Will German meta data help an English USA-based site get found in Germany?
-
I think I already know the answer to this, but I'd love a second opinion.
If you add German meta data to some web pages will it help those pages turn up in search results in Germany?I'm assuming not. It's an English, USA based site, doing well here for English searches - and I don't want to mess that up.
A German site is being planned, but this client is hoping the English site could be found in the meantime.
~Caro
-
Thank you Erica, that confirms my suspicions.
-
You'll likely end up confusing Google about which country it should rank the site in, and it could negatively affect your US rankings and still get you no traction in Germany. You really need to build a German site.
-
Thank You Gyorgy,
Our long term plan is to have a complete German Website optimized for german and on a german domain. But my client was hoping that, in the meantime, we could get our english pages found in Germany, and without risking our USA SEO achievements.
-
I assume the US site has a target country specified in its Google Search Console. The answer depends on the competition and the SEO budget, but I suspect that you'd have a hard time making those German language pages ranking in google.de.
If you have an international SEO strategy to use one domain for every country (e.g. /us/ and /de/ folders) then it's a different story.
If you'd have only a few German pages on the US website, then don't bother. Launch the German website on a German domain and start a separate SEO campaign for the German market.
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
-
Sitemap for Mobile Version of Site
Hi, I just did a mobile version (http://m.vietnamvisacorp.com) of my site (http://www.vietnamvisacorp.com). And was looking for some guidance on where to put it in the sitemap. Do i need an entirely new sitemap for mobile site, or do i just add to my existing .xml of desktop site. Thank you!
On-Page Optimization | | JohnHuynh0 -
The page is missing meta language information.
Hi, I saw my website have a problem about meta language, I do some search and found that I need to add on the , with 'll' is language code and 'cc' is country code. But I am confused what should I do, because my website is world wide, not launch at specific any language and country. Please give me an advice in this case. Thanks,
On-Page Optimization | | JohnHuynh0 -
Altering site structure
I work for a business that operates several sites that were developed a very long time ago. We've been making many different changes over the past 12-18 months to improve these sites in several different ways. One area that we've never discussed or attempted is general site structure. Its pretty obvious that when the business was started they had never heard of information architecture or usability design. To make matters worse, the internal linking strategy appears to have been link everything to everything. Well after being told that it couldn't be done - I'm getting our team to say we must focus on this, if for no other reason that to help consumers figure out how to navigate through our site. Today we essentially have a series of category / information pages. In some cases, we hang more detailed topical content related to a category /informational page in a hub and spoke manner. Although remember what I said about linking everything to everything. In reality there are a series of subtopics that should been designed for every category / informational area. Instead, what happened is in some cases the subtopic is integrated into the hub or category page, in other situations is hung off the page as a spoke page and in others the subtopic isn't even covered. The plan is to standardize - each category will have 'n' subtopics (~10-12, we're still working this out). From a navigational standpoint users will be able to easily navigate both across categories as well as subtopics within a category as well as between categories within adjacent/similar subtopics. This is essentially a grid if that makes sense. The question is this - we have some keywords that do well in SEO and many many more that do not and the trend has not been our friend. We're considering keeping the URLs of the pages associated with strong keywords the same within the nav structure, even though this might mean the URL for a spoke page will be inconsistent with the spoke page name from a different category. I don't see any real danger for pages that either are not associated with any ranking keywords or only very weak keywords. Maybe I'm wrong. What things should we consider in this change? We believe that this standardization should help consumers find the information they are looking for in a much more efficient manner, so page views/visit should go up. Additionally, this prepares us for category and subtopic comparison pages and other added functionality being added in a logical manner. We also think that as we add depth about a subtopic, it will be easier for us to acquire links to our site because the subtopics within a category will appeal to different websites. This is by no means a small project. We have hundreds and hundreds of pages. Do folks think this is a worthwhile endeavor? We've spent a lot of time cleaning up H1 tags, structure of our pages, anchor tags, page load order and speed, image caching, etc. Site structure, URL length and internal link structure are essentially what is left. Once these are done we intend to really get going on better and more organized content on our site. Thoughts?
On-Page Optimization | | Allstar1 -
Sudden Site Rankings Drop
Good day guys, We have been following strict SEO strategies for the past 6 months, all sites have been improving incredibly well, all except one. The site in question is http://bit.ly/IH4pkM . The site is regarding automotive spray booth equipment. We were ranking on the first page for the keyword "spray booth" (which is the most important one), at place #4 for weeks on end. However since half-way last week, the site has been dropped to half-way the second page (#17). There are barely any crawler errors listed for our campaign on SEOMoz. There were several pages of which the meta description was missing, but that has been fixed earlier this week. When it comes to link building, I looked at what the top competitors were doing, and was looking for unique link building opportunities myself. We have received 0 webmaster tools warnings as well. I do not believe we are penalized due to the "penguin" update. After all, if you search for for the company's name in Google, it is still listed on there (# 2). Nor have we been part of dodgy link networks at all. So my question is, what do you guys believe made us drop the rankings? Is there some on-page issues I am overlooking? Any recommendations to restore out previous rankings? Kind Regards, Roderic
On-Page Optimization | | Michael-Goode0 -
0 urls indexed in GWT, many found with site: command
Hi, This is happening with a brand new site. We have created sitemaps and submitted them to Google Webmaster Tools. GWT says sitemaps are ok, "x" number of urls submitted, but no urls indexed. When I check in Google with site:domain.com I see that many of the urls are already indexed. Why this discrepancy between GWT and reality? Thanks for your time!
On-Page Optimization | | gerardoH0 -
If a site has https versions of every page, will the search engines view them as duplicate pages?
A client's site has HTTPS versions of every page for their site and it is possible to view both http and https versions of the page. Do the search engines view this as duplicate content?
On-Page Optimization | | harryholmes0070 -
No Index help
Hi, I have alot of notices about webpages that are apparently blocked by no index robots, I look through the code on the site and cannot see any coding for this and am confused how to fix the problem. Help anyone?
On-Page Optimization | | Vetshopgroup0 -
Curious meta-tag
Has anyone met this meta tag? <meta name="ranking" content="Top10, Page=1" /> I imagine it has no effect but I'm curios where did it came from, i saw it on many sites
On-Page Optimization | | seo.academy0