Any Idea for International SEO in this complex situation?
-
Hi,
a client of mine has a site with a domain name brand.es. They are a furniture manufacturer. They has a well known brand in its sector.
brand.com is registered by a US company. (Completly different activity)This client registered its domain name 10 years ago, and its audience was in Spain.
As it is a .es ccTLD it is directly geotargeted to Spain.5 years ago, they began to export to other countries, and today they have distributors in a lot of countries like Italy, France, England, Portugal, Germany, and many more...
As they are manufacturers and they sell their products to multiple locations worldwide, the language aproach seems to be the more efficient way to reach they users.
The problem is that they are using a ccTLD domain brand.es, beacuse the .com domain was registered.
Actually the international organic traffic is very poor, mostly related to queries with the brand name.My question:
Is it possible to do international seo with a geotargeted domain .es?
Should they register a .com that doesn't match exactly their brand name? (it is a little difficult, beacause brandfurniture.com would be good for England, but not for Spain or France. )
Or should they focus their strategy with some ccTLDs for 3 or 4 of the main countries? (Not sure this would be an alternative... too much cost)I know, that in this situation there is no perfect solution, but I would appreciate your opinions.
Any Ideas ??????Thank you!!
-
Thank you! I completly agree!
-
Thank you so much for your insights!
-
Having a ccTld like the .es and trying to go international is not the ideal, because:
- the domain is automatically geotargeted toward Spain by Google;
- because, for instance, the .es will be easily recognized as Spanish, and if you are trying to to target also Latin American countries, that can be an issue for psychological reasons.
Said that, it is not impossible to rank well with a ccTld also outside of its main country, it is only more difficult.
Not so much if you share the language (i.e.: .es but also targeting Mexico with a subfolder /es-mx/), but surely more difficult if you are targeting UK.
The only way to overcome the automated geotargeting limitation, more than the already classic stuff like hreflang et al, is local link building and brand awareness campaigns.
That means that if you are using a subfolder strategy, and even though the popularity of the "base language version" is passing through internal linking to all the other versions, you will need to push hard for link earning campaign in every targeted countries... and this can be hard because it is not easy to make people link to a www.domain.com/en-gb/ kind of URL.
So, as a TL;DR, it is possible but surely hard.
-
Yes you can and I've seen this many times. I'm not that a multitude of TLDs is the right way to go about it however and would suggest sub-domains. Don't forget to use an IP blocker like HMA to test search results from various proxy locations. This has been a life saver many times for us!
-
The short answer is you can rank any site for any geolocation.
The longer answer is that you have a ccTLD which, as you've noted, is geotargeted to Spain. That's not an insurmountable problem, but it does tend to tilt the table against you slightly. That having been said, this is about SEO and marketing so if you want to keep your single ccTLD there's no reason you can't. When was the last time you took note of the domain name of a link you were clicking in a search result? As long as it's relevant, do you care?
Build other language sections and segment them using subdirectories (i.e. brand.es/en, /fr, /it, etc) and build your localization in. Advertise locally through Adwords and do what you can to reach out to local links so you can build some broader geotargeting for engine bots to grab onto. Remember, make sure you're doing authentic localization and NOT dumping your content into Google Translate.
All this having been said, if I were you I would see if I can get the ccTLDs for these other countries and do your localization that way (i.e brand.co.uk, brand.fr, etc). This will tilt the table in your favor and allow you to focus on localizing and marketing. It will make advertising easier as well.
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 SEO Question: Using hreflang tags across two different TLDs.
Hi! My UK based company just recently made the decision to let the US market operate their ecommerce business independently. Initially, both markets were operating off the same domain using sub-directories (i.e: www.brandname.com/en-us/ , www.brandname.com/en-gb/ ) Now that the US team have broken away from the domain - they are now using www.brandnameUSA.com while the UK continues to use www.brandname.com/en-gb/. The content is similar across both domains - however, the new US website has been able to consolidate several product variations onto single product pages where the UK website is using individual product pages for each variation. We have placed a geo-filter on the main domain which is 301 redirecting North American traffic looking for www.brandname.com to www.brandnameUSA.com However, since the domain change has taken place, product pages from the original domain are now indexing alongside the new US websites product pages in US search results. The UK website wants to be the default destination for all international traffic. My question is - how do we correctly setup hrlang tags across two separate TLDs and how do we handle a situation where multiple product pages on the "default" domain have been consolidated into one product page on the new USA domain? This is how we are currently handling it: "en-us" href="https://www.BRANDNAMEUSA.com/All-Variations" /> href="https://www.BRANDNAMEUSA.com/All-Variations" />
International SEO | | alexcbrands0 -
If I redirect based on IP will Google still crawl my international sites if I implement Hreflang
We are setting up several international sites. Ideally, we wouldn't set up any redirects, but if we have to (for merchandising reasons etc) I'd like to assess what the next best option would be. A secondary option could be that we implement the redirects based on IP. However, Google then wouldn't be able to access the content for all the international sites (we're setting up 6 in total) and would only index the .com site. I'm wondering whether the Hreflang annotations would still allow Google to find the International sites? If not, that's a lot of content we are not fully benefiting from. Another option could be that we treat the Googlebot user agent differently, but this would probably be considered as cloaking by the G-Man. If there are any other options, please let me know.
International SEO | | Ben.JD0 -
International websites : hreflang
Hi, i'm looking for good examples with 'href lang' tag (rel="alternate" hreflang="x") Have you examples of websites with this tag? Thanks D.
International SEO | | android_lyon0 -
Same domain with different google effect seo ?
I have a domain www.abc.com for US market. Now i want to sell same services in Australia. I am thinking to buy www.abc.com.au . Because i think i will get rank more faster for .au in Australia because of .au . What do you guys suggest ?
International SEO | | afycon0 -
SEO Company in Asia
Hi All. I have a client looking to expand their industrial services to southeast Asia (Vietnam and Indonesia specifically right now). Does anyone know of an SEO/Online Marketing firm local to that region that may be able to help them network with businesses and industries there? I've gone through the SEOmoz member database and reached out to a couple people with agencies in that area but never heard back from them. I personally thought a local firm would be more beneficial to the client but I'm also open to suggestions on ways that we might be able to help them market their services online from the US. Thanks so much! Megan
International SEO | | ILM_Marketing0 -
SEO difficulty between languages?
Hello, I would like to know if there are certain factors that determine SEO difficulty between different languages or countries. Is doing SEO more difficult in Japan than in the United States? What would be some factors that could help determine the above? Thanks in advance,
International SEO | | SS-ose0 -
Australia specific SEO tips?
For those who are conducting SEO here in Australia: A lot of the info I read, and there is a lot, is generally from the States or UK it seems. Are there any things in particular I should look out for when doing SEO in Australia? Are there any SEO tips that are particular to Australia only? What directories are a must in Australia?
International SEO | | iSenseWebSolutions0