International SEO Setuo
-
Hi Guys
i have a client who is looking to be found in multiple English speaking countries I.e .co.uk, .com and .com.au
At first I advised they would need unique content for each to avoid duplication but then the client showed me this site http://welleco.com/ this is setup via shopify on a multisite. All the sites have the same content and are all indexed.
My question is can this be done in WordPress? Via something like WPML. And would it need to have seperte hosting and a seperate site or can this be done by something like IP redirect.
Can someone advise if this is good practice or maybe suffer other ways?
Thanks in advance.
-
Cheers Guys,
Great answers here! now I come to think of it the site was already ranking high worldwide for the co.uk site. The reason for the different domains is the difffeent distributors and currencys. Definitely won’t go down this route again. Will try the canonical hack and let you know, how it goes.
regards
Neil
-
That notification seems confirming my supposition that Google is consolidating that homepage with some other of the existing ones... hence, I'd test the canonical hack I explained above.
-
Apologies it’s rejuvenated.co.nz
-
I see https://www.rejuvenated.com.au in Google's index.
-
Hi Guys,
Further to my question, thought I would give an update.
We now have hreflang, canonicals and redirects in.
We have basically emulated the setup of this site:-
which is using the same content and all pages seem to be indexed in Google.
However we have this home page
https://www.rejuvenated.com.au - which is not indexed in Google and appears in GSC in excluded URL's in index coverage as "Google chose different canonical than user". Is this a duplication issue? Why have the other pages been indexed and why is the .com home page indexed?
Regards
Neil
-
First of all, the answer given by Kate is totally correct, so consider it.
However, I will try to answer your question from a different perspective and starting from considering that there's a serious reason why your client needs to have different websites for targeting different countries where the same language is spoken (i.e.: some products are not available in every geography, or the client is marketing the services/products with different messages or, simply, the business company has also a physical presence in the targeted countries).
So, considering that starting point, we can find ourselves in 2 situations.
The first is the ideal one: the websites - albeit substantially identical in their purposes - are localized (different content or simply a different "writing" of the content from site to site, attention to the country level nuances of the language (i.e.: respecting British English orthography in the UK website).
In this case - apart geotargeting the domain (if its a generic domain name) via GSC or relying on the automatic geo-targeting the country code domain names have and earning "local" backlinks - you should implement the hreflang annotation in order to indicate to Google what URL to show to searchers depending on their language and location.
The 2nd case is more tricky and, unfortunately, more common: the websites targeting different countries but having the same identical content from site to site.
In this case, you should still need to implement the hreflang but, contrary to all written and available documentation, you should canonicalize all the duplicated website to the "canonical" one while indicating in the href element of the hreflang the canonicalized alternative URLs.
As I said, this is not "documented" in any Google help pages because it's formally the wrong way to implement the hreflang. In fact, we all know that that alternative and self-referential hrefs must always be "canonical" URLs.
However, this is a strong and valid exception, and it has been validated as such by John Mueller in a tweet answering a question by Glenn Gabe about this same situation.
Said all this, when it comes to hreflang implementation in this kind of situation, I always suggest running a test on a limited set of URLs before implementing it broadly.
Finally, you're asking if you can do it this on WordPress. Sure you can.
-
Hi!
First, I never recommend doing something just because another site does and it looks like they are getting what they want without doing the work. You never know what is going on behind the scenes.
Second, for your client, if there is nothing that needs to change on a per country basis, why make different sites for different countries? Or does something change across the countries they want to target?
Third, never use IP based redirects for geo-targeting if that is the route you go. It creates a bad user experience for travelers and search engine bots.
I recommend (without knowing much about them) that they make one site in English, it should work just fine in all of the target countries. However, if there are other reasons for being country specific, do let me know.
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 -
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 -
Has any one seen negative SEO effects from using Google Translate API
We have a site currently in development that is using the Google Translate API and I am having a massive issue getting screaming frog to crawl and all of our non-native English speaking employees have read through the translated copy in their native language and the general consensus is it reads at a 5th grade level at best. My questions to the community is, has anyone implemented this API on a site and has it a) helped with gaining traffic from other languages/countires and b) has it hurt there site from an SEO standpoint.
International SEO | | VERBInteractive0 -
Shall I automatically redirect international visitors from www.domain.com to e.g. www.domain.com/es? What is best SEO practice?
We have chosen the one domain approach with our international site having different language versions in subdirectory of main domain:
International SEO | | lcourse
www.domain.com/es
www.domain.com/it
etc. What is SEO-wise best practice for implementing international index pages. I see following options: entering www.domain.com will display without redirection the index page in language of user (e.g based on IP or browser) in www.domain.com
Example: www.booking.com entering www.domain.com will always show English index page.
Additionally one may display a message in the header if IP from other country with link to other language version.
Example: www.apple.com entering www.domain.com will always redirect automatically to country specific subdirectory based on IP
Example: www.samsung.com Any thoughts/suggestions on what may be best solution from a SEO perspective? For a user I believe options 1) & 3) are preferable.0 -
Huge spike in referral traffic from international domains
We have recently experienced a huge spike in referral traffic from .fr domains (we are in the UK). They all lead to our 404 page. Its been going on for the last 3 days, and its still happening with about 20 visitors browsing the site from these domains at any one time, staying approx 3-7 seconds and then bouncing. The top domain appears to be a parked page. We cant see any obvious links or ads coming from any of these .fr domains and they are quite irrelevant to our sites industry anyway, which leads me to believe these may not be real visitors. Any advice on what may be causing this? And how to stop it? Needless to say none of these referrals have converted.
International SEO | | Silkstream0 -
SEO Recommendations
Our website www.nile-cruises-4u.co.uk has slowly slipped down the page one ranking of Google.co.uk for our main search terms after several years at number one. I've looked closely at our site as much as a "non-techie" can do but wondered if anyone could recommend a good SEO company/individual that could take an overview and then help us try and climb back up the page one rankings. As a small business I dont' have tons of money to spend but I realise the importance of good SEO and I am prepared to spend as much as is required within reason. I thought members of SEOMoz were more likely to be able to recommend good SEO companies rather than me trawl around the web trying to find a company or individual that might suit our needs. I hope this is a suitable question for this forum but apologise in advance if it isn't. Colin
International SEO | | NileCruises0 -
Does changing host server between countries affect SEO if there is no content change?
My website is currently hosted with Go-daddy and the hosting server is in the USA on a Linux platform. The problem is, the response time for my Australian Customers, is too slow, as a result, I decided to move to another Go Daddy Hosting server in the Asia Pacific Region. This has been completed successfully, however I think there may be some impact on my rankings. Can you advise if there are any specific things that I must do, when I move to a different hosting server with the same company or an alternative company. Note: We are not changing domain names or content, purely just moving to a hosting server closer to where our customers are based. Looking forward to your response.
International SEO | | fdep0 -
SEO and Cloud Hosting
Hello, Cant find any clear answers on my issue and hope someone can help. Rather than being worried about losing local rankings with a move to the cloud, we have the opposite issue. The site is a large, international reference site with millions of visits a month. We have the site on servers hosting in UK, Europe and US. If we move the site to Amazon cloud hosting (obvious benefits aside), is there a danger of losing rankings internationally (depending on where the cloud datacentre is located)? Are their any other possible pitfalls and counters? Would be grateful for some advice on this. Thanks
International SEO | | LoweProfero-AU0