Correct site internationalization strategy
-
Hi,
I'm working on the internationalization of a large website; the company wants to reach around 100 countries. I read this Google doc: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/182192?hl=en in order to design the strategy.
The strategy is the following:
For each market, I'll define a domain or subdomain with the next settings:
- Leave the mysitename.com for the biggest market in which it has been working for years, and define the geographic target in Google search console.
- Reserve the ccTLD domains for other markets
- In the markets where I'm not able to reserve the ccTLD domains, I'll use subdomains for the .com site, for example us.mysitename.com, and I'll define in Google search console the geographic target for this domain.
Each domain will only be in the preferred language of each country (but the user will be able to change the language via cookies).
The content will be similar in all markets of the same language, for example, in the .co.uk and in .us the texts will be the same, but the product selections will be specific for each market.
Each URL will link to the same link in other countries via direct link and also via hreflang. The point of this is that all the link relevance that any of them gets, will be transmitted to all other sites.
My questions are:
- Do you think that there are any possible problems with this strategy?
- Is it possible that I'll have problems with duplicate content? (like I said before, all domains will be assigned to a specific geographic target)
- Each site will have around 2.000.000 of URLs. Do you think that this could generate problems? It's possible that only primary and other important locations will have URLs with high quality external links and a decent TrustRank.
- Any other consideration or related experience with a similar process will be very appreciated as well.
Sorry for all these questions, but I want to be really sure with this plan, since the company's growth is linked to this internationalization process.
Thanks in advance!
-
Thanks so much Gianluca, I'll take all your ideas into account.
-
You wrote this, and I'd like you to explain it better:
Each domain will only be in the preferred language of each country (but the user will be able to change the language via cookies).
Why people - for instance Italians - should be even feeling the need to switch the language from Italian to English?
Sincerely, I find it useless.
What you should do is doing like Amazon does: let people visit whatever version they want. For instance (I live in Spain), when I am in the UK and I want to buy something in Amazon, I visit amazon.es. Even if Amazon knows that I'm in the UK, and advices me that maybe I may prefer to shop in the .co.uk website, it lets me stay, navigate and buy from the .es one.
You, then, say this:
Each URL will link to the same link in other countries via direct link and also via hreflang. The point of this is that all the link relevance that any of them gets, will be transmitted to all other sites.
This is not that true. At least, not literally. In fact, the PageRank any page of yours will earn via internal and external links will just partly be passed to the other country versions corresponding pages. This because the PageRank flows through every link present in a page, both internal and external links, and "evaporates" in case of nofollow links.
About your questions:
- Do you think that there are any possible problems with this strategy?
Overall it is correct (being the only doubt the "cookie" thing you talked about)
Is it possible that I'll have problems with duplicate content? (like I said before, all domains will be assigned to a specific geographic target)
If you use the hreflang, you should not have issues related to duplicated content.
Each site will have around 2.000.000 of URLs. Do you think that this could generate problems? It's possible that only primary and other important locations will have URLs with high quality external links and a decent TrustRank.
Having millions of URLs should not be a problem... if it was so sites like Etsy, Home Depot or Amazon would be suffering it, wouldn't they? When it comes to Big Sites, the most important thing is having a very solid architecture and work very well everything internal linking.
Any other consideration or related experience with a similar process will be very appreciated as well.
When implementing the hreflang annotations, try not using as many hreflang as country versions are present.
In other words, apart the home page (for obvious localized brand visibility and for avoiding having, for instance, the .com version outranking the local one for being more authoritative), in the internal pages use only the hreflang annotation in order to suggest Google what version to show in case of countries sharing the same language.
For instance, let's take that www.dominio.com/page-a is in English and targeting the USA, then the hreflang annotation would be only relative to all the others URLs of pages in English and targeting others English speaking countries, but you should not add the annotation for the spanish speaking versions or italian.
Why? Because the languages are different and such a strong signal that you don't need to explain to Google that it should present to Spanish speaking users in Spain the URL of the spanish country version instead of the American English one.
-
Thanks Dmitrii.
Any other opinions will be appreciated aswell, this process is really important for this webpage.
-
Hi there.
Everything seems good to me. Just make sure that you use proper hreflangs or canonicals for content, which can potentially be duplicate, make sure that you have proper/correct sitemap and there are no problems with crawlability and accessability.
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
-
I have problems with internationalizations
I've done everything I can think of to set internationalization between three domains but Google keeps showing my .com results in Spain where .es results should be displayed. The site is siteground.com siteground.es and sitegorund.co.uk. I've used alternate tags which I think are set correctly, siteground.co.uk ranks pretty well in the UK search but in Spain - still can't get .es results and that's been 3 months already.
International SEO | | Pandjarov0 -
Footer pages on international sites
Hi guys, i have a question about footer indexed pages like about us, frequently questions, press or ads with us, among others. I'd like to put the same page in our website of .com.mx but i don't know how because i think it will be duplicate content. should i create new content for these pages? Thanks, J
International SEO | | pompero990 -
Can you target the same site with multiple country HREFlang entries?
Hi, I have a question regarding the country targeting aspect of HREFLANG. Can the same site be targeted with multiple country HREFlang entries? Example: A global company has an English South African site (geotargeted in webmaster tools to South Africa), with a hreflang entry targeted to "en-za", to signify English language and South Africa as the country. Could you add entries to the same site to target other English speaking South African countries? Entries would look something like this: (cd = Congo, a completely random example) etc... Since you can only geo-target a site to one country in WMT would this be a viable option? Thanks in advance for any help! Vince
International SEO | | SimonByrneIFS0 -
Improving Search Rankings in other Countries for an existing site
Hello SEOmoz, I have a very well respected international client who ranks high in the US and for English language Google search results worldwide. Â However, the client's foreign language pages for specific countries do not show up on the first page of SERPs in those specific countries. The foreign nation/language pages are served on the same root domain as the main English language site it this fashion: www.client.com/france www.client.com/brazil Here are my questions: What can we do from an SEO standpoint to improve SERPs in Google.fr or other countries What is the best way to prevent duplicate content errors or prevent the wrong page from being indexed abroad. What are some best practices when using Google Webmaster tools in this regard? Thanks
International SEO | | BPIAnalytics0 -
Multiple domains for one site / satellite domains
Hi, I know this has been asked a few times before but I want to clarify everything my own head. We've recently relaunched a website for a client that combined three existing sites into one. The new site is http://www.gowerpensions.com/ I've added 301 rewrite rules to the three old domains to to point to the correct page on the new website, i.e the old contact page goes to the new one, the about page to the new about page etc, etc. The old domains are thehorizonplan.com, horizonqrops.com and horizonqnups.com. I've informed Google Webmaster Tools of the change. The client also has several other domains such as horizonpensions.com and qnupscheme.com. Am I correct in thinking I should not park these domains on top of the gowerpensions.com website as this will be seen as duplicate content? I don't think there is anything linking to these domains. They might not even be listed in Google. With the thehorizonplan.com, horizonqrops.com and horizonqnups.com domains there are existing links to them, but will parking these on top of gowerpensions.com cause a problem, or should I keep my 301 redirects forever? Would a better strategy be to make microsites on all of the satellite domains that link to the main one to create more relevant links? If this is the case then I'd need to fix any third party links to the old horizon domains. I hope that makes sense. Thanks Ric
International SEO | | BWIRic0 -
International SEO whats best 2 sites co.uk and com.au ?
We have the co.uk and com.au ccTLDS and currently operate out of the UK only but plans are in place for Australia. We can't get hold of the .org or .com so it has to be the ccTLD. I want to use the same site for both countries and either host 2 identical sites (same content) or 1 site with different domain names + meta tags for the 2 countries. Whats the best way to make this happen without screwing things up?
International SEO | | therealmarkhall0 -
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 -
What's the best strategy for checking international rankings?
Hi There- I am looking to optimize sites serving the UK and Austrailia markets. I feel like I have a good handle on how to go about doing that, but what I am fuzzy on is, what's the best way to monitor the SERPs for the keywords I am targeting. I know based on experience that if I just search google.com.au from here in the states, my results will be 'americanized' and may/probably won't accurately reflect what someone would see if they were search from Austrailia. Are there any good tools or tactics for seeing what searchers in the countries I am focusing on woudl see? Thanks! Jason
International SEO | | phantom0