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
-
You can do so, Good luck for your new lauch.
@jimmy cleared at first instance.
-
Thanks Jimmy. That's what I was thinking but just wanted a sanity check.
Will check out the webinar
Jason
-
I second this. You can geo locate the site root for UK and then geo locate the sub directories for your international audience.
Good luck.
-
Hi
If the UK website is already well-established on www.website.com then do not risk moving this to a .com/uk sub-folder. There will be no additional benefit from moving it onto the sub-folder, yet you could risk losing some organic search visibility through the redirection process.
There would be no issue for Google understanding your site structure if you go along with your plan:
www.example.com (UK)
www.example.com/fr (France)
www.example.com/de (Germany)
and so on...We recently hosted a webinar detailing many of the considerations you should take into account when launching internationally - https://www.searchlaboratory.com/2016/10/technical-seo-for-international-markets-webinar-video/. I hope you find that information useful.
Good luck with the launch!
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
-
International targeting
I submitted each language URL as a separated website to google webmasters, I've submitted Hreflang sitemap which has language codes only(without countries codes) each page in my website has hreflang language and country code. Should i use international target option for each language to target the countries? will that hurt the language targeting? or I have to leave international targeting option unchecked for each language? My Goal to target by languages, not countries.
International SEO | | MTBE0 -
Redirected traffic and SEO problem
Hi all, I have a bit of a search engine predicament and I can't find the answer anywhere. It's a bit of a complicated one so please bear with me 🙂 ... I'm a Freelance Copywriter, I recently started the business, I've also recently moved to New Zealand. As such I'm looking for business back in the U.K. (As that's where my network is), but also locally, in NZ. I've purchased both the .co.uk and .co.nz domain names (http://www.inspirecontent.co.uk and http://www.inspirecontent.co.nz) The way that the domain provider / host has set these up is for one to redirect to another. Currently if someone visits www.inspirecontent.co.nz it redirects to the U.K. Site. That's less than ideal for me, because I dont want NZ traffic (i.e potential leads) to think I'm a U.K. Based business. my questions are as follows: 1. Will the redirect to the U.K. domain prevent me from appearing in NZ search (I.e if someone searches via google.co.nz) I'm really struggling to rank at the moment, I'm working on more content but if the redirect is a problem then I need to know about it so that I can find a work around. 2. Any suggestions on the best approach to the work around? It would be great if the URLs didn't change! So that you wind up from the U.K. on the U.K site, and if you're from NZ, you land on and stay on the NZ domain, but I'm not sure how to achieve that. One option, I think, would be to have two different websites, hosted separately, but I hear that duplicated content is bad for SEO? Thanks all in advance Kind regards
International SEO | | Andrea_howey0 -
Local Strategies For International Business
A client of mine is in a field that Google (correctly) recognizes as international, and does get traffic and leads for this but they are bound by sales covenants to sell only in regional geographic territories in their country, Other than PPC is there a strategy I can use to increase regional traffic? As mentioned, Google does not recognize this business as local.
International SEO | | waynekolenchuk0 -
Ranking well internationally, usage of hreflang, duplicate country content
I'm trying to wrap my head around various options when it comes to international SEO, specifically how to rank well in countries that share a language, and the risk of duplicate content in these cases. We have a chance to start from scratch because we're switching to a new e-commerce platform, and we were looking into using hreflang. Let's assume an example of a .com webshop that targets both Austria and Germany. One option is to include both language and region in the URL, and mark these as such using hreflang: webshop.com/de-de/german-language-content (with hreflang de-de)
International SEO | | DocdataCommerce
webshop.com/de-at/german-language-content (with hreflang de-at) Another option would be to only include the language in the URL, not the region, and let Google figure out the rest: webshop.com/de/german-language-content (with hreflang de) Which would be better? The risk of inserting a country, of course, is that you're introducing duplicate content, especially since for webshops there are usually only minor differences in content (pricing, currency, a word here and there). If hreflang is an effective means to make sure that visitors from each country get the correct URL from the search engines, I don't see any reason not to use this way. But if search engines get it wrong, users will end up in the wrong page and will have to switch country, which could result in conversion loss. Also, if you only use language in the URL, is it useful at all to use hreflang? Aren't engines perfectly able to recognize language already? I don't mention ccTLDs here because most of the time we're required to use a .com domain owned by our customer. But if we did, would that be much better? And would it still be useful to use hreflang then? webshop.de/german-language-content (with hreflang de-de)
webshop.at/german-language-content (with hreflang de-at) Michel Hendriks
Docdata Commerce0 -
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 -
International targeting
Hi I have a UK based website using a .com, we also own the .co.uk which points to the .com. We get IRO 40,000 UVs per month and we have good domain authority. I now want to launch the site in America however if I seperated the sites out and used the .co.uk for the UK and the .com for the US I would decimate my UK rankings. Am I able to target both the US and the UK under the one domain, or will the fact that I host in the UK ultimately impact on any rankings I may achieve in the US?
International SEO | | danielparry0 -
Local SEO - My Ranking depends on City of the user - Rank tracker is failing
Hello, The search results differ completly depending on the user location. The websites yoagbarcelona.org targets poeple from barcelona: Barcelona; User location Barcelona web is on the last position on first page: http://screencast.com/t/ZsIeiCeLRM User location New York 1st. http://screencast.com/t/PzaLbwWW4xx: Also SEO MOZ rank tracker is showing me that im no 1in google.es for yoga barcelona. The problem is that this is only true for users outside the region 😞 The site has very bad ranking in google places and you need to go down to page 10 until my yoga studio shows up in the maps results. I did some hardcore citation building and signed up in almost all local directories that google pulls data from within one month and optimised the google places / plus profile. Please give me some advice how I could overcome the problem.??? Especially on what part should i focus when optimising the page. ??? Are there any other good strategies for getting into google places ??? Do I need more links from local sites or how is this local serps working ???
International SEO | | stereo690 -
Australia specific SEO tips?
For those who are conducting SEO here in Australia: A lot of the info I read, and there is a lot, is generally from the States or UK it seems. Are there any things in particular I should look out for when doing SEO in Australia? Are there any SEO tips that are particular to Australia only? What directories are a must in Australia?
International SEO | | iSenseWebSolutions0