lot of “Duplicate without user-selected canonical” in Coverage/Excluded report (Google Search Console) for most domains. When we inspect some of those URLs we can see Google has decided that canonical URL points to (example): User-declared canonical: None
              Google-selected canonical: …same page, but on a different domain Strange is that even those URLs are on Google and can be found in SERPs. Obviously Google doesn’t know what to make of it. We noticed many websites in the same scenario use a self-referencing approach which is not really “kosher” - we are afraid if we use the same approach we can get penalized by Google. Question: What do you suggest to fix the “Duplicate without user-selected canonical” in our scenario? Any suggestions/ideas appreciated, thanks. Regards.

              International SEO | | Alex_Pisa
              0
            • MMcCalden

              Setting up international site subdirectories in GSC as separate properties for better geotargeting?

              My client has an international website with a subdirectory structure for each country and language version - eg. /en-US. At present, there is a single property set up for the domain in Google Search Console but there are currently various geotargeting issues I’m trying to correct with hreflang tags. My question is, is it still recommended practise and helpful  to add each international subdirectory to Google Search Console as an individual property to help with correct language and region tagging? I know there used to be properly sets for this but haven’t found any up to date guidance on whether setting up all the different versions as their own properties might help with targeting. Many thanks in advance!

              International SEO | | MMcCalden
              0
            • gravymatt-se

              Should Hreflang x-default be on every page of every country for an International company?

              UPDATED 4/29/2019 4:33 PM I had made to many copy and pastes. Product pages are corrected Upon researching the hreflang x-default tag, I am getting some muddy results for implementation on an international company site  older results say just homepage or the country selector but…. My Question/Direction going forward for the International Site I am working on:  I believe I can to put x-default all the pages of every country and point it to the default language page for areas that are not covered with our current sites. Is this correct? From my internet reading, the x-default on every page is not truly necessary for Google but it will be valid implemented. My current site setup example:
              https://www.bluewidgets.com Redirects to https://www.bluewidgets.com/us/en (functions as US/Global) Example Countries w/ code Site:- 4 countries/directories US/Global, France, Spain Would the code sample below be correct? https://www.bluewidgets.com/us/en/ (functions as US/Global) US/Global Country Homepage - https://www.bluewidgets.com/us/en/ US/Global Country Product Page(s) This would be for all products - https://www.bluewidgets.com/us/en/whizzer-5001/ http://www.bluewidgets.com/us/en (functions for France) France Country Homepage - https://www.bluewidgets.com/fr/fr/ France Country Product Page(s) This would be for all products- https://www.bluewidgets.com/es/es/whizzer-5001 http://www.bluewidgets.com/us/en (functions as Spain) Spain Country Homepage - https://www.bluewidgets.com/es/es/ Spain Country Product Page(s) This would be for all products - https://www.bluewidgets.com/es/es/whizzer-5001 Thanks for the spot check Gravy

              International SEO | | gravymatt-se
              0
            • ILM_Marketing

              SEO Company in Asia

              Hi All.  I have a client looking to expand their industrial services to southeast Asia (Vietnam and Indonesia specifically right now).  Does anyone know of an SEO/Online Marketing firm local to that region that may be able to help them network with businesses and industries there? I've gone through the SEOmoz member database and reached out to a couple people with agencies in that area but never heard back from them. I personally thought a local firm would be more beneficial to the client but I'm also open to suggestions on ways that we might be able to help them market their services online from the US. Thanks so much! Megan

              International SEO | | ILM_Marketing
              0
            • gregelwell

              SEO for .com vs. .com.au websites

              I have a new client from Australia who has a website on a .com.au domain. He has the same domain name registered for .com. Example: exampledomain.com.au, and exampledomain.com He started with the .com.au site for a product he offers in Australia. He's bringing the same product to the U.S. (it's a medical device product) and wants us to build a site for it and point to the .com. Right now, he has what appears is the same site showing on the .com as on the .com.au. So both domains are pointing to the same host, but there are separate sections or directories within the hosting account for each website - and the content is exactly the same. Would this be viewed as duplicate content by Google? What's the best way to structure or build the new site on the .com to get the best SEO in the USA, maintain the .au version and not have the websites compete or be viewed as having duplicate content? Thanks, Greg

              International SEO | | gregelwell
              0
            • Amjath

              Do non-english(localized) URLs help Local SEO and user experience?

              Hi Everyone, This question is about URL best practice for multilingual websites. We have www.example.com in English and we are building the exact replica of English site in German www.example.de. On the Geman site, we are considering to translate some portions of the URLs for example last folder and file name as seen below: example.de/folder1-in-english/folder2-in-english/folder3-in-german/filename-in-german.html Is this a good idea? Will this help SEO and user experience both? or the mixed languagues in URL will confuse the users? Google guidelines say that this should be ok. Would love to get feedback from SEOMOZ community! Thanks, Supriya.

              International SEO | | Amjath
              0
            • Francisco_Meza

              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_Meza
              0

            Get started with Moz Pro!

            Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

            Start my free trial
            Products
            • Moz Pro
            • Moz Local
            • Moz API
            • Moz Data
            • STAT
            • Product Updates
            Moz Solutions
            • SMB Solutions
            • Agency Solutions
            • Enterprise Solutions
            • Digital Marketers
            Free SEO Tools
            • Domain Authority Checker
            • Link Explorer
            • Keyword Explorer
            • Competitive Research
            • Brand Authority Checker
            • Local Citation Checker
            • MozBar Extension
            • MozCast
            Resources
            • Blog
            • SEO Learning Center
            • Help Hub
            • Beginner's Guide to SEO
            • How-to Guides
            • Moz Academy
            • API Docs
            About Moz
            • About
            • Team
            • Careers
            • Contact
            Why Moz
            • Case Studies
            • Testimonials
            Get Involved
            • Become an Affiliate
            • MozCon
            • Webinars
            • Practical Marketer Series
            • MozPod
            Connect with us

            Contact the Help team

            Join our newsletter
            Moz logo
            © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
            • Accessibility
            • Terms of Use
            • Privacy

            Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.