Local cTLD site not showing up in local SERP

[Jacobe]

I have 1 website with 2 cTLD. 1 is with .be another .nl. Both are in Dutch and pretty much with the same content but a different cTLD.

The problem I have is that the .nl website is showing up in my serp on google.be. So I'm not seeing any keyword rankings for the .be website. I want to be able to see only .nl website serp for google.nl and .be serp on google.be

I've already set up hreflang tags since 2-3 weeks and search console confirmed that it's been implemented correctly. I've alsy fetched the site and requested a re-index of the website.

Is there anything else I can do? Or how long do I have to wait till Google will update the serp?

[Jacobe]

Update: Still no improvements in the results even after all the changes have been implemented. Anyone with other suggestions perhaps?

[linda_h]

Hi Jacob,

Don't use the canonical across both countries. Google will figure out the correct country targeting eventually. If you do this, it will only hurt you.

You won't be penalized for duplicate content, but you can be omitted from search results (per page) if Google has not figured out the country targeting yet. It might think it is the same content, but be patient.

Another thing you can do is enable people to toggle between the .nl and .be site, and accept (for the time being) that you rank with the 'wrong' site.

I'm pretty sure the fix you mentioned below will help you!

• The canonical url doesn't point to the NL or vice versa. It did have another URL as we're getting data from a different system and using wordpress to generate the userfriendly URL. So The canonical still has a different URL. I've made the change to make it exactly the same as the one shown in the URL. I hope it will help in some way.

[Jacobe]

Hi Linda,

Thanks for the feedback.

• The hreflang format is corret, i just checked again. nl-nl and nl-be.
• The canonical url doesn't point to the NL or vice versa. It did have another URL as we're getting data from a different system and using wordpress to generate the userfriendly URL. So The canonical still has a different URL. I've made the change to make it exactly the same as the one shown in the URL. I hope it will help in some way.
• Geotargeting config was set correctly for each account in Search console from the beginning.
• All backlinks are from .be domains except the one with a high spam score. I've already made the request to remove them.

I'm also thinking about referring the canonical url of both nl and be website to the .be domain as the content is the same. What i'm thinking now is that there is a case of duplicate content and perhaps the .be website is somehow being penalized as the one with the duplicate content which is why the nl website is showing up higher than the .be website. Would this help? I mean if I do this, would Google show the correct domain in the correct engine despite both having same content?

[linda_h]

Hi Antonio,

I actually meant that if you have duplicate content of some kind, your page example.be/xyz may have:

• a canonical to example.be/xyy
• your hreflang might point to example.be/xyz and example.nl/xyz - this should also be example.be/xyy

Did you also check if you used the right format for the hreflang (nl-be)?

And for geotargeting, it is not set by default, so I'd recommend to set it anyway. It can't hurt.

[antonioaraya]

Yes, canonicals maybe are pointing to the .nl site, good point Linda. In the same SF crawl Jacob you can check that.

If the domain is .be, Google Search Console will automatically target the domain to Belgium.

[antonioaraya]

• This item it's OK
• Yes, you can check it on Crawl stats under Crawl menu. Just to be sure, check the log. There's any user agent detector that can redirect Googlebot to other page?. Check that using "Fetch as Google" under the same menu, or change the useragent in Screaming Frog and crawl your site if there's a differente between the default SF user agent and Googlebot
• Yes, you should use one method, if the tag under head doesn't work (but should), try with the sitemap annotations
• The Spam score should be addressed, but the quality links are from Belgium? (or Belgium oriented sites?)

[linda_h]

My experience tells me you might need to wait a bit longer.

Other problems you might have:

• Canonicals not pointing to the same URLs as the hreflangs.
• Geotargeting settings in Google Search Console.
• Belgium backlinks (from .be sites) - but this has been mentioned by Antonio.

[antonioaraya]

Hey Jacob:

• Do you use Screaming Frog? would be great to double check if there's any directive with noindex that it's hurting your .be visibility (about a few of your pages are being indexed). The "site:" command it's pretty useful to use it on-the-fly, but I would recommend always to check if the URLs in the sitemap.xml are being indexed. Wait 1-2 days to see if after submiting your sitemap there's any change
• I assume you are using Wordpres in a Apache server running php, so, in your File Manager (cPanel) or your FTP software, go to the root directory (one level up to public_html), you should have a "logs" folder with a couple of compressed files. Un-zip them and open it with Notepad or any text editor. Search for Googlebot in the logs and see the most recent request from Googlebot
• Yoast it's a good plugin, I use it, but for this case, maybe should be good to deactivate this feature of the plugin and search for another than can handle hreflang, or do it manually
• Yes, maybe your .be ecosystem is pointing to the .nl site, check it with Open Site Explorer and if this is the case, request a change of domain of each site owner. If not, you should begin to build those links in a proper way

[Jacobe]

Thanks for the reply Antonio.

• Checked the robots and it's not blocking anything. All pages are being indexed as well. when I use site:website.be I do see the results. It's just that the .nl website seems to overtake the .be results.
• Where could I find the log files from Googlebot?
• I'm using Yoast SEO pluging for the XML sitemaps and there's no indication of the language there. i'll double check again.
• Concerning the backlinking, do you mean link building?

I've submitted my sitemap to search console and I did notice that only a few of my pages have been indexed. But When I use "site:" I do get the pages.

[antonioaraya]

In my experience this should take no more than 2 weeks after checking href lang are set up properly (but will depend if Googlebot crawl both sites frecuently), the questions I will ask myself in this case are:

• It's pretty dumb, but sometimes we forget the basics, like: are you blocking the site with the robots.txt? noindex tags? something?
• Double check if the href lang is properly implemented
• In your log files there's any presence of Google bot on both sites?
• Assuming you are using tags in the header for href lang: Have you tried to force the href lang implementation with sitemap.xml? https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/189077?hl=en
• Have you tried to backlink the .be domain from business partners in Belgium?