Multi Regional Website Best Practices
-
Hi there,
I have a website that is targeting 3 countries AU/US & NZ. I have set up hreflang tags for each page on each of the site however I am having difficulties getting it work right.
I read this article which was a great insight into the hreflang tags. https://moz.com/blog/hreflang-behaviour-insights and as a result I have implemented hreflang tags in the following manner:
When users access the root domain http://[website] it will redirect the user to their locale with a 302 redirect.
I have a few questions:
1. When building my external link profiles, I'm not sure if I should be building link profiles for http://[website]/ or for the geo graphical pages (http://[website]/aus/ etc..). Note that the http://[website]/ is never used, it just issues a 302 to the actual geographical location.2. It seems that the hreflang tags are not working correctly. Perhaps its the result of the 302 on the root page, but in google.com.au (using the link http://www.google.com.au/search?hl=en&gl=au&pws=0&q=[branded search]) I would expect that I should see the search results for /aus/ given the fact that the hreflang tags are setup as en-au. Instead I am seeing the root domain page. Is that correct or should it be showing all the pages with /aus/. ALSO If I do a search in google thailand (http://www.google.com.au/search?hl=en&gl=th&pws=0&q=[branded search]) it returns the /aus/ version where it should be showing the /us/ using the x-default hreflang tag.
In google webmaster tools I have setup 4 site profiles:
http://[website]/
http://[website]/us/
http://[website]/aus/ (Targeted to Australia)
http://[website]/nz/ (Targeted to New Zealand)Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks
Nathan
-
Google explicitly advice to use 302 in case of redirection because of IP/User Agent detection, which is what it always says in others similar cases (i.e.: redirecting from desktop to mobile version of the site).
-
Hi Patrick,
If I created a landing page on the root domain, would that have positive or negative implications for SEO. I'm also thinking through usability whether it's more useable to redirect a user automatically with the option to change their region after they have landed on their 'local' site.
Do you know how my search results would look adding the landing page into the mix? I mean in terms of URL and content, how will it display in the search engines?
At the moment, sometimes I see the root domain in the search results and other times I see the country specific pages. An example of this is if you go to https://www.google.com.au/?gws_rd=ssl#q=destiny+rescue+where+we+work, you will see a mixture of results. There are some root domain representations, some /aus/ and even some /us/ and /nz/ (of which the last 2 technically shouldn't be present).
Thanks
-
Hi again
1. There is nothing you are going to lose by changing the 302 redirect to a 301. If anything, I would change the www.domain.com version of your site (leaving that country targeted to the world, no specific region) to give the user an option of what region they are from and what site they would like to visit based on their location. I would then follow the directions in my first paragraph.
2. See my suggestion in one. You shouldn't redirect your www.domain.com to a regional variant. Again, if anything, make the homepage an option page based on the users location so that they can choose which experience they would like to have.
Does this all make sense? Let me know!
-
Hi Patrick,
Thanks for your response.
I read the Moz page on redirections and it's interesting MOZ states that 0% link juice is passed with a 302. With that in mind I have the following additional questions:
1. At the moment I do a 302 from the root of domain to the geo graphical site. (The root domain page is never rendered, only redirected). From what I understand google bots only ever spider a site from the US. If I change the redirect to a 301 the link juice from the root page would then be transferred mostly to /us/ then would it? What sort of ranking power would /aus/ and /nz/ lose as a result of changing the redirect from a 302 to a 301.
2. Would that mean that the http://[website]/ root page would disappear from the search engines and only /us/, /aus/, & /nz/ would be displayed? At the moment the root page link (http://[website]/) is being displayed on most searches when I google.
Thanks.
-
Hi there
Yes - hreflang and language tags are a great place to start. I would also create a Google and Bing Webmaster Tools for each regional variation and country target them accordingly - here's the Bing resource to do that.
You can also use citation builders like Whitespark to build listings for the regional URL variations and their contact information.
When it comes to your 302 issues, I would make sure that your redirects are implemented properly - there are resources there on how to do so.
I would also suggest trying to mold your on-site SEO and content to capture traffic in regional areas for a better user experience.
Here are a couple of more resources for you:
International SEO (Moz)
The International SEO Checklist (Moz)Hope this all 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
-
International website sharing with .com/.au/.uk
I have a small business in the United States and would like to copy our main website for my international partners. My website is a .com. I think that their domains will end in their country codes: .au and .uk. We are open to using different domains. We plan to share blog articles and other content, but do not wish to be penalized for duplication. I have tried to read articles on this topic, but am unfamiliar with a lot of the terms. Is there any way to do this simply? Many thanks, Steph
International SEO | | essential_steph0 -
What's the best strategy for acquisition?
Hi All, Recently acquired a competitor company. This acquired company is small in size but is the exclusive UK distributor for a gigantic Swedish company. This is the way the current domain structure is divided. swedish-supplier.se (Not owned by us - swedish supplier ) Swedish-supplier.co.uk (owned by us, operating as the swedish supplier in the UK) New-acquired-company.com (owned by us) The supplier doesn't want us to have two websites as they keep getting confused customers. Because of this we have agreed to remove www.swedish-suplier.co.uk and solely sell the product at www.new-aqquired-company.com. However, because of the sheer size of the Swedish supplier, a lot of traffic comes through to swedish-supplier.co.uk. My question is, how can we work together with the supplier to remove this domain and still maintain a good amount of UK traffic? Should we point swedish-supplier.co.uk back to the suppliers original translated web site and have them pass enquiries onto us or should we point it to our website? & What's the best way to go about it? Thanks, Danny
International SEO | | DannyHoodless0 -
What are the SEO implications of having a website hosted in Singapore (as a subdomain of the global website) when the website is targeting the UK audience?
What are the SEO implications of having a website hosted in Singapore (as a subdomain of the global website) when the website is targeting the UK audience? Will it be hard to get it to rank? Will there be problems with search console?
International SEO | | ToniFarrington-Allthingsweb0 -
What is the best way to generate an automatic sitemap for google, bing and yahoo?
Hi guys, I have 3 international sites So far I recieved a Sitemap that was generated by an seo company to use and submit to google, for our co.nz domain, I have been told to submit this also to bing and yahoo. Can anyone tell me if I can submit the same sitemap for the com.au and com or would i need to generate a new sitemap for each domain? I have been told, everytime we change content we have to keep submitting, is there a way to do this autmatically as we will be writting alot of content daily. Any recommendations or suggestions?
International SEO | | edward-may0 -
Website Migration
Are there any SEO issues with fdmgroup.com that I should address? We recently migrated to a new website redesign. Thanks.
International SEO | | fdmgroup0 -
How to handle rel canonical on secondary TLD's - multi regional sites.
I currently have a .com domain which I am think of duplicating the content on to another tld, CO.UK (and regionalize some aspects like contact numbers etc). From my research, it seems that in gwt you must then indicate which country you wish to target, in the co.uk case the UK. My question is how should I handle rel canonical in the duplicated site. should it rel canonical back to the .com or the co.uk? Any other pointers would also be appreciated. Thx
International SEO | | dmccarthy0 -
"Hreflang=x" tag and multinational websites
Hello, We have multiple websites targeted at multiple countries and languages, each with the correct country extension. We have a corporate blog for each of these websites, where the blogs are subdomains of the main website. Currently we have a process of rewriting our blog posts completely – while keeping the same subjects – in order to have original content on each of our blogs, although we have up to 3 blogs in the same language. These are the languages we target: French – FRANCE French – SWITZERLAND French – BELGIUM Italian – ITALY Italian – SWITZERLAND German – GERMANY German – SWITZERLAND German – AUSTRIA Spanish – SPAIN Spanish – COLOMBIA Spanish – PANAMA Czech – CZECH REPUBLIC Swedish – SWEDEN Dutch – BELGIUM / NETHERLANDS English – UK English – INTERNATIONAL The process is obviously very tedious, and not always applied rigorously – i.e. some of the texts are posted on 2-3 different blogs, creating duplicate content.
International SEO | | ESL_Education
The questions : Would there be any reason for us to privilege the use the rel="canonical" tag over the "hreflang=x" tag, thus giving privilege to a "master" version for each language? Are there any risks in using the "hreflang="x" tag for our blogs considering that the posts would be very similar, except for references to additional content? Could there be any risk that Google would consider our sites as duplicate content after all? Should we specify on each blog that we have all the above versions, or should we only specify the other markets versions in each language? For example, should we specify on our French, Swiss and Belgium blog that we have 3 different French versions, on our UK blog that we also have an international version, and so on, or should we list all versions on each of the blogs? Does the "hreflang="x" tag facilitate the indexation of each of the versions in the SERPs of their targeted market? Lastly, are there any precautions we should take in order to put this in place? Looking forward to your feedback. Best wishes, Maëlle0 -
What is the best SEO site structure for multi country targeting?
Hi There, We are an online retailer with four (and soon to be five) distinct geographic target markets (we have physical operations in both the UK and New Zealand). We currently target these markets like this: United Kingdom (www.natureshop.co.uk) New Zealand (www.natureshop.co.nz) Australia (www.natureshop.com/au) - using a google web master tools geo targeted folder United States (www.natureshop.com) - using google web master tools geo targeted domain Germany (www.natureshop.de) - in german and yet to be launched as full site We have various issues we want to address. The key one is this: our www.natureshop.co.uk website was adversely affected by the panda update on April 12. We had some external seo firms work on this site for us and unfortunately the links they gained for us were very low quality, from sometimes spammy sites and also "keyword" packed with very littlle anchor text variation. Our other websites (the .co.nz and .com) moved up after the updates so I can only assume our external seo consultants were responsible for this. I have since managed to get them to remove around 70% of these links and we have bought all seo efforts back in house again. I have also worked to improve the quality of our content on this site and I have 404'ed the six worst affected pages (the ones that had far too many single phrase anchor text links coming into them). We have however not budged much in our rankings (we have made some small gains but not a lot). Our other weakness's are not the fastest page load times and some "thin" content. We are on the cusp (around 4 weeks away) of deploying a brand new platform using asp.net MVP with N2 and this looks like it will address our page load speed issues. We also have been working hard on our content building and I believe we will address that as well with this release. Sorry for the long build up, however I felt some background was needed to get to my questions. My questions are: Do you think we are best to proceed with trying to get our www.natureshop.co.uk website out of the panda trap or should we consider deploying a new version of the site on www.natureshop.com/uk/ (geo targeted to the UK)? If we are to do this should we do the same for New Zealand and Germany and redirect the existing domains to the new geo targeted folders? If we do this should we redirect the natureshop.co.uk pages to the new www.natureshop.com/uk/ pages or will this simply pass on the panda "penalty". Will this model build stronger authority on the .com domain that benefit all of the geo targeted sub folders or does it not work this way? Finally can we deploy the same pages and content on the different geo targeted sub folders (with some subtle regional variations of spelling and language) or will this result in a duplicate content penalty? Thank you very much in advance to all of you and I apologise for the length and complexity of the question. Kind Regards
International SEO | | ConradC
Conrad Cranfield
Founder: Nature Shop Ltd0