International SEO - Mixing country targeting and language targeting in GWT.
-
Hi all!
I want to start with International SEO process for my ecommerce. We sell worldwide with a .com domain, although the business is mainly focused in Spain.
We maintain three languages, spanish, english and french with a non suitable structure. Now, after read a lot about it, I'm considering to use subdirectories for each language, /es/, /en/ and /fr/. And heres it's my first doubt:
Could I avoid /es/ from spanish language as it's the default one? I've understood from recents Q&A that it's not needed although more user friendly. I'm trying to avoid tons of 301 from old urls for my main language. Anyway I want to know the best approach regardless complexity.
My second doubt is about country targeting. After some research, I consider that it'd be interesting target country for /fr/ subdomain but language for /en/. Do you see any problem mixing both strategies?
I know I also need to add the hreflang tag to guide googlebot. But I prefer to clarify these points first.
Thanks a lot!
Best regards.
-
Hi Carmen,
Thans for the response.
No, I'd like to target french in france, fr-FR. That for french, but for english i just want to target the language and not the country, just /en/. So, I'd like to know if i can follow different strategies in webmaster tools, targeting country for /fr/ subdomain and language for /en/ subdomain.
Thanks!
-
Hi Diego,
We had similar problems as our first language was spanish, then we added english and migrated the website to a new WP. The dev created an /es/ directory. We couldn´t avoid 301 redirects. Anyway, the only thing we have lost was the social media share counter. In terms of organic traffic we saw no impact (overall impact was positive because we started creating more content since then - but this is another story). Actually if I had to do it again, I would keep the original URL as it was and only create the /en/. Someone else has another opinion?
For your 2nd question: Your target user would be an english speaker living in France?
If so, you should use hreflang:
Kind regards,
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
Okay, so I have read through the following link in respect to International SEO (https://moz.com/learn/seo/international-seo), and I believe that the way forward it a ccTLD. My thought was to have .com, .co.uk and .eu. Currently my site is .com, but receives most of its traffic from UK sources. I'm concerned that when I switch over to ccTLDs, the .co.uk in particular, that my UK traffic could dry up. Switching from .com to .co.uk and then using the .com to target the US market makes sense, but I would like to know others opinions on the potential dangers of doing this. Also, are ccTLDs kept on the same hosting or would they require individual hosting? The link doesn't cover this question.
International SEO | | moon-boots1 -
What's the best homepage experince for an international site?
Greeting Mozzers. I have a question for the community, which I would appreciate your input on. If you have a single gTLD that services multiple countires, what do you think is the best homepage UX for the root homepage and why? So the example would be you own website www.company.org and target content to Germany, Japan and Australia with content through the folder structure eg. www.company.org/de-de If someone comes to the www.company.org from a region, would you: Redirect them based on location IP – so if from Germany they land on www.company.org/de-de Let them land on the homepage which offers location selection Let them land on a page with content and offer location selection eg. pop-up or obvious selection box Something I’ve not thought of… I'd appreciate your input. Thanks
International SEO | | RobertChapman0 -
Include mobile and international versions of pages to sitemap or not?
My pages already have alternate and hreflang references to point to international and mobile versions of the content. If I add 5 language desktop versions and 5 language mobile versions as https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2620865?hl=en explains, my sitemap will get bulky. What are the pros and cons for referencing all page versions in sitemap and for include just general (English/Desktop) version in sitemap?
International SEO | | poiseo0 -
International Site - Language Targetting
Hi Mozzers, I am currently conducting a technical site audit on a large website. Their main content and audience is in the US, but they have started to add translated versions of the content in different languages (about 30 different languages). Also, they are not using cookies or scripts to auto-populate the language on the page, and the pages seem to be getting indexed just fine. Currently, they have their language distinguished by sub-folder (i.e. example.org/blog/by-language/spanish/), which I plan to 301 redirect to example.org/blog/es/ for each language. However, they are not implementing any sitemaps or hreflang header tags. I have not dealt with this in the past as all of my work has been done on smaller US sites, so I wanted to verify the steps I plan to take to ensure this is a solid approach. 301 redirect example.org/language/spanish/blog/ to example.org/es/blog/ Recommend adding hreflang markup into the header for each language. (They have a lot of pages, so they may not implement this if it is too much work.) Highly recommend adding XML sitemaps for each content version of the site using the media flow HREFLANG Siitemap Tool. Setting up multiple Webmaster Tools accounts and geotargetting them by language. I would also add the XML sitemap for each language. Is this a solid approach, given the information above? I want to make sure I am fundamentally sound on this before suggesting so many large changes. Thank you in advance for any thoughts / wisdom you can instill! ---------------------additional information--------------------- If I am hearing you correctly, I would only submit one XML Sitemap for international content. It would look something like the below image. I would only use one GWT account to upload the file, and I would not need to add any additional markup on each page, as it will be located in the hreflang xml sitemap. Finally, would it be a good or bad idea to 301 redirect their naming convention to a new, shorter one? example.org/by-language/spanish/blog/this-is-an-example --> example.org/es/blog/this-is-an-example bpXAYlr.png
International SEO | | J-Banz0 -
Country Specific Google Results
Does anyone have any stats (preferred) on users selecting Google results segmented to their country? For instance, users in the UK (France, Japan, etc.) selecting the "Pages from the UK" option to limit results to country based sites? Or if not hard stats, at least any international users care to comment? Cheers, Brian ~identity
International SEO | | identity0 -
Country name displayed after domain name in google SERP
our online shop targets clients in the US and worldwide (same URL - no subdirectories - currency changes based on IP). when searching in google.ie or google.no for our site google displays in the SERPS "US" or "United States" after the URL for our site, but for most other US competitors it does not show the country in the SERPS. I deleted our google places listing 2 weeks ago, since I suspected it may be related, but no change so far. In google webmaster tools we have targeted the shop domain to United States, which may be another factor. Unfortunately we can not undo this setting since without it our google US ranking for the most relevant competitive keyword drops from position 8 to position 100+. Server location is in Germany which despite lots of US links and US contact info and USD currency appparently makes google think that the site is not targeting the US. Does anybody know what triggers the country name in the SERPS (google places or webmaster tools or other) and can give advice if there is any way to get rid of it.
International SEO | | lcourse0 -
How to optimise you site in other countries eg Australia
We would like to rank better for specific keywords in Australia. We rank pretty well in our home tld .co.uk but would like to do so in .com.au I would appreciate your thoughts and recommendations.
International SEO | | seanmccauley0 -
Subdomain hosted in a different country - what are the implications?
Hello, We are looking at creating an eCommerce section to a website and we are just weighing up the options: Magento - host on hour own server - great but it can often be very slow when hosting a shared server. Shopify - hosted solution but hosting is in the US and we are in the UK and shop will be hosted on a subdomain as a result Build our own solution - time consuming and costly There are two issues that have arisen from this situation.... Is it worse for SEO to host your store in a different country or to host in your country but your store potentially run slower? I'm swaying to the side of the argument that says give your users a good and fast experience instead of worrying about where you host the store. Bearing in mind that the main website will be hosted in the UK anyway and it is just the subdomain that will be hosted in the US. Just wondered if anybody has had experience with this or if I'm missing something? All feedback greatly appreciated! Thanks, Elias
International SEO | | A_Q0