Should I establish a Webmaster Tools site per language?
-
Our company services multiple regions. Our website is setup for France, International (en-gb), Spanish, United States and China. The websites share a common template and format and menu tree but each has unique content.
Should I use a single Google Webmaster Tools site for all of these or establish each of them as a unique website?
-
In theory - yes, but here is how look in practicle:
http://www.stateofdigital.com/google-broken/
Just check examples with "bandwagon" or "carro". I'm not sure how this happen but i can often see similar results since our Bulgarian language is close to Russian. So in bulgarian SERP i can see sometimes russian results. Of course result is relevant, just different country.I also have site related to Greek language. But this site can be visited from Cyprus and other worldwide locations due keywords. I can attach SearchConsole and Analytics screenshots if you don't believe it.
-
What is currently taking place is that in the US I am competing with my international english website for top spot and the international english website often wins. I was hoping that I could assign international targetting to each and that the effort would help Google point users to the most relavent content but according to https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/62399?hl=en:
"This setting is only for geographic data. If you're targeting users in different locations—for example, if you have a site in French that you want users in France, Canada, and Mali to read—don't use this tool to set France as a geographic target. A good example of where it would be useful is for a restaurant website: if the restaurant is in Canada, it's probably not of interest to folks in France. But if your content is in French and is of interest to people in multiple countries/regions, it's probably better not to restrict it."
So, to answer my previous question it looks like this will often lock the results into the country.
-
I'm not sure because Canadian Quebec users for example can see .fr results in their SERP. Same can happen with Latin/South America and .es results. Just because language...
-
Thank you for your answer. In our case the following applies:
"If your website is using different folders with gTLDS (example.com/de;example.com/es;example.com/fr) - yes you can verify them and setup to specific geo-location."
For now, we won't be implementing HREFLANG tags but I am considering assigning each website in Webmaster Tools an International Targeting setting. If I assign this value, for example the french website to France, I shouldn't necessarily see the French website show up less in, let's say, Canadian French searches, correct?
-
- If your website is is using different ccTLD (.de/.es/.fr) domains - yes you can verify them and set to specific geo-location.
- If your website is using different gTLDS subdomains (de.example.com/es.example.com/fr.example.com) - yes you can verify them and setup to specific geo-location.
- If your website is using different folders with gTLDS (example.com/de;example.com/es;example.com/fr) - yes you can verify them and setup to specific geo-location.
- If your website is using url parameters (example.com/?hl=de;example.com/?hl=es;example.com/?hl=fr) - no you can verify them only once and setup to only one geo-location.
Whatever your structure is - please use hreflang to avoid duplicate content and provide even better experience for users and bots:
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
-
Is it better to delete old job pages on a recruitment site?
My client (online recruitment) has over 1.5 million pages indexed, the majority of which are old job posts and listings since they began. I wanted to know if it would be better to keep all of the pages, or advise my client to delete some of the archive as these pages will no longer be attracting traffic.
On-Page Optimization | | AxonnMedia0 -
SEO and multilanguage site
Hi all! I have used a wordpress plugin called WPML which translates a webpage into another language so that I have a webpage in two different languages (spanish (main market) and english). I'm just doing the seo for the spanish market and I'm gonna start with the seo for the english one. Should I do it just the same as I had a one-single-language page? just with english keywords, etc. I guessit would only differ in the way I do the linkbuilding strategy as the markets are different Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | juanmiguelcr0 -
Craw structure for web site about jobs?
Hi there, we have now a client who has a job offering web site.There are many craw errors in it. My question is how should the url structure in a jobs website look like and which pages should be indexed? What is the best way and tips for optimizing a job website? Now the posted jobs pages are dynamically like: examplejob.com/detail-job/1891222223/Careers-for-Mens---Womens/Experienced-Web-Design-Need I see many job websites allow their job offers to be indexed and may be this is useful because some people find jobs also when directly search in Google. Are they using dynamically urls for that? And also my related question is what happens when the job offer expires? When Google craws that page again should it be redirected to 404 page or the original job offer text should be there and just to be added info that this job offer has expired? Otherwise If only it's written that it has expired may be there will be too much duplicate content on many many pages.
On-Page Optimization | | vladokan0 -
Best Way to Add Google Map to Site
My site is built with WordPress. I want to add our business location in the contact page using Google Map. What is the best way to do this? There is many plugins out there for Word Press do I need to use one ? Hopw about Webmaster tools, does it need to be submit somewhere in there? When it is done properly, will Google show our store location with a map in Goolgle search results? I saw some store result showing the map & business hours, How to do this? Thank you for your help. BigBlaze
On-Page Optimization | | BigBlaze2050 -
How is my on-site SEO looking like?
I know this is a broad question. My site's content has been written more than one year ago and haven't been changed so far. Our main goal is to make the application hosted in the site work better every day, so we don't worry much about writing content. The URL is http://www.onlinelogomaker.com
On-Page Optimization | | rpedri0 -
Best Domain Name for Life Coaching Site
Hello, I am an NLP health coach. I am starting to work with both life threatening illnesses and minor diagnoses. NLP is a type of personal development. I'm wondering what your opinion of the best domain would be, keeping in mind branding, SEO, and usability/rememberability. The term "NLP" is not well known. I will be doing both phone coaching and in-person coaching. My other website (BobWeikel.com) is not very strong because of the lack of keywords in the domain, but it's easy to remember. Options are: NLPTrained.com BobWeikelHealthCoach.com BoiseHealthCoach.com (I'm in Boise Idaho) RobertWeikel.com or whatever you suggest.
On-Page Optimization | | BobGW0 -
Improve Site SEO
Hey Guys I was wondering if you could give me advice to improving my SEO. I have used all the tools on this site and have improved it a lot already, but wondering if there is any glaring issues, that I could fix now www.treelifedesigns.com
On-Page Optimization | | treelifedesigns0 -
Monitor site loading speeds
We all know that site loading speed is important for google ( and getting more important), and currently we are considering moving to a dedicated server. But I would like to measure pur current loading times and compare them to our competitors. I know that webmaster tools shows you your loading times, but its seems a bit random with its results, and I know analytics also now records speed, but the sample sizes seems to be too low. When I googled website load times, I got a load of different free tools but they seem to give conflicting results e.g one said that our avg kb load time was 0.02sec and our competitor was 0.01, but a different site says our sites loads in 1.7 secs and our competitor loads in 11sec (our home pages have similar total file size for our homepage. ) Also what would be useful would be a way to monitor of website loading speed to see when it slows down, so we can figure out why. Does anyone know of any good reliable programs or sites that does this?
On-Page Optimization | | eunaneunan0