How to handle different content on same domain internationally?
-
Dear community,
I have encountered a unique situation and I am unsure as how to proceed, I have a U.S. based website for intentions of this question is www.musicstore.com. The customer has decided to offer their products up for sale internationally, however, has two business requirements, one is that his international presence differs with product offering and content then the domestic version and two, that they both live on the same domain of www.musicstore.com without any reference to offering a differing international presence. Many of his products are offered for purchase directly overseas, while not against his suppliers rules, it is frowned upon.
All this said, now to my question. I'm currently running a Magento two website install. With GeoIP setting which version of www.musicstore.com is presented. Do I have to worry about different content being displayed on the same exact url even though the experience is completely location based? If it is a concern, any risks I should be concerned with. I could possibly do something along the lines of www.musicstore.com/in/ while this is not ideal for the customer, if it prevents many larger issues I'd steer the customer this way. I just want my customer to be able to sell his product internationally without upsetting his suppliers or making Google go, what does this site actually have.
Hopefully I explained my question well enough for those who can help to understand. Please ask if you need any more information.
Any help would be greatly appreciated, thank you.
-
Dirk - thanks for posting the link to the personalization software and SEO question - I was trying to find that to give you credit - great information!
-
I agree with Patrick on the legal aspects.
If you want to do geolocation it still better to have a separate url. Check this link: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/6144055?hl=en - the red box on the page indicates clearly:
"IMPORTANT: We continue to support and recommend using separate locale URL configurations and annotating them with rel=alternate hreflang annotations."
It continues with: "If your website has pages that return different content based on the perceived country or preferred language of the visitor (i.e., you have locale-adaptive pages), Google might not crawl, index, or rank all of your locale-adaptive content. This is because the default IP addresses of the Googlebot crawler appear to be based in the USA. In addition, the crawler sends HTTP requests without setting
Accept-Language
in the request header."While the article also states that Google bot can also use foreign IP adresses, so it would be capable to detect the non-us version of the content, based on the remarks above it doesn't guarantee that the full site will be indexed.
To be honest, I don't think this is a risk your client is willing to take (unless non-us sales are not important)
The hreflang would be useless in this case - as you don't have an alternate url in this scenario.
My advice would be to use geolocation but to redirect non us visitors to an international url (like the alternative you mentioned). You could block access to this site for US visitors but then you create the same dependency of the non-US based Googlebots - which doesn't seem to be advisable). In this scenario you do have the risk that the suppliers would find out that an international version exist.
You might want to check this question as well (http://moz.com/community/q/personalization-software-and-seo)- the geo location in this case was on region/citylevel which is impossible to do.
Hope this helps,
Dirk
-
Hi Ian
First, I would thoroughly check the legalities of what you're talking about, just from the customer's company's standpoint. You don't want to get yourself in trouble.
If everything goes well and you get the go ahead, take a look at the following resources:
International SEO (Moz)
The International SEO Checklist (Moz)
Use hreflang for language and regional URLs (Google)Let me know if this helps - good luck!
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
-
Near-Duplicate Content
Hi, On my website, we are showcasing many products in both English and Spanish. We originally create each a product description in English, then we translate to Spanish. But sometimes, due to having numerous products, we don't translate to Spanish, and we just pull the English description on the Spanish page (so it has menus etc in Spanish, but the long Product Description in in English). English Example: http://www.viatrading.com/product.jhtm?id=34608
International SEO | | viatrading1
Spanish Example: http://www.viatrading.com/wholesale/product/TIGR-LN-APP/Ropa,-Relojes,-Gafas-y-Accesorios.html?cid=4 Could that be considered duplicated (or near-duplicated) content? For SEO, would it be better if the Spanish product page was redirected to the English one if not translated? Thank you,0 -
How can I restrict the domains country by country?
Hello, I have Two Domains one is xyz.co.uk and other is xyz.com Now, my main target for .com is United States, and I don't want to open that .com domain in any other country especially India. The same with the .co.uk, I dont want to open .co.uk in other countries. I did it with some developer help but it gave me redirected error in Google Webmaster. Can anyone please guide me how I can do this the proper way ? And Other issues is, how can I implement ,if any user in United States open xyz.co.uk than he should redirect to the .com version. Thank you.
International SEO | | AmitTulsiyani0 -
Moving my site to one domain name .com from 3
Hi Guys, I'm ranking really well for my domains in my local geo - im wondering if it will be more effective if i moved the co.nz and com.au over to the .com - the only thing is will i still see my com.au and co.nz results on the .com?
International SEO | | edward-may0 -
International SEO Question with regards to Sub Folders in Webmaster Tools
So, we have a website in 18 or so different languages. bluewidgets.com/br bluewidgets.com/cn etc I have added each sub folder in Google Webmaster Tools and 'pointed' them to be at their respective geographic specific. However, the United States version of the website is sitting on the root domain. Is there any issue with me pointing the root domain at United States Google, considering there are 18 sub folders already pointed at different regions?
International SEO | | LukeyJamo0 -
B2B International Subdirectory - How Unique is Unique?
With the power to upload unique xml sitemaps for a subdirectory targeting the UK, geo-target the UK in WebmasterTools, and the ability to adjust content to adhere to en-gb standards, would it still be essential for a site to re-write all of it's content if it wanted to rank well or could we just use the same content as our en-us pages with the dialect changes and other tools mentioned above? Not interested in unique TLDs or subdomains.
International SEO | | SEOPPCDP0 -
Chinese domain offered for sale!! Very suspicious
We have been approached by a company offering us a chinese domain we would like to own, they are based in China but provide no company information and only their escrow account for us to transfer the funds. My first reaction is to run a mile but we have been asked to see if we can secure it from these people any urgent advice would be greatly appreciated as we have never done a transaction like this as the overseas domains are a new venture for us. Any guidance really appreciated.
International SEO | | loopylu030 -
International (foreign language) URL's best practices
I'm curious if there is a benefit or best practice with regards to using the localized language on international sites (with specific ccTLDs). For example, should my french site (site.fr) use the french language as keywords within the URLs or should they be in english? e.g. www.site.fr/nourriture vs. www.site.fr/food Is that considered best practice for SEO (or just for brand perception those markets?). Is there a tangible loss in SEO if we do not use the correct language for those URLs and just stick with English around the world? I recall seeing a Matt Cutts video on the topic and he said that google does support i18n URL's but other SE's might not support them as gracefully but he didn't come down with a hard recommendation to go with i18n URL's or just English. Would love a strong ruling in favor one direction based on best practices.
International SEO | | mongillo0 -
Intentional redirect for international visitors to a website
We are doing PPC for a new client, and using Clicktale to improve conversion rates. However, Clicktale won't work because the client does not want international visitors looking at their website (competitive reasons! - yeah don't get me started...). They have a redirect on for all international visitors which points to a "coming soon..." page Are there any SEO implications on traffic in their own country (they currently do rank for terms)? I'd like to go back with a strong case for them removing any international redirect. Thank You
International SEO | | CleverClicks0