Country specific SEO
-
Hi I have a question regarding country specific SEO and what would the best approach be?
I have website A which is currently ranking well in Google country A, I would now like to introduce a new website B which is only specific to users in Google country B.
The only difference between the 2 websites is that website B will have different prices and products for the users in Google country B. From a development point of view we would like to only have one instance of the website which can be served to users in country A and B all that we would do is change some of the content and prices based on the user IP which means that users in country A see a different version of the website to users in country B.
Is this approach fine from and organic point of view? Or would we need to have 2 separate websites and make use of Href Lang?
-
Refreshing content on the same URL based on the users IP is a very bad decision in terms of international SEO, because Google will see only one of the two versions.
What you have to do is, eventually:
-
or change the visible prices and currencies depending on IP of the users (but letting them still being able to change the currency for UX) but not changing the content.
-
or creating a second version (in subfolder for instance) targeting the other market you desire to target.
The second one is the best solution
Yours is not.
-
-
Thanks Tymen for your response. Yes exactly in order to maintain 2x websites it will be more resources that is why we would like to keep one website. But I thought I would just check in with the community in order to make sure from an organic point of view and hiding content for users from specific ip's that this doesnt have a negative effect on our organic traffic.
Thanks again.
-
Hi Iannaude,
I would either rank for both countries with 1 website or rank for 2 countries with 2 websites. 2 websites means; 2 x unique content so is 2 x the work. Depending on the number of products you should make a decision what you want to do.
Good luck!
Tymen
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
-
Switch to Separate URL Configurations for International SEO?
We run an ecommerce website and sell to customers in the US and Canada. We recently realized that the way we serve content to our users isn't Google's recommended way. We use locale-adaptive pages in that some content changes slightly depending on where we think the user is located based on their IP address. But the URL doesn't change. Google's stance on locale-adaptive - https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/6144055?hl=en&ref_topic=2370587 That being said, the changes are quite minor. It is usually only pricing and currency that changes depending on if we determine the user to be based in Canada or the US. However, I understand that there can be problems related to this configuration because of GoogleBot primarily using a US-based IP. We decided that the best course of action for us is to serve US content as our default content on all of our existing URLs. And Canadian content would be served using new url paths such as: example.com**/en-ca/**product1. All of this would also be configured to use hreflang tags. The problem we have run into is that it is a pretty huge development challenge to reconfigure how the site serves content when we have been using locale-adaptive for over a year. So developer resources would be taken away from other tasks and put toward this one for a relatively long time. Based on this information and the fact that we would like to both rank better in Canada and to follow Google's recommendations, how important would you say this change would be? I realize this isn't a black and white question and it depends a lot on business goals and preferences. However, I need to be able to gauge as best as I can how necessary it is to do this in order to make the decision of whether to do it or not. Any input is greatly appreciated!
International SEO | | westcoastcraig1 -
An International SEO Conundrum
Hello all, I'm looking for opinions on this. Imagine there is a website example.com in English and the company 'Example' wanted to translate some of the pages (not not all) in to Russian. So they set up example.com/ru and translate the key pages into Russian. But half of the pages on.com/ru are left in English and there are no plans to translate them. How would you handle the pages in Engish on .com/ru? My thoughts are that they should: Canonicalise to the same versions on .com, and... Remove RU hreflang tags from the pages on .com/ru which are in English Otherwise, users searching in English with Russian browser settings could land on a page in English but then navigate to a translated page in Russian (+the menu navigation items will be in Russian) = bad UX. Not to mention they would be telling Google a page is in Russain but Google would be crawling English. So IMO, the best option is to use canonicals for this so that the .com version of the page is indexed. Then when a user lands after searching in English they will always be served English pages within that session. If English speakers/searchers land on the .com/ru page that would lead to a website half in one lang and half in another. I'm aware that Google recommends not using rel="canonical" across country or language versions of your site, but I believe they are making that recommendation based on an assumption that all pages are going to be translated to another language. In this case, there is no intention to do that, ever. Thanks for your thoughts and opinions. Cheers, Gill.
International SEO | | Cannetastic0 -
URL Structure - Homepage, Country and State Pages
Hello, I am creating a website (or websites if best format) that will have state-specific boating license courses for every state in the US, Canada and Australia. I would like the content to be available on the website in English, French and Spanish. I want to be the global leader in providing boat test courses. For the (1) homepage, (2) country pages, and (3) state pages, what is best SEO format I should use for:
International SEO | | Monologix
(a) URL structure
(b) "href lang" code
(c) rel canonical code
(d) will meta content with non-English pages need to also be in the non-English language of that page? Also, what server company do you recommend I host my website with? I am a non-programmer and learning SEO, so any and all help will be greatly appreciated! Thank you very much in advance!!!0 -
International SEO: best practices for local variants of the same language?
We are translating our site into 17 different languages, including local variants of the same language (i.e. Mexican Spanish and Spain Spanish, Canadian English and British English, etc). Should we add all of these local variants to our site? We don't have the marketing / link building budget (or business need) to put these all on separate ccTLDs, so we are using country-specific subfolders instead (example.com/es/). The translations will be of exceptional quality. Our main goal is to pull in some additional traffic from these translations. If we add these local variants, do you think we can expect to see traffic from these different countries (additional traffic from Canada, England, etc)? Any advice / input would be appreciated.
International SEO | | nicole.healthline0 -
Looking for content writers for multi-language SEO
Hi All, I'm currently doing a lot of work for a UK client who has multiple sites outside the UK (all part of the same business). We're currently discussing the option of us handling all of his SEO for his German, French, Spanish and Italian sites too, but we only have access to one person in the office who can speak French and Spanish. They're currently booked up on other jobs that we can't really move them off, so I'm looking for options of outsourcing some of the content writing. My question is, does anyone know of any high quality content writing services that have writers available to write for the countries languages above? We're going to focus initially on their on-site strategy and building up their high quality content. At the moment, they don't have much relevant content on their website, so we're going to initially look at this. Moving forward, we'll be looking at their off-site strategy and trying to find areas to submit high quality articles, look at guest blogging and PR opportunities. Any tips anyone has on this side (in terms of outsourcing to native speakers) would be quite useful too! Many thanks,
International SEO | | PinpointDesigns
Lewis0 -
SEO international - ccTLD or Subdirectories / Hosting on 1 server (IP) in Netherlands
Hi All, I do mingle me in discussion if it's better to have an Ecommerce site of a Brand X on seperate ccTLD's (Brand.nl / Brand.de / Brand.com or use subdirectories (brand.com/nl, brand.com/de, brand.com/fr etc. I see a lot of comments on this, but i am missing one (maybe) essential part. We are using Magento with multi ccTLD support. BUT the environment is hosted in the Netherlands. Will we be "penalized" on hosting in NL when using www.brand.DE or other countries? Or is it MUCH better to host those ccTLD in country of Origin? Because if it is, maybe we can better use subdirs because then we can use our builded authority of the root domain. Hope someone have an answer on this one! Thanks! Jeroen
International SEO | | RetailClicks0 -
Does hosting content for one country in another country negatively affect its SEO ranking?
Hi, my content is primarily for Australian audiences, however due to a general lack of competitive hosting infrastructure, I tend to host a lot of content in the US. A 2007 article I read implied that it's not a good idea - does anyone have a definitive 2011 answer? Cheers, Jez
International SEO | | jez0000 -
Russian SEO: Do you know some good sources with tips and news about Yandex?
We are launching our site in Russia - and basically I have no experience in Russian SEO! Could you please recommend me some good English sources with news, tips and hints about Yandex? Basically I am looking the Russian SEOmoz 🙂 Thanks!
International SEO | | jorgediaz0