How to set up international SEO for english speaking countries
-
Hi, My company have offices around the world. However they also provide different services and products depending on the region. For example our offices in the USA, UK and Australia all provide different services to each other.
My question is, how do I set up my WordPress website up to cater for these different countries and services?
I think the simple answer would be to build a separate website for each, but this would be too costly and we don't have the resources to maintain all three.
Many thanks for your time,
Tom
-
The best way of using multilingual/multi-country in WordPress is using the WPML plugin.
-
HI Thomas,
The multisite setup is just a way of controlling the content. If you set it up on subfolders then google will see the sub folders as normal and all on the same domain. If you set it up using domain mapping then you are in effect setting up different domains (even though you are hosting the content all in the same place) and google will see the content as separate domains. If you are planning to go the subfolder route you could set up wordpress to get the same behavior without using multisite, it just might be quite dev intensive depending on how different you want the regional variations to be.
Whichever route you choose an important thing will be to make sure your regional hreflang tags are set up correctly - this will likely need a bit of tweaking given your description but is worth it to get it right.
-
Hi Ryan,
Even in WordPress Multisite?
I love a good White Board Friday thank you, I will definitely give that a watch.
Tom
-
Hi Thomas. Yes, inbound links to subfolders tend to help Domain Authority rise better than those going to subdomains. Rand recently did a White Board Friday on this, found here: http://moz.com/blog/subdomains-vs-subfolders-rel-canonical-vs-301-how-to-structure-links-optimally-for-seo-whiteboard-friday. Cheers!
-
Hi Guys,
Thank you for your quick response. If I did use WordPress Multi-Site to build the subfolders for the different countries, would they pass "link juice" between them?
-
HI Thomas,
You could use a wordpress multi site installation for this which allows for setting up different wp installs on subdomains or sub directories as Ryan suggests. This will allow you to have separate 'sites' while all still being controlled from one wp admin panel and with a bit of coding/setup work to tweak things if needed. You can also use a domain mapping plugin to run multiple domains (.com, .com.au, .co.uk etc) from the subfolders if that is in the plans.
-
Without resources for multiple sites, you'll likely want to create separate folders for the regions, ex. yoursite.com/usa/, yoursite.com/uk/, yoursite.com/au/ and so on. To further guide users you could employ location based redirects to their applicable portion of the site. As far as Wordpress design goes you'll want to clearly label each section and state the the services and products being offered are (US/UK/AU) specific.
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
-
Is it worth maintaining multiple international websites
Hi I work for a British company which has two well established websites - a .co.Uk for the UK, and a .com for the US and rest of the world (in language directories). The Uk site is hosted in the Uk, the .com in US. The websites do reasonable well in Google on both sides of the Atlantic. The company is a small but quite well known brand. The company is now thinking of redirecting the .co.Uk to the .com as it would be cheaper to maintain. What would you advise? Thanks.
International SEO | | fdl4712_aol.com2 -
Is using JavaScript to render translations safe for International SEO?
Hello World! Background: I am evaluating a tool/service that a company wants to use for managing the translated versions of their international/multi-lingual websites: https://www.transifex.com/product/transifexlive/ Transifex is asking webmaster to "simply add a snippet of JavaScript" to their website(s); the approved translations are added by the business in the back-end; and the translated sites are made live with the click of a button (on/to the proper ccTLD, sub-domain, or sub-directory, which is specified). CONCERN: Even though I know Google reads JavaScript for crawling and ranking,
International SEO | | SixSpokeMedia64
I am concerned because I see the "English text" when I view the source-code on the "German site", and I wonder if this is really acceptable? QUESTION: Is a service like this (such as Transifex using JavaScript to render translations client-side) safe for indexing and ranking for my clients' international search engine visibility, especially via Google? Thank you!0 -
International SEO Query
Hi All, I have an international SEO question and was wondering if you could help. My client runs a website in the UK (www.example.co.uk). The site is ranked well for it's collection of keywords, my client now wishes to target the US market. He wishes to use the same web structure and design in new site www.example.com as we know this converts well. My questions are: What would be the best practice for setting this up? I know there will be duplicate content issues if a website is duplicated. If we use the same design and website structure but re-word content, would this be acceptable? Thank you for all your help in advance.
International SEO | | SO_UK0 -
International Sites - Sitemaps, Robots & Geolocating in WMT
Hi Guys, I have a site that has now been launched in the US having originally just been UK. In order to accommodate this, the website has been set-up using directories for each country. Example: domain.com/en-gb domain.com/en-us As the site was originally set-up for UK, the sitemap, robots file & Webmaster Tools account were added to the main domain. Example: domain.com/sitemap.xml domain.com/robots.txt The question is does this now need changing to make it specific for each country. Example: The sitemap and robots.txt for the UK would move to: domain.com/en-gb/sitemap.xml domain.com/en-gb/robots.txt and the US would have its own separate sitemap and robots.txt. Example : domain.com/en-us/sitemap.xml domain.com/en-us/robots.txt Also in order to Geolocate this in WMT would this need to be done for each directory version instead of the main domain? Currently the WMT account for the UK site is verified at www.domain.com, would this need reverifying at domain.com/en-gb? Any help would be appreciated! Thanks!
International SEO | | CarlWint0 -
Google Analytics - whats best way to set up to track users on geotargeted sub folders & tlds ?
Hi ive got a client site just about to launch into 2 new territories (German Germany & Turkish Turkey) The existing/main site is in English & targets English keyword usage globally via domain.com and is not geotargeted in anyway. Analytics is set up for this on domain.com and tracking accurately and GWT is set up too. Now we have added a Turkish language site via a subfolder (domain.com/tr/) & the German site (domsain.com/de/) BUT this German subfolder will be domain mapped to a TLD (domain.de) eventually.. So what's best way to configure/set up Google Analytics to track users so can view the international sub-sites as individual sites etc ? (& GWT for that matter) ? Also after doing this i will be setting up in Moz Anlytics as separate campaigns so how do you set up so only draws in the Analytics data specific to these sub-folders ? All Best Dan
International SEO | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
Why is GoogleBot crawling our German site and rendering it in English.
We have a German website at (http://de.pa.com) and we can't get the search engines to index the site in German language. For some reason the GoogleBot, BingBot, etc are crawling de.pa.com and displaying English text on the SERP. I've tried testing via web-sniffer.net and Google Webmaster tools which both are crawling de.pa.com in English. We know the page titles/meta descriptions are in English which we are updating to German, but I'm curious to why search engines are indexing our German site and displaying on the SERP as English text when the entire content of the site is in German. Thank you, Brian
International SEO | | Liamis0 -
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 -
International Link Building
Can anyone weigh in on their own efforts to build links into international TLDs? Which tactics have been successful? Which have failed? Have you engaged any agencies to manage this for you and if so, how did they perform and who are they? We have nine ccTLDs plus our .com site to manage so it's a bit overwhelming! Fortunately, we have teams dedicated to managing day-to-day operations of each site. Each team is comprised of managers who speak the targeted language as their first language and have intimate knowledge of the targeted culture. I want to leverage them to help my SEO efforts, but I'm not sure how my advice should be different than what we do for our .com site.
International SEO | | RyanOD0