Local SEO In A Different Language
-
I am pretty new to web design and SEO, so I am sure I have completely done this wrong. I work for a U.S. based equipment dealer and before I started working here my company incorporated in Canada under "(our main product) of Canada". Even before we had any SEO work done on our website, we ranked in the top 3 across Canada for our main product.
The one exception to this was Quebec where we rarely got any traffic due to the language barrier. We started working to fix this last summer using the Montreal Consulate, our SEO company at the time and a translator. They each gave me the same French translation of our Company name and I had them translate the 8 most visited pages on our existing site. I then created a replica of our existing site, hosted it on the French translation of our name and started running inbound links to this site from our U.S. and Canada sites.
The first thing I am wondering is if there's any issue with this practice? We have had good results so far and traffic from Quebec is way up across our three sites.
The second issue I have is we just hired our first employee in Quebec and found a partner there. They are both adamant that the translation we are using is incorrect. I own the domain for the correct translation they are suggesting but I have no idea how to go about it. Any suggestions?
-
I will recommend that you take a look at the Moz Guide on this topic: http://moz.com/learn/seo/international-seo
Google will differentiate content if it is served on a different domain in a different content. So a 1:1 relationship should in theory not create DC as long as it is not in the same language. However, I would take the time to make sure that the content is written properly in the right tongue and take into account local cultural aspects.
Which method are you using?
or
-
Hi Richard
One thing I would look into is hreflang if the content is the same. These attributes help Google and other search engines serve the correct translated content and URLs in the correct regions. Also, you should look into citations and listings in the different regions you are serving. This will help associate your brand with those products/services in that region. Try Whitespark.ca.
Hope this helps!
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
-
How to approach SEO for a business with three distinct focus areas
I have a client who has asked for the development and optimisation of three websites for a business located at one address. They offer specialised skin care, have a make-up artistry division and also a luxury portraiture/photographic service offered to clients. I have suggested one website, based on all I have read in this community (Possum etc.). Their concern is that they will seem like a "master of none" and envision three sites interlinked. Before I push back and categorically say that this is a poor idea, I wanted to gain some insight from those of you who may have dealt with this scenario before. I need to explain how one domain can be structured to present all three these areas as distinct, given that the home page will speak to all three. Any ideas regarding site structure and optimisation strategy would be much appreciated. Thanks in advance!
Local Website Optimization | | flashie0 -
Google showing 3 different results for homepage
Hello All! First post in this community. I hope someone can help with an issue I'm having with my website, 3vdental.com. 1. When I Google my brand name, 3V Dental Associates, I see one result on the front page. This result shows ONLY my brand name as the title tag... See here: https://www.screencast.com/t/Vwq4l2Lrn 2. When I Google my domain name, 3vdental.com, I see a second result, that still only shows my brand name as the title tag, but with sitelinks showing in the results... See here: https://www.screencast.com/t/L37hxZ8rd1xp 3. Both results above are not ideal, as they are not displaying the correct title and meta tags set within the Yoast SEO plugin. Here's a front-end view of the site displaying the correct title and meta tags.. See here: https://www.screencast.com/t/CZS3CBja4m Is there any way to correct this so that Google displays my preferred tags when my website is displayed? Thanks for your help in advance!
Local Website Optimization | | Visionisto0 -
In local SEO, how important is it to include city, state, and state abbreviation in doctitle?
I'm trying to balance local geographic keywords with product keywords. I appreciate the feedback from the group! Michael
Local Website Optimization | | BFMichael0 -
How many SEO clients do you handle?
I work in a small web & design agency who started offering SEO 2 yrs ago as it made sense due to them building websites. There have been 2 previous people to me and I now work there 3 days a week and they also have a junior who knew nothing before she started working for us. She mainly works for me. My question is, how many clients do you think would be reasonable to work on? We currently have around 55 and I have been working there for nearly 5 months now and haven't even got to half of the sites to do some work on. I've told them the client list is way too big and we should only have around 15 clients max. However they don't want to lose the money from the already paying clients so won't get rid of any and keep adding new ones Their systems were a mess and had no reporting or useful software so I had to investiagte and deploy that, along with project management software. Their analytics is also a mess and have employed a contractor to help sort that out too. It's like they were offering SEO services but had no idea or structure to what they did. Meta descriptions were cherry picked which ones to be done, so say 50/60 on a site not filled in. So it's not like I have 45 or so well maintained accounts. They're all a mess. Then the latest 10 new ones are all new sites so All need a lot of work. I'm starting to feel incredibly overwhelmed and oppressed by it all and wanted to see what other SEO professionals thought about it. Any thoughts would be appreciated.
Local Website Optimization | | hanamck0 -
Best SEO Option for Multi-site Set-up
Hi Guys, We have a Business to Business Software Website. We are Global business but mainly operate in Ireland, UK and USA. I would like your input on best practice for domain set-up for best SEO results in local markets. Currently we have: example.com (no market specified) and now we are creating: example.com/ie (Ireland) example.com/uk (united kingdom) example.com/us (united states) My question is mainly based on the example.com/us website - should we create example.com/us for the US market OR just use example.com for the US the market? If the decision is example.com/us should we build links to the directory or the main .com website. To summarize there is two questions: 1. Advise on domain set-up 2. Which site to build links to if example.com/us is the decision. Thank you in advance, Glen.
Local Website Optimization | | DigitalCRO0 -
Multiple My Business pages affecting local SEO?
Hey Moz! We have a situation with a dentist firm with multiple doctors at the same address. They have two locations for their dental offices, and each of the dentists operate at both offices. The issue: Each doctor insists on having their own by business page for each location and i'm afraid this is hurting their local SEO. We've been tracking keywords by week and we've seen some big fluctuations in ratings and i'm looking into why this is happening. The office in location 1 has it's own Google My Business page and the three dentists have their own my business page set up at the exact same address. The office in location 2 has it's own Google My Business page as well and the three dentists have their own my business page there also. This leads the two addresses of the main offices having multiple My Business pages at the same address competing against eachother since they are all are registered with similar names and specialties. Could this be hurting our local SEO? Thanks! -Z
Local Website Optimization | | zacgarrison_700 -
International SEO Difficulty With Hreflang
Hi, It seems that multilingual sites can be very tricky sometimes. This is the second problem we are facing with a client this month... A company which already has a presence in Spain wants to expand now in Portugal, Brazil and Argentina. There are some linguistic differences between Spain Spanish and Argentina Spanish so we will have a slightly different content but same url (check below) We will also cover the linguistic differences between Portuguese and Brazilian but with different urls, so we will have 4 pages serving the same content in 3 ( technically 4 ) different languages: company.com/idioma -> (original Spain Spanish page - url stays the same.) company.com/es-ar/idioma (Argentina url) company.com/pt-pt/idioma (Portugal url) company.com/pt-br/lingua (Brazil url) Normally we know we should use alternate hreflang to all 4 pages, but now that the url changes, e.g between Argentina and Brazil, the case is the same or we can omit it for these two countries? Thank you!
Local Website Optimization | | Tz_Seo0 -
How Google's Doorway Pages Update Affects Local SEO
Hey Awesome Local Folks! I thought I'd take a proactive stance and start a thread on the new doorway pages update from Google, as I feel there will be questions coming up about this here in the forum: Here's the update announcement: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2015/03/an-update-on-doorway-pages.html And here's the part that will make local business owners and Local SEOs take a second glance at this: Here are questions to ask of pages that could be seen as doorway pages: Do the pages duplicate useful aggregations of items (locations, products, etc.) that already exist on the site for the purpose of capturing more search traffic? I think this will naturally lead to questions about the practice of creating local/city landing pages. At this point, my prediction is that this will come down to high quality vs. crummy quality pages of this type. In fact, after chatting briefly with Andrew Shotland, I'm leaning a bit toward seeing the above language as being strongly geared toward directory type sites and large franchises. I recommend reading Andrew's post about his take on this, as I think he's on the right track: http://www.localseoguide.com/googles-about-to-close-your-local-doorway-pages/ So, I'm feeling at this point that if you've made the right efforts to develop unique, high quality local landing pages, you should be good unless you are an accidental casualty of an over-zealous update. We'll see! If anyone has thoughts to contribute on this thread, I hope they will, and if lots of questions start coming up about this here in the community, feel free to link back to this thread in helping your fellow community members 🙂 Thanks, all!
Local Website Optimization | | MiriamEllis9