Multi National Company that Doesn't Want to Implement International SEO
-
I have got an interesting situation where I have a client who wants to merge two ccTLD's into one. They currently have .fi and .com and they want to merge both sites to .com
.fi is for finland and .com for USA.
They want to merge the sites and the original plan was to use subfolders for each country and pair with hreflang.
However the team now wants to merge both sites with NO subfolders differentiating between finland or the US.
My understanding of International SEO that this is the most opposite from best practices, but is there any specific reasons why they wouldn't want to do this?
I'm struggling to find any specific reasons that I can cite to the client that would argue why we should at least do a subfolder or some sort of international seo strategy.
-
@webuniversalp1 Yes, hreflang tags need to be created for each page "appropriately" as covered in my previous response to help search engines show the right version page to the right geo/audience.
-
El tema es que vas a tener que redireccionar las dos webs, no sé si mantendrás el contenido de la .com pero si no te espera un auditoria grande dependiendo de la web, en cuanto a lo que dicen en los anteriores sobre hreflang pienso lo mismo.
-
@naeemgari Hello,
You need to use the hreflang tags for each page, with this Google will not penalize your content and will understand that they are two versions with different languages.
-
@naeemgari I agree with that.
-
Hello,
You need to use the hreflang tags for each page, with this Google will not penalize your content and will understand that they are two versions with different languages.
-
@jkhoo for international SEO the strongest signal for search engines is ccTLDs. The next best option would be a sub-folder URL structure with the correct hreflang tag declarations.
For your core keywords is there low / no search volume in Finland? From a business standpoint, managing two websites can be tedious. You need to build content & backlinks for two domains.
However, from an SEO standpoint, the preferred option would be to keep the ccTLDs. They are the best indicator of relevance to local SERPs. Think about your audience in Finland are they likely to visit a .com domain from SERPs or a .fi domain? Search engines would also prefer showing more targeted and relevant results to users. Therefore, ccTLDs for target regions and international SEO are the best options.
The next best route would be sub folders with appropriate hreflang tag declarations & xml sitemaps.
Additionally, site mergers/migrations generally result in a loss in organic traffic and visibility which can range from a quarter to over year(s).
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
-
SiteName Attribute Showing in Different Language in SERP
We are currently experiencing issues with our subdomain SiteName. Our parent company root domain is a Japanese language site, but we have an English subdomain that is for the United States primarily, and nearly rest of world for organic traffic. Our issue is that we have followed the guidelines here: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/site-names There was a large post on here with many responses including Googlers with issues others were having, but it has since been removed. Here is the code in place on our homepage: <script
Technical SEO | | Evan_Wright
type="application/ld+json"> { "@context": "https://schema.org",
"@type": "WebSite",
"name": "Mescius Developer Tools",
"alternateName": ["Mescius, inc.", "developer.mescius.com"],
"url": "https://developer.mescius.com" }
</script> Unfortunately this is what is appearing in the SERP. It is using the Japanese equivalent of our parent company. Screenshot 2024-02-23 at 3.37.55 PM.png Even though the relationship between root and subdomain should not be causing this, it seems like something is impacting this incorrect SiteName, and it is impacting CTR for the subdomain. Has anyone else experienced this and found a fix?0 -
Google not detecting Hreflang
Hey everybody, We recently migrated our .co.uk to .com/en. Google for some reason is saying that the .com/en version has no hfrelang tags - even though they are clearly there and have had the same implementation as other language versions of the website. We also did a previous migration 6 months ago for the german version of our website and no hreflang problems there. We add our hreflang tags to our sitemap - which you can find here:
Technical SEO | | mooj
https://camaloon.com/en/web-sitemap.xml Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated!! Thanks 🙏0 -
Ecommerce Product Page Optimization & International SEO
Hello, I'm working on our website SEO optimization. We have a thousands of products pages with different structures for the languages (arg) and very depth folder path .com/[folder]/[folder]/[folder]/product1.hmtl So now I have the happiness of working on the optimization of the website with themajor risk of impacting all current ranking. But anyway, here are a few questions I have on the way. Part 1 - International URL Our websites target people per country and languages. We do not have shops per countries (not enough resources_) but we try to get at least website per languages. What could be the best option?_ Url Parameters +hreflang So we save one folder less and the proper setup. But I'm just scared it's gonna be too messy for Google URL:.com/product1**?lang=fr** Product page:link rel="alternate" hreflang="en" href=".com/product1" / Language folder + hreflang one folder more but clearer structure URL:.com**/fr/**product1 **Product **page:****link rel="alternate" hreflang="en" href=".com/product1" / Part 2 - Product URL Our website is structure per categories so the product comes after. However, I've seen a lot of websites recently removing the categories to save folders space. What should be the most efficient option? Category folder It's obviously a good practice but this + the language folder makes already 2 folders URL:.com/categoryA/product1-{targetedKW} {targetedKW} = cheap product, best price or else All in url I've never done it but it somehow makes sense URL:.com/categoryA-product1-{targetedKW} Part 3 - Keyword stuffing As I'd like to get most of it automatically done, what could be the best places to add a few KW. **Markups:**All the ones we can **Meta Descriptions:**optimize one for Google + one for twitter + one for facebook Longer to do but then from google shopping and other automatic links, we could have the perfect or, at least, best description possible **All other option:**Reuse our product name + {targetter KW1 KW2 ...} Product description_ex: content_ Buttons (click to buy)ex: button title="Buy product_name cheap" alt="Purchase product_name"Buy Product name/button Images:same than above Meta:Titles and meta description Hn
International SEO | | omnyex0 -
Worldwide and Europe hreflang implementation.
Hi Moz ! We're having quite a discussion here and I'd like to have some inputs. Let me explain the situation and what we plan to do so far. One of our client has two separate markets : World and Europe. Both pages versions will be mostly the same, except for the fact that they will have their own products. So basically, we'd want to show only the European EN version to Europe and the standard EN version to the rest of the world, same goes for FR and ES. As far as IT, DE, CS and SK, they will only be present within the european version. Since we cannot target all Europe with a single hreflang tag, we might have to do it for every single european countries. Regarding this subject, SMX Munich recently had quite an interesting session about this topic with a confirmation coming from John Mueller saying that we can target a single URL more than once with different hreflang tags. You can read more here : http://www.rebelytics.com/multiple-hreflang-tags-one-url/ So having all this in mind, here's the implementation we plan to do : www.example.com/en/ Self canonical www.example.com/fr/ - hreflang = fr www.example.com/es/ - hreflang = es www.example.eu/it/ - hreflang = it www.example.eu/de/ - hreflang = de www.example.eu/cs/ - hreflang = cs www.example.eu/sk/ - hreflang = sk www.example.eu/fr/ - hreflang = be-fr www.example.eu/fr/ - hreflang = ch-fr www.example.eu/fr/ - hreflang = cz-fr www.example.eu/fr/ - hreflang = de-fr www.example.eu/fr/ - hreflang = es-fr www.example.eu/fr/ - hreflang = fr-fr www.example.eu/fr/ - hreflang = uk-fr www.example.eu/fr/ - hreflang = gr-fr www.example.eu/fr/ - hreflang = hr-fr etc… . This will be done for all european countries (FR, EN and ES). www.example.com/en/ - x-default Let me know what you guys think. Thanks!
International SEO | | Netleaf.ca0 -
If domain mapping subfolders to TLD's is it perceived as a fully separate entity/site therafter ?
Hi I take it once you have domain mapped a country specific subfolder to a country specific TLD (for better local region targeting reasons) Google perceives it as a completely separate entity and it no longer shares any of the parent sites domain benefits (such as domain authority etc) so from that point on requires its own dedicated link building etc ? All Best Dan
International SEO | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
Recent Google Link Scheme Updated ? What's Your Reaction against Link Building, Link Exchanging ?
Many Bloggers and Webmasters are upset over this !
International SEO | | Esaky
Recent Google Link Scheme Updated ? What's Your Reaction against Link Building, Link Exchanging ? https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66356?hl=en What will you Do, if we are good at traffic to our blog and advertiser link will be no-follow - will they accept it ! and guest post also. They need a do-follow link back to their blog or website they hired for !0 -
Geo-targeting a sub-folder that's had url's rewritten from a sub-domain
I have a client that's setting up a section of his site in a different language, and we're planning to geo-target those pages to that country. I have suggested a sub-folder solution as it's the most cost effective solution, and it will allow domain authority to flow into those pages. His developer is indicating that they can only set this up as a sub-domain, for technical reasons, but they're suggesting they can rewrite the url's to appear as sub folder pages. I'm wondering how this will work in terms of geo-targeting in Google Webmaster Tools. Do I geo-target the sub domain or the sub folder i.e. does Google only see urls or does it physically see those pages on the sub-domain? It seems like it might be a messy solution. Would it be a better idea just to forget about the rewrites and live with the site being a sub domain? Thanks,
International SEO | | Leighm0 -
Is it worth to have a DNS manage service like easydns or ultradns in terms of seo ?
I have a HTML site hosted in Netherlands, i use Could Files from Rackspace and Cloudfront from Amazon as CDN. My target audience are in Portugal Is it worth to have a DNS Manage service in terms of seo? If so what are the benefits? Thank you Paulo
International SEO | | paulogoncalves0