Does IP filtering have a negative impact on SEO?
-
If a large site has multiple regions (Australia, USA, UK, France), how will IP filtering to a particular area affect SEO.
e.g: Ilive in the UK an if I visit the said website I would automatically be redirected to the UK subfolder of the site whereas somebody searching in Australia would be redirected to the AUS folder.
Will there be any detrimental affect on SEO and will the search engines still be able to crawl the entire site no matter which data centre is being used?
-
Perfect, thank you both for your help.
-
I do this on most of my sites and haven't seen anything bad happen. In fact a quick trip to Google.fi (just to check) shows mysite.com/fi/ followed by mysite.com (with inline sitelinks) and then mysite.com/fi/page and mysite.com/page, so seems fine.
Other subfolders with less links going into them (Germany for example) have mysite.com and mysite.com/de/
So UK IP directs them to site.com/uk, AUS IP to site.com/aus, yeah?
A couple of considerations.
- Allow users to select what language they want once they're on the site (and make it obvious how to change). To get this to work make sure you check the referral header and if it's from site.com don't impliment the IP redirect.
Having a drop down in the header also means Google can get to all of your language subfolders.
- Set your targeted country in webmaster tools. You can do this for subfolders quite easily.
There should be no problem even with same language (English) content as long as you do this.
A bit of further reading for you
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2010/03/working-with-multi-regional-websites.html
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/new-info-from-google-and-yahoo-tilts-the-geotargeting-balance
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/international-seo-where-to-host-and-how-to-target-whiteboard-friday
If you need any specifics, let me know
-
I would never recommend multiple domains for the same content. it will generate duplicate content and will harm you more then help you.
I think you should do the following, check the IP look it up and then ASK! the user if he/she wants to go to the Australian version or stay at the American version. Or maybe have dynamic content that makes the user aware of the Australian office.
I would personally have all of the TLD's point to different sites with different content. That way you can GEO target, have the sites located localy and use local TLD's all of witch will help you out greatly in your SEO efforts.
Here's to hoping my reply made sense
-
Thanks for your response.
The site currently sits on a .com domain and is split by 8 regions all in English. They are looking to go into non-english speaking countries but not yet.
In Google.com.au when searching for the brand the .com version comes up top with United States next to the URL and the AUS part of the site is below, even though they are geo located. What they are thinking of doing is if they click on the USA link it will check to see if they are in Australia and forward them to the Australian sub-section.
There has been talk about ccTLDs but this would be a massive amount of work and is not currently possible due to the amount of duplicated work that would be involved from their point of view.
I am trying to back up any response that I give ensure the correct path is taken.
Would you recommend not to use IP filtering?
-
actually it will affect SEO in a positive way, since google will notice that the hosting server is located in the region it targets. BUT and there are several:
- You will have unhappy visitors, what if I visited your site while I was travelling in Spain, since I don't understand a word Spanish I wouldn't be a very happy camper.
- Google will only see one of your languages since it has a fixed IP.
The right way to do it:
- have a separate domain name for each country. Eg: Danish target group .dk English UK .co.uk English US .com German .de and so on
- Have a well written (translated by a translator not google translate) version for each language
- Give the visitor the opportunity to select the language he/she want to read, don't force them, guide them.
- have your different languages hosted in the target areas.
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
-
Question about International SEO
We've just recently launched our website in Canada and our web crawler is showing some pages with "&Country=CA", even if the current page already includes Country=CA. Why is this and how would we go about resolving?
International SEO | | nicole.nelson030 -
International SEO Sub folder Structure
Hi Could anyone offer some advice on the best way to structure sub folders on a website that we are launching worldwide. We are a UK based business and currently run a UK site on www.website.com and we are planning on launching into Europe using a sub folder structure. We will use /de, /fr, /es for the new countries that are coming on board but the question is should the UK site url be: www.website.com or www.website.com/uk As have an established web presence in the UK I'm thinking it should remain as www.wewbsite.com but are there any advantages / disadvantages to changing it to .com/uk Many Thanks
International SEO | | SmiffysUK0 -
What strategy is better for a multilingual site for the SEO point of view?
Hi everyone, in a case for a site with two languages like spanish and english, how would do you deal with it? I can see 4 cases, which is better?? 1. With differents domains: mydomain.es (for spanish version) and mydomain.com (for english version). 2. With subfolder mydomain.com/es/ and mydomain.com/en/ 3. With Subdomain: es.mydomain.com and en.mydomain.com 4 With URL translation (any url is translated in ther languages but not use of subdomain or subfolder): mydominain.com/hola and mydomiain.com/hello Thanks very much for your answers (i love this forum). 🙂
International SEO | | webtematica0 -
Shabaka domain - Impact on SEO
Hi All, I heard about shabaka domain names recently and am not sure if getting a shabaka top-level domain with arabic content help from a SEO stand-point? Currently my Arabic website is on this domain: http://www.tcf-me.ae/ Do you think it is a good idea to get a shabaka domain to target the GCC countries on our Arabic website? Or does it not matter? Thoughts? Thanks in advance for your help.
International SEO | | LaythDajani1 -
Does the location of my Domain Registrar affect SEO?
Does the location of my Domain Registrar affect SEO? For example, if my hosting company is in the U.S., but the domain registrar is overseas. Also, is it better to have both services be met by one company?
International SEO | | greenfoxone0 -
Multinational Sites - The main SEO issues
I currently work for the UK arm of a Company with headquarters in Germany - The have outlets in half-a-dozen European countries, and up until now each country has had it's own website. The group has decided that from next year they will close all the individual country sites and then run new sites each from a central .location, I guess with a shared database of products. I see the sense in having central stock control etc, but I'm worried about the SEO impact. I have searched Q&A and the blog but could not find much to help me. What I would like to do is to provide some advice and pointers at to what they should be aiming for, both in terms website structure and on-going SEO for each country. Any advice welcome, thanks in advance.
International SEO | | cottamg0 -
Targeting France Best SEO practices
I've got a client with a large e-commerce site with a .com domain and they want to start targeting France. Other than building another site in Frence with a .fr domain, what would be the best course of action? I know that the obvious option would be to build a separate French site with a .fr domain but is there another more cost effective way? I tried doing a search for one of their key-phrases using the Google Global app (Google.fr) and they are ranking in pretty much the same position as for Google.co.uk. Your thoughts on this would be greatly appreciated.
International SEO | | FishEyeSEO0 -
The best SEO practice for a .hk domain
We are currently working on a project which involves 3 separate .com domains in relation to a UK company selling/renting residential, commercial and investment properties within the UK. We are now working on producing a .hk site for the overseas customers. Can anyone advise what the best practice is for a .hk domain and where best to start? Should the domain be hosted in that geographical location for example? We are relatively new to this so any advise would be greatly appreciated.
International SEO | | SoundinTheory0