International SEO - Alternatives to Automatic IP re-direct
-
Hello,
When doing international SEO I've read that it's not good practice to automatically re-direct users to the correct part of the website based on their IP address. But what alternatives are there to this?
Let's say you're targeting the US and the UK through multiregional SEO. What can you do to ensure that users from the US go to the US sub-directory and that users from the UK go to the UK sub-directory?
In Moz's international SEO guide it says that:
"If you choose to try to guess at the user’s language preference when they enter your site, you can use the browser’s language setting or the IP address and ask the user to confirm the choice. Using JavaScript to do this will ensure that Googlebot does not get confused. Pair this with a good XML sitemap and the user can have a great interaction. Plus, the search engines will be able to crawl and index all of your translated content."
Can anyone explain this further?
Any help would be much appreciated!
Thanks in advance
-
Thanks for the detailed response Nick - great summary!
"If you choose to try to guess at the user’s language preference when they enter your site, you can use the browser’s language setting or the IP address and ask the user to confirm the choice. Using JavaScript to do this will ensure that Googlebot does not get confused."
I presume web developers would know how to do this?
-
Also just to add:
""If you choose to try to guess at the user’s language preference when they enter your site, you can use the browser’s language setting or the IP address and ask the user to confirm the choice. Using JavaScript to do this will ensure that Googlebot does not get confused." It's about giving the user choice and not force redirecting them aka it's ok to query the language and suggest it, but not force it.
For example, GoogleBot is mostly from USA, so it would be auto-forced to US content options which theoretically means it could miss other versions.
If you are redirected to a particularly language version, you need to give the user the option to switch...
-
Hi there,
Great question!
I must admit that some of the wording for this confused me as well...
I've pasted below some snippets from Google's official guidelines on managing multilingual websites and added my own thoughts here and there: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/182192?hl=en/
"If you choose to try to guess at the user’s language preference when they enter your site, you can use the browser’s language setting or the IP address and ask the user to confirm the choice." Let the user switch the page language If you have multiple versions of a page:
- Consider adding hyperlinks to other language versions of a page. That way users can click to choose a different language version of the page.
- Avoid automatic redirection based on the user’s perceived language. These redirections could prevent users (and search engines) from viewing all the versions of your site.
Using JavaScript to do this will ensure that Googlebot does not get confused.
"If you prefer to dynamically change content or reroute the user based on language settings, be aware that Google might not find and crawl all your variations. This is because the Googlebot crawler usually originates from the USA. In addition, the crawler sends HTTP requests without setting
Accept-Languagein the request header."Pair this with a good XML sitemap and the user can have a great interaction. Plus, the search engines will be able to crawl and index all of your translated content.
No specific answer or single quote to copy but this covers on-page annotation and XML sitemaps: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/189077
- Hope this helps as a starter!
Nick
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 SEO & redirects - do these solutions make sense?
I’m currently working on SEO for an international website with subdirectories set up for each international version. The site is has never had any SEO previously and is having a lot of indexing and visibility issues. Also geotargeting seems very off in search results. I’ve diagnosed various issues and want to check my assumptions and solutions below make sense... The root domain uses a 302 redirect to display content from the /en-GB page. (302 redirects seem to be a default language fallback setting configured in the CMS) and they’re used for most key pages. I’m concerned these redirects are contributing to a lot of the issues with incorrect indexing. The en-GB is the default language version of the site. So far, the en-GB has been set as the canonical version too. Both the root domain and this subdirectory URL display the same content. (en-US is also a near duplicate page). All other international homepages appear only on their subfolder URL. Various SEO tools have been showing redirect loops (caused by language changing parameter versions of URLs being crawled that don’t have redirects on them) and issues with hreflang and canonicals. I believe the hreflang tags and canonicals have been ignored due to relative URLs being used for each, as search results don’t always contain the desired versions of the URLs (in terms of regional version and preferred canonical versions). My questions are: Could these 302 redirects be conflicting with hreflang tags? If so, I’m thinking they should be removed (if not made 301s). GSC doesn’t like the fact these are on key pages, as redirected pages are listed in the sitemap. Will changing hreflang tags and canonical tags to absolute URLs possibly be enough to fix these issues from what you can tell? (Or will redirects need to go too?) Is the en-GB correctly set as the canonical when the root domain is also accessible, indexed and using this page’s content within the CMS too? (I feel like the root domain should be the canonical version, but not sure that works together with other language version subfolders or with a redirect in place from root to subfolder). As an extra point to the last question, GSC has recently chosen the root domain as the canonical (despite en-GB being set as user preference) and is now choosing to deindex some international versions of the homepage as a result. Hoping that getting the hreflang tags fixed and possibly redirects removed should correct this ASAP. But perhaps this also confirms en-GB should be the canonical and marked X-default too. I hope that all makes sense and sorry it’s a small collection of related questions. Really appreciate any replies.
International SEO | | MMcCalden0 -
Help with international targeting
Hi all! Okay, so we've got a site, let's say example.com - we sell training courses worldwide with a particular focus in just 8 countries.
International SEO | | JamieM1611
Historically, we've never targeted users in different countries effectively, we've just got the example.com that floats about ranking in different countries, but our content is dynamic (obviously a big SEO no-no - we pick up the IP of the user and show the content relevant for that country without the URL's changing)
This obviously presents an SEO flaw in that we can effectively target people in our key countries effectively. So, we're introducing the targeting as subfolders (/uk/, /ie/ etc) my questions are: 1. Would this be the correct implementation of hreflang AND canonical tags for the URL: https://www.example.com/es/ 2. The second thing I was wondering is the 'international targeting' in search console. We haven't (because of our current set up) set a target country for www.example.com (because of the lack of regional targeting and dynamic catch all) - would we be better leaving that untargeted and only specifying the regional targets for the new subfolder URLs (www.example.com/us/ /uk/ etc) or should we set the .com as the USA as default? We'd be a bit weary of doing this because most of our traffic comes from the UK and South Africa, so I'm assuming it would be best to leave this alone unless someone else has a different opinion? I know Googlebot almost always crawls .coms from US, which is why we were thinking of leaving the .com as the 'catch all' and specifying the US version. 3. Finally, we do have a lot pages which don't really change at all (like the about us page) would we give these any special directives to avoid duplicate content (as the content on these won't be changing at all?) or do we just keep the structure as shown above? I.E would the about us page (even though not changing) still be (with the canonical): URL: https://www.example.com/about-us/ (x-default) ? Thanks in advance!0 -
International website sharing with .com/.au/.uk
I have a small business in the United States and would like to copy our main website for my international partners. My website is a .com. I think that their domains will end in their country codes: .au and .uk. We are open to using different domains. We plan to share blog articles and other content, but do not wish to be penalized for duplication. I have tried to read articles on this topic, but am unfamiliar with a lot of the terms. Is there any way to do this simply? Many thanks, Steph
International SEO | | essential_steph0 -
International SEO : Redirecting spanish visitors to spanish site
Hi There, I have a problem I need an advice for. I run an e-commerce site in French. Things are going well. I also run the Spanish version of this site. We are starting to sell. But nothing like French site. I have traffic coming to the French site from Spain from visitors with Spanish language and they don't buy anything. That is strange as the conversion rate is good. Si I want to redirect them to the Spanish site. We sell phone parts. Our SEO is mainly based on brands, make, and reference numbers. So keywords are almost the same in both languages. Of course, site.es is aiming at google.es, and site.fr at google.fr So I am wondering. If I redirect these visitors to the Spanish site, Will it affect french site's SEO? Thanks
International SEO | | Kepass0 -
Is it OK to change language by user IP?
Hello, I just read https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/182192?hl=en#1 about multilingual website. Google says "Avoid automatic redirection based on the user’s perceived language". so Is it ok to redirect url by user IP instead of user language?
International SEO | | visaasancard0 -
If I redirect based on IP will Google still crawl my international sites if I implement Hreflang
We are setting up several international sites. Ideally, we wouldn't set up any redirects, but if we have to (for merchandising reasons etc) I'd like to assess what the next best option would be. A secondary option could be that we implement the redirects based on IP. However, Google then wouldn't be able to access the content for all the international sites (we're setting up 6 in total) and would only index the .com site. I'm wondering whether the Hreflang annotations would still allow Google to find the International sites? If not, that's a lot of content we are not fully benefiting from. Another option could be that we treat the Googlebot user agent differently, but this would probably be considered as cloaking by the G-Man. If there are any other options, please let me know.
International SEO | | Ben.JD0 -
Backlinks to URLs with Language Parameters (for Chinese version of website) and SEO?
Hey all, We run a large eCommerce site in Australia and are preparing to launch to the Chinese market. Our site has been fully converted to Chinese and displays the version of the site detected as default in the user's browser unless they manually select otherwise. This is done by appending the parameter "?la=zh" onto the end of the URL, so for example the Chinese version would be: **www.example.com/australia?la=zh ** This then forces the product catalogue to display the relevant language version. My question is, for SEO purposes and back links in particular, since they aren't really a "true URL" (i.e: strictly speaking they aren't different "pages", just the same page being populated with different characters), would getting links from Chinese websites to the URL "www.example.com/australia?la=zh" really be viewed as any different from just "www.example.com/australia"? Do they pass the same amount of juice and is the difference detected by the engines (thinking mainly about Baidu in particular but of course Google as well)? Feedback from anyone with experience in SEO for multi-lingual sites would be much appreciated, thanks.
International SEO | | ExperienceOz0 -
Keyword selection for international company
Hi everyone, I am working on a new project for a telecommunications company with its target audience in various countries around Europe and USA. They only have 1 website in English and don’t have content specific to different countries. Ineed to choose keywords for this project but I am finding it quite challenging as usually my keywords are localised. In this case I cannot restrict keywords to any particular country. At the same time I know that it would be extremely tough to rank for generic keywords. What do you suggest?
International SEO | | ICON_Malta0