Spanish word as English domain name
-
hi
anyine any issues with using Spanish, and other non English words, as domain names when trying to rank in Google uk. We launched a number of websites a while back but finding it hard to get much traction in Google uk. We are getting a reasonable number of impressions but cannot seem to get very high in the rankings. All the names are foreign words for their service. Our homeware website, for example, uses the basque word for furniture as its name.
other than potential branding issues of having domains people might struggle to spell, is there any serp issues we would face with these names.
thanks
-
I understand that. Sometimes it's a little frustrating to rank but I encourage you to ask yourself this questions:
- I'm trying to run a marathon rather than 100 metres?: try to rank first for less competitive keywords like "dinning tables" or "dining chairs in london" rather than "furniture"
- Do people know me?: maybe you need a little boost to people know you so you can get some SEO signals (links, social shares, branding). Try to run an AdWords Campaign, get active in your social media niche, make partnerships with niche sites (not just for get links, get visibility to other audiences).
- I'm measuring the right KPI's?: sometimes ranking for highly competitive keywords is not the best option if you have a brand new domain. Are you receiving organic traffic? Are you getting long tail rankings? How's the conversion rate of organic search compared to other sources? Are you receiving non-brand traffic rather than your brand (in Google Search Console).
Hope this can help you. Good luck!
-
Many thanks for the quick reply.
the domain extension is co.uk, hosted in uk and the site content all in English. Hopefully that's enough signals for Google. wmt has the uk as the default address for the domain. Due to the extension I'm unable to change it to another location even if I wanted to.
The domain pretty new with very little authority so that's probably more the cause with rankings than anything, I guess. Thought best double check before we invest a lot of time and effort in seo that we wouldn't be making life harder for us than needs to be.
regards
carl
-
I don't think if you are using a word in another language you will have a worst ranking rather than using english words. In Spanish speaking countries it's very often to see domains with english words.
If you are having impressions and not clicks, might be a branding issue and the domain name discourages the people to click. Its title and description are in English, Spanish or Basque? If you are not ranking my questions would be:
- The keywords you are trying to rank are too competitive?
- Are you using the keyword in your page?
- Do you have any link from sites in the UK?
- Do you target your domains to UK in Google Search Console if this domains are gTLD, if not, those domains are co.uk?
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
-
Redirect to 'default' or English (/en) version of site?
Hi Moz Community! I'm trying to work through a thorny internationalization issue with the 'default' and English versions of our site. We have an international set-up of: www.domain.com (in english) www.domain.com/en www.domain.com/en-gb www.domain.com/fr-fr www.domain.com/de-de and so on... All the canonicals and HREFLANGs are set up, except the English language version is giving me pause. If you visit www.domain.com, all of the internal links on that page (due to the current way our cms works) point to www.domain.com/en/ versions of the pages. Content is identical between the two versions. The canonical on, say, www.domain.com/en/products points to www.domain.com/products. Feels like we're pulling in two different directions with our internationalization signals. Links go one way, canonical goes another. Three options I can see: Remove the /en/ version of the site. 301 all the /en versions of pages to /. Update the hreflangs to point the EN language users to the / version. **Redirect the / version of the site to /en. **The reverse of the above. **Keep both the /en and the / versions, update the links on / version. **Make it so that visitors to the / version of the site follow links that don't take them to the /en site. It feels like the /en version of the site is redundant and potentially sending confusing signals to search engines (it's currently a bit of a toss-up as to which version of a page ranks). I'm leaning toward removing the /en version and redirecting to the / version. It would be a big step as currently - due to the internal linking - about 40% of our traffic goes through the /en path. Anything to be aware of? Any recommendations or advice would be much appreciated.
International SEO | | MaxSydenham0 -
Huge spike in referral traffic from international domains
We have recently experienced a huge spike in referral traffic from .fr domains (we are in the UK). They all lead to our 404 page. Its been going on for the last 3 days, and its still happening with about 20 visitors browsing the site from these domains at any one time, staying approx 3-7 seconds and then bouncing. The top domain appears to be a parked page. We cant see any obvious links or ads coming from any of these .fr domains and they are quite irrelevant to our sites industry anyway, which leads me to believe these may not be real visitors. Any advice on what may be causing this? And how to stop it? Needless to say none of these referrals have converted.
International SEO | | Silkstream0 -
Why would a site lose rankings in U.S while maintaining rankings in other English locations (Canada & Australia)
What would cause a site to lose ranking in the U.S while maintaining top (1st page) positions in other English results countries such as Canada or Australia? Is this purely penguin related because of location of backlinks or are there other significant factors that could be in play? Would this rule out Panda as a cause because it's simply an "English language" targeted algo and not location dependent like backlinks (penguin)? Appreciate any insights
International SEO | | ResumeGenius0 -
For a website in portuguese what would you use? pt.domain.com, br.domain.com or domain.com.br
Hello We are a company with a website in several languages, one of them is portuguese. Our market is 2 times bigger in Brazil than in Portugal, but obviously Brazil has more potential in the future. In domain.com we have our main site in English. What would you use? pt.domain.com, br.domain.com or domain.com.br? In the first case, it means just portuguese, in the second Brazil but it is not geolocalized, and in the third, you are almost ignoring Portugal users... Duplicating content, doesn't seem to make sense... The content is basically international, so it is just the language that matters. Any help will be very much appreciated.
International SEO | | forex-websites0 -
How to SEO for Spanish-Speaking People in California
I found myself in need of translating our current website into Spanish language so that we can target the Spanish-speaking population of L.A. and surrounding areas. I have several questions: 1. What should my url structure be? ex: domain.com/es/subpage
International SEO | | cgman
would that work? 2. Do I need to worry about any header information? Do I just translate the whole thing into Spanish with meta info etc..? What about rel="canonical", what do I need to do with the spanish translated pages? Any other tips for SEO in Spanish? I plan on hiring a translator to translate the entire website into Spanish and thought about putting it in its own sub-directory, for example: domain.com/es/ Thanks for looking!0 -
Does anyone know where to find recently expired domains?
The title says it all. Is there anywhere I can find domains that are recently expired and back on the market? I'm thinking if the domain name is a good enough match and has had a reasonable authority that it may be worth buying and using in the correct environment...
International SEO | | Gordon_Hall0 -
Delaying Redirection - Possible loss of Domain Authority?
Hey guys, I was hoping somebody might be help with my current dilema. We have a international website due to go live soon which has changed its brand name. The organisation whom we are working for want to leave the old site live for around 6 months after the new site goes live. The reason for keeping the site live is for users to be able to access many of the resources which will not be transferred over in time for when the new site goes live.The plan is to have a message on old site letting visitors know we have moved site. I'm concerned about this approach in terms of loosing some of the domain authority if the sites bounce rate starts increase due to people clicking over to the new site. Then in 6 months time when we finally redirect to the new site we might loose out on some of the domain authority. Is this something to be concerned about?The site currently has PR of 7 and Domain Authority score of 70.Cheers,Rob
International SEO | | daracreative0 -
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