Language/Country Specific Pages All in English
-
Hi Folks,
I have been checking how many pages our competitors have indexed in Google compared to our website and I noticed that one of our main competitors has over 2 million indexed pages and I have figured out that it is because they have language/country specific pages for every page on their website. That being said, these pages contain all of the same content and the language doesn't actually change, it remains in English.
Now my question is this. Will this not in fact hurt their rankings, in terms of duplicate content? Or am I missing something here?
The URL's essentially do something like www.competitor.com/fr/ for France for example but as I say the content is in English, and duplicates their main website.
Seems odd to me but would love your opinions on this. Thanks.
Gaz
-
Thanks Keszi,
Will send you a PM, appreciate your help and advice. Thanks.
Gareth
-
In general, they should have different texts for all of their targeted regions. But without having a closer look on this specific example, it is quite hard to tell what they are doing.
If you want, send me a private message (if you do not want to share it here) and we can take a look at the specific case. Ok?
Gr., Keszi
-
Thanks for the response keszi.
In terms of serving pages that are all in English though, how would this affect rankings? It seems as though this should be penalised as you're not providing content in the language targeted, so in fact it is duplicate.
Thanks
Gaz
-
Hi Gareth,
I personally do not like the sub-domain approach, so if I had to choose between sub-domain and sub-directory approach, I would go for the second one.
The company where I work is using sub-directories for each of the languages, we have content written in each of the languages and we have also implemented hreflang markup. And it works fine for us.
Each of the approaches in international targeting has their positive and negative aspects. It really depends on many factors which one to choose.
Gr., Keszi
-
After doing some research it appears that subdirectory language specific content is the least SEO friendly but it also seems that you should have the content written in the language of that specific country.
What are your thoughts on this? Would this be detrimental to rankings or would you recommend I implement a similar strategy but using subdomains like https://country.domain.com? Thanks.
Gaz
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
-
If I have two brands and I market one in English (BrandA.com) and one in Spanish (BrandB.com), and the websites are identical but in different languages, would that have a negative impact on SEO due to duplicate content?
I have a client who wants a website in Spanish and one in English. Typically we would use a multi-language plugin for a single site (brandA.com/en or /es), but this client markets to their Spanish-speaking constituents under a different brand. So I am wondering if we have BrandA.com in English, and the exact same content in Spanish at BrandB.com if there will be negative SEO implications and/or if it will be recognized as duplicate content by search engines?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Designworks-SJ1 -
Merging Pages and SEO
Hi, We are redesigning our website the following way: Before: Page A with Content A, Page B with Content B, Page C with Content C, etc
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | viatrading1
e.g. one page for each Customer Returns, Overstocks, Master Case, etc
Now: Page D with content A + B + C etc.
e.g. one long page containing all Product Conditions, one after the other So we are merging multiples pages into one.
What is the best way to do so, so we don't lose traffic? (or we lose the minimum possible) e.g. should we 301 Redirect A/B/C to D...?
Is it likely that we lose significant traffic with this change? Thank you,0 -
How to optimize count of interlinking by increasing Interlinking count of chosen landing pages and decreasing for less important pages within the site?
We have taken out our interlinking counts (Only Internal Links and not Outbound Links) through Google WebMaster tool and discovered that the count of interlinking of our most significant pages are less as compared to of less significant pages. Our objective is to reverse the existing behavior by increasing Interlinking count of important pages and reduce the count for less important pages so that maximum link juice could be transferred to right pages thereby increasing SEO traffic.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vivekrathore0 -
New pages not ranking
I published some new landing pages about a month a go which are much better quality than previous pages and on an optimised URL. The old pages never ranked and the new pages aren't ranking either although they are much better. The old pages 301 redirect to the new pages. Any quick ways I can at least get them ranking? Not expecting Page 1 overnight but to at least see the new pages on Page 5 would be great!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Marketing_Today0 -
Revert to old domain w/ better DA/PA or stick with new one?
I switched from one domain to another because I wanted a domain that had our company name so it was more brand-y. However, the old domain had better DA/PA. Originally I set up a global 301 from the old to the new, but now I'm finding that I actually need to set up individual 301's from each URL of the old site, or at least from each page. The new domain is http://www.bohmkalish.com and the old domain was http://www.ssdlawcalifornia.com. However, I am using Wix so it looks like I can't always do URL-URL 301's, although I can redirect any URL to a page on the new website. The problem is that, in some cases, the content on the new site is different (or, for example, I can only link a particular blog post on the old site back to the new site's blog's main page). How closely do URLS/pages need to resemble each other for link juice to be transferred? Also, should I try to set up all these redirects manually or bite the bullet and go back to using the old domain? The problem is that I did a lot of beginner SEO junk for the new domain, like submitting to a few higher-quality directories, and getting our website on various industry resource sites, etc. I'd need to re-do this entirely if I go back to the old page. What do you think?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BohmKalish1230 -
If Penguin 2.0 targets specific pages and keywords, should I spend less SEO effort on them since will they be harder to optimize? Penalty repair is only starting at end of year.
I’m working with a company that got hit by Penguin 2.0. They’re going to switch to white-hat only for a few months and review analytics before considering repairing the penalty. In the meantime, would it make sense to focus less SEO effort (on-site optimization, link building, etc.) on any pages or keywords that were penalized or hit hardest? Or are those the pages we should work on the most? Thanks for reading!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DA20130 -
Using a 302 re-direct from http://www to https://www to secure customer data
My website sends Customers from a http://www.mysite.com/features page to a https://www.mysite.com/register page which is an account sign-up form using a 302 re-direct. Any page that collects customer data has an authenticated SSL certificate to protect any data on the site. Is this 302 the most appropriate way of doing this as the weekly crawl picks it up as being bad practise? Is there a better alternative?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ubique0 -
Schema markup in SERP in s ome languages but not in English. Any suggestions?
I have schema markup on a category page and on a product page on a website in 10 languages. Product page markup is showing in google SERP in all languages (both star rating, number of votes). Category page markup is showing very inconsistently. For English google SERP do not pick it up at all. For Spanish and German they are showing completely in SERP (votes, minimum price), for other languages, just part of makrup (minimum price) is shown in google SERP. In rich snippet tool they show up correctly in all languages. Any suggestion what can be done to get schema of category page picked up more consistently? Any experience of other markup formats than schema being picked up better? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lcourse0