How to set-up international URL structure for e-com shop?
-
Hi There
We're currently running a successful international online store on a .com domain. We are located in Europe but most of our visitors are coming from the U.S. We display all the prices of our products in USD to all our customers.
We are considering to set up multiple stores for different regions, so we can display different currencies per region, shipping methods, banners etc.
We were thinking about the following set-up:
- eu.domainname.com (for EU excl. UK, currency €)
- uk.domainname.com (for UK, currency GBP)
- www.domainname.com (For rest of the world, currency $)
All shops are in English. Would this be a good set-up? What should we take into account to avoid duplicate content?
Kind regards
Jerome
-
Hi Jerome,
- If your SaaS vendor allows it, you should use subfolders for the countries instead of subdomains. So www.example.com/uk instead of uk.example.com, for example. The reason for this is that the subdomains won't share link equity as effectively.
- You should implement hreflang -- Moz has a great introduction to the topic here -- on all equivalent pages (I'll explain what I mean by that in a second).
- By all means choose sensible default currency options (for example GBP should be the default currency in the /uk directory), but preferably do allow users to change that default value if they wish. If they do change it, do not direct them to a different URL. Use a cookie to store their currency preference.
Now, more on 'equivalence'. The point of hreflang is so that you can have identical or very similar pages targeting different country/language combinations, and have Google discard these pages as duplicate content. The pages don't have to be completely identical. For example, Americans and Brits use different spellings for common words. If my product was online math(s) lessons, my two equivalent URLs may look like this:
The language, tone, and general marketing pitch of each page may be different, and tailored to their respective audiences, but they're each fundamentally selling the same product. So I would add the following hreflang tags to these pages (both tags on both pages):
Be careful to use the correct country codes: en-UK is not valid, for instance, but en-GB is. Read Google's guidelines on the topic.
-
Hi Don
Thanks for your quick reply.
Unfortunately we are not able to set-up parameters like you describe. We are using a SaaS platform and this functionality is not included.
Furthermore, we'd like to localize in terms of shipping, payment and marketing. Therefore we need to create 3 different shops. Setting this up is not a problem and this can be done very fast, however we need to know how to set-up the URL structure of the 3 shops.
Please find below the URL structure of Topshop as an example:
US: us.topshop.com (currency USD)
UK: www.topshop.com (currency GBP)
NL: eu.topshop.com (currency EUR)Most of our traffic is coming from the U.S. What should we take into account to avoid duplicate content, since all product and category pages have the same content?
Thanks in advance, Jerome
-
Hi Jerome,
I actually thought I responded to this from the office, but I must not have hit submit.
If the goal of these new domains is simply to provide ease of use to the consumer, I suggest you use parameters instead.
Example of using parameters: Recommended if goal is to help users by showing local currency.
yoursite.com is the default (USD)
yorsite.com?cur=EUR (EURO)
yoursite.com?cur=GBP (Pounds)You would then set up canonical tag on your pages that could accept this parameter to point to the default (point to itself). This would prevent any duplicate problems.
Sub directories make more sense if you're going to localize the domain for specific regions. Like language, currency and locations. Since you're using the same language, and likely not setting up servers / locations in those areas, I feel your best bet would be to use parameters. Most eCommerce Suits offer this in one way or another, and its not particularly hard to code if you are not using a CMS.
My thoughts,
Don
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
-
Places.SinglePlatform.com "Menu" links on your GMB listing?
I just experienced this and after lots of frustration was able to figure out how it happened and how to fix it (keep reading). **HOW: **So apparently Google did a deal with Constant Contact which owns Singleplatform.com that allows them to publish edits to ANY local business and they have used this to SPAM entire categories of local businesses by adding in a "Appointments" and/or "Menu" link to the Google My Business listing for search/maps and they have done it in such a way that it is extremely difficult to remove/fix. (NOTE: they are not listed in Google's list of 3rd parties which automatically add info to your listing....https://www.google.com/maps/reserve/partners) **THE PROBLEM: You have a link to a menu or appointment page that you did not add and can not edit. **The options for setting a URL for "Menu" and/or "Appointment" (and a few others https://support.google.com/business/answer/6218037) are tied to the Primary Category set on your GMB listing and are only available to certain categories. FIXING: You would think if you are a verified owner of your GMB listing, it would be simple - but Google/SInglePlatform.com have gone to great lengths to make it more difficult.... Step 1 - Make sure you are a verified owner of GMB listing Step 2 - Change your Primary category on the business to one of the categories which supports the link in question (no definitive list, but I know setting Primary to "Restaurant" will get you Menu and "Interior Designer" will get you an Appointment link) Step 3 - Save the new category Step 4 - Now you will have the option under your "URLs" section of GMB listing. Step 5 - Change the URL from the SPAMMY link to a relevant page you control and Save Step 6 - Change Primary Category back to what you want.
Local Listings | | arowland2 -
URL Redirects - New Site Updates
We recently switched to a new site and I realized that our developer changed our locations page from /locations to /location. Our developer set the redirects correctly, so we most of the "juice" should still transfer fine. Even though most of the link strength should transfer to the new site, the language is misleading and according to MOZBar, the previously established links to /locations do not show up. The best option in my mind is to have the developer switch back to /locations and redirect /location. Do you feel this is the best option as well and is there anything I should be cautious about when doing this?
Local Listings | | Dions0 -
1 company, 2 shop locations, 3 Google+ pages - help!
Hello, I work for a furniture retailer and I'm doing an audit of our digital presence and need a hand with our G+ pages. Thanks for reading! We are one company but with two shops, located about 10 miles apart. One shop has been established over 10 years, the other is roughly a year old. The shops are called: 'Our Company' and 'Our Company, Second Location' Each shop has its own website (which is confusing and we'll hopefully shortly revert back to just one) We currently have three Google+ profiles: the first G+ was set up a number of years ago and was set up as a personal page, not a business and it links to both shop's websites. The other two G+ pages appear to have been created when we created a Google Local listing for each shop. My questions are: What is the best tool to handle all this info across the web? Bright Local looks good. Should I junk the original G+ profile? If I do, how will I know I won't remove any important stuff from Google? Should I keep 2 G+ profiles, one for each store or have 1 G+ profile and put both store's details in there. Or should I have 3 G+ profiles: 1 for our company name, and 1 for each of our 2 locations? When I search for 'Our Company', I only ever get our original company to show in the Google Local listing on the right hand side of search results. Our second shop is shown in 'People also search for'. Is this the best I can hope for? Is there any way to control this? Both of the G+ profiles that are linked to our Google Local listings have the original G+ URL. Should I customise this and if so, are there any naming conventions I should follow? What should we do with the (2?) G+ profiles for each shop? Both have currently got no content on them. Thanks in advance for any tips and advice.
Local Listings | | Bee1590 -
Preferred URL structure for directory pages?
Hi Moz-Mind, We've got a bunch of duplicate content issues in our directory of trucking-related businesses, caused by search terms that can appear in any order, (classic mistake). We're taking advantage of this our work on URLs to try to improve our URL structure, and I'm not sure which way I want to go. These are the options we're considering. What does the Moz-mind think of each of them? example.com/location-name/service-name example.com/service-name/location-name example.com/service-name-near-location-name For the moment location-name would be a city & state abbreviation, like atlanta-ga, (unless it's better to use something else). Since these are search URLs, it's also possible to add a distance restriction, and a keyword, to the search criteria. How do you suggest adding the distance restriction? example.com/service-name/location-name/50-miles example.com/service-name/within-50-miles/location-name example.com/service-name-within-50-miles-of-location-name And the keyword? example.com/service-name/location-name/keyword example.com/service-name/location-name/keyword/{actual-keyword} example.com/service-name-near-location-name/keyword Something else? I was leaning toward example.com/service-name/location-name/within-50-miles, but I thought of the /service-name-near-location-name/ and /service-name/within-50-miles-of/location-name options today and really like how they make sense both to computers and to people, not unlike example.com/GA/atlanta/service-name/50 I'm looking forward to hearing what the community thinks. There must be an established best practice for directories, but if it's kind of ugly I'd like to find an even better way, if possible. Thanks, John
Local Listings | | 4RS_John0 -
YP.com cloning my site! Will this hurt my original content?
Client was in an obscene YP.com contract. Now they are cloning the site I built for client, inserting the phone number that gives them credit for the leads. It's harvesting content immediately, loading pages I created just today. Client site : http://www.shephearstmeadows.com/
Local Listings | | jacksonmc
YP clone: http://www.awomansway.calls.net/ Is it possible this is hurting the site's score as source of original content? Anyone know how to stop it? Thank you,2 -
Google Places - not physical location, but listed as we are (e-commerce)
Hello Mozzers, We have specific situation with google places. We are e-commerce store but google display us as local business where people can come in. (with directions button). This creates problems for us, since we do not want and we are not setup to receive customers. On our website there is address in the footer and also we have About Us page with the address (this is the address of facility from where online orders are shipped.) - is this a problem and is google concluded that we are physical store because of this? Is there any way to change this or we should contact google directly and explain the situation? And if we should contact google, is there any risk involved? (like: why you have the address on site when you are not physical store? ) Thank you, Nenad
Local Listings | | Uniline0 -
Google custom url options - Brand Name or Keyword
Hi All, Recently we were given the option to choose from two custom urls for a car dealership's G+ page:
Local Listings | | EEE3
+brandname
+locationdealershipbrand Made up example:
+scottford
+nyford My gut tells me to choose the +brandname option, but curious to see if anyone had any other input about how the "location + dealership brand" custom url choice could impact local search results, if at all. (I was surprised that it even came up as an option because to me it echoes EMDs...) Thoughts? Thanks!0 -
Local Listings SEO: Which multi-location retailers are doing a super job with local listings? I'm also interested in finding retailers who are using schema.org microdata format to structure their store-level data.
Do you know of any enterprise level restaurant or retail chains that are doing a great job with their local listings content? Just looking for some links/examples of best practice executions. Also, I'm very interested in finding retailers or other multi-location businesses that are using schema.org microdata format to structure their local store location data.
Local Listings | | SeeMore2