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.
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!
-
If I understand the OP's intent, it is to target countries, not languages. Hreflang can specify alternates for a language, or a language-country combination, but unfortunately not just for a country. So, as the OP has proposed, yes you do need to specify the language and the country. And that does bring up a dilema faced by many of us in terms of what language to use. If your content is in all English, then yes you should use like "en-FR". BUT, you might also want to include an "fr-FR" as well, pointing to the same alternate URL. Because there are going to be a lot more France-based visitors on Google whose browser settings are for French language than English. For sure, both do exist (there are native English speakers in France too), but you don't have to choose one. You can include both. Google may not completely respect your directives since the content is in English (assuming that's the case), but it's what I would recommend. So, for each country (assuming the content is in English), include both an English and a language-specific hreflang tag (pointing to the same destination) for that country.
Since your last example uses "es-ES", I assume maybe that you're planning to also publish some content in Spanish language. But if not, again, realize you can include multiple hreflang tags for a single country, and pointing to the same page.
I also don't know where you are based. But if the business is US-based, I wouldn't duplicate US also as a localization. Rather, I would make that the default. Or, if you are based somewhere else, same thing, but with that country.
On question 2, you can set up a GSC property for folder paths (www.example.com/fr/), and target those. I would not target the root level (www.example.com) in your case, because that would also apply to all the subfolders. That's one of the advantages of using subdomains instead of subfolders, is that you can target each independently. But with subfolders, you can target all except the root (because it would cascade downward).
On question 3, you should do the same as you do in number 1, as long as you are duplicating those pages in each subfolder. Otherwise, if you don't give a directive of which page to index, since they are duplicates, Google is going to choose for you. And might not choose the one you prefer.
-
The language codes you are using in the above examples are not correct. The correct languages should be "en", "fr", "it", "es". If you want to specify the country code it must appear after the language code, more info here.
Keep in mind that the hreflang tags are not used by the web browsers to load the preferred language automatically, they are intended for search engines.
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 Proposal
Hi, I need to create an international seo proposal and wondered what are the best bits of international SEO I should include? I have been reading up on loads of blogs wondered if anyone had some great ideas 🙂 Much appreciated.
International SEO | | karl621 -
International Targeting for Australia Problem
Hello Moz Community! I'm reaching out since I recently launched a UK and Australia version of my website. Now, each page on the website has 4 versions: 1. www.example.com 2. www.example.com/au 3. www.example.com/uk 4. www.example.com/en <-- this is a by-product of the plugin we're using, CMS is WP each page has the following 4 targeting tags on it: I looked in Webmaster Tools and we're getting an error on what appears to be every Australia page. The error states, ""au"- unknown language code. URLs for your site that have an unknown language code 'au' and their alternate URLs." In Google's own example, they have the language for Australia set as en-au [https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/189077?hl=en} Has anyone run into this issue before? We had the alternate tag set to "au" at first, but edited the plugin so the alternate tag now says "en-au", but this still hasn't remedied the problem. Any insights into resolving this error are greatly appreciated!
International SEO | | DigitalThirdCoast0 -
Website Domains, Geographical targeting and Duplicate Content
My colleagues in Holland have 2 websites. I've copied and pasted their question - my comments are at the bottom "www.ancoferwaldram.nl with NL, EN and FR language www.ancoferwaldram.com with only EN language The EN versions Google sees as “duplicate content” so we have to get rid of that. I think we better use 1 website: www.ancoferwaldram.com with NL, EN, FR and maybe other languages and deactivate www.ancoferwaldram.nl Or keep the www.ancoferwaldram.nl with only the NL language? Or keep the www.ancoferwaldram.nl with direct links to www.ancoferwaldram.com and no content?" The focus is to get the site to rank in Non-eu countries for export. So given the .nl has higher DA (though only about 15) would it be better to have seperate .fr, .be, .com sites for specific languages and geo targeting. Or would it be better to keep everything on the same site? If so which domain? i assume that the duplicate content can be resolved by stating which is the canonical version, once the domain strategy is resolved welcome any thoughts here. 🙂
International SEO | | Zippy-Bungle0 -
Targeting International Markets on the Web
Hello Moz community, I have a popular news website that we are looking to target multiple countries (all English first). So I know (1) a hosting provided (ip address) in that country and (2) a target extension (.co.uk) will help us. Am I missing anything else that can help when targeting international markets? What I'm struggling with is the duplicate content. I can't copy the content over to the extension because of the bad practice of duplicate content. Is it possible to have the same content on both websites and let Google know that it lives at the .com extension? If so, would those websites containing duplicate content still rank? And we would want to target different languages later (for example Spanish). This would be different content because it is in a different language, correct? Thanks for your help Moz community! Cole
International SEO | | ColeLusby0 -
Help targeting the USA in Search
I believe I've properly targeted, and told Google that our website absoluteautomation.com is aimed at US residents, while the .ca domain targets Canadian. However our .com domain routinely appears above our .ca when searching in Canada (actually on a physical computer in Canada) on google.ca. I'm hoping I can fix this both to improve Canadian search results, and I'm assuming that whatever is making .com appear so well in Canada is hurting it on the US side. Any ideas?
International SEO | | absoauto0 -
Targeting an Specific Country Audience - Domain Q
Hiya everyone! I know this might entail a novice SEO question, but i am having some doubts. Hope you can give your opinions. Its kind of technical question regarding domain and country targeting. I have a Steel Construction company targeting only the audience of the particular country. Last year, i bought the targeted domains for my brand (company name), as in domain.country specific TLD, Should i use these domains, redirect them, or something? Would that help?. I currently use domain.com, but i am constantly being beaten down by websites with domain specific with overly thin content, no PA or DA, and 0 links to their site. Should i use my country specific domains, would that make a difference? Note: I also run some marketing campaigns for charitable foundation i started, and i used country specific domain and server, and with little effort i ranked top 3 in most of the desired terms. Any help or comment is appreciated, Thanks!
International SEO | | JesusD0 -
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 -
I need suggestions. We're helping a big journal to improve their external links, even though they've a site with over 10 million monthly visits, their external links are week. Any suggestions?
Please let us know where we can find information on how to improve external links for a very big journal site. Thanks.
International SEO | | carloscontinua0