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Are these issues caused by pagination? Page 1, Page 2, Page 3 things? A canonical is not exactly right. A noindex would be best, (noindex,follow) specifically, just make sure that tag isn't put on page 1. You want page 1 in the index.
I would no suggest disallowing the crawling of the pages (what Andy stated above, sorry Andy, that's a disallow, not a noindex).
I am not sure how to change this for just the paginated pages though. I'd look for a noindex module in the Prestashop Modules area.
First off, you're talking about two things here. It sounds like you have two sites that are geo-targeted to two different countries. There might be some translation in there, but if you have a .co.uk and a .com, those need to be treated like different sites as they are targeted at two different markets.
Second, please never use an automated IP redirect. Google only crawls from the US, it's asking to not get your .co.uk crawled. In addition to that, it's a poor user experience for some people. As the other commenter mentioned, there is a big chance someone is traveling and needs to see the .com, wants to, and gets redirected to the .co.uk because they are traveling.
If you want to attempt to put people in the right place, detect their IP and use javascript to pop up a message if they are going to the other site that asks them if they'd prefer to be on the one associated with their IP.
Flags in the header is the best way to go about this in conjunction with the IP detect and javascript prompt. You can even set a cookie after the prompt that will always put them on that country site when they come back.
What search term are you using when checking what page is showing for France based contact information?
1. Is the latter correct? Am I guessing correctly re "sub-folders" authority (if such thing exists) or am I simply wrong?
Your two points are valid ones. I don't want to say correct as in that is the cause for sure, but the age of content in my experience does play a role in duplicate content picking.
2. Can I solve this using canonical tags?
Canonicals can go wrong with hreflang, but it isn't a bad idea if you get it right. However, you know your content and your users better than us.
Another possible solution to help everything is to detect the user's location and ASK (Don't redirect on IP alone) if they prefer to see that location's content. This will encourage the sharing of all of your content over time.
But if I am completely realistic, nothing is going to show up perfectly if you are trying to geo-target without actual geo-targeted content. Sometimes you just need to tell the business owners who made this decision that opening a shop in another country, trying to act like a local business with zero changes to the content, just isn't going to work out in every business in every country.
There isn't a tool per se that can tell you why, but I can tell you that different location searches in travel are .. different. There are many more people searching for Las Vegas than Austin. The competition is different as well. There are many factors that go into ranking, you will have to identify what the user wants when they search for the term you want to rank for and then give that to them AND promote that page. And that is just one page. You will have to do this differently for different pages.
Quick question: Is there another reason you have the same content at /us/ as the "international" version? I assume the /us/ subdirectory is geo-targeted to the US in WMT?
hreflang should be present for the current pages and all other translated versions.
See the note about canonicals and hreflang in the other reply. Canonicals are for use in each specific page instance when you need them.
For the US vs UK, you need to research your market. I can't give you the answer to this without tons of research. I recommend researching each country market individually. There are different target keywords, competitors, and backlink profiles to research.
Who is they? I assume that means you are hearing this from your local distributor in France or customers there?
I can confirm that you have hreflang set up correctly. I've always personally had an issue with setting up HREFLANG when you mean regional geolocation, but the rest of the international SEO field disagrees with me. 
But in the light of geotargeting, to double check, have you claimed domain.com/fr in Search Console and targeted it at France?
Actually all of them are going to be inaccurate if you are using them for traffic numbers. The best tool is still the Google Keyword Tool, but it's numbers are averaged over the last few months and then rounded. They have been know to grossly over and under estimate natural traffic many times over. Use any tool as a gauge of it's importance in relation to other keywords, not of exactly how much traffic you might get.
For long tail, if you can find it in a keyword tool, it's mid tail, not long tail. The good long tail traffic is received when you write on topics that are relevant to the end user, answer questions, etc. These are impossible to know via a tool, if you want to know for sure the best tactic is to ask your users. Surveys and just conversations are the best inspiration for content ideas.
Perfect.
Note the #2 item on this list. The key to having international content is treating each country subsite as it's own site. Make sure you have someone from that country consulting you on each country focused site. So if UK, have someone native to the UK review the site. Same for Germany, France, etc.
As for structure, my personal favorite is subfolders. So your UK site would be www.domain.com/uk. www.domain.com if you get to the point that you have so many and really need a US one as well, make www.domain.com the "universal" version, and www.domain.com/us as targeted to the US, but it might not be necessary at this point.
The content is the big part, if you want to do well internationally, really focus on getting the content right. There will be some overlap, don't worry about that. Focus more on the user experience for people in each area.
The only technical thing that needs to be done is for you to geo-target in the respective WMT areas.
Does that help?
The importance is based on how important it is for you to have your Canadian users see the "Canadian" content in search results. If you are in a highly competitive search space in which price markup in SERPs is important, this might be worth your time.
BUT if you don't mind that the US page shows in search results and the IP redirect takes care of things once the user is on the site, you are fine with your setup. Like you said at the end, this isn't the "preferred" route, but if the content isn't really changing, then it shouldn't be an issue.
The issue really lies in when the users need to see very different content.
Additionally, consider IP detection, but using a cookie after confirming with the user that they are in the US or Canada to show the right content to that specific user.
Very welcome! Let me know what happens!
I am actually not sure of the answer to this question. Typically if the algorithm has detected a pattern like that, it's for a reason. The only thing I can recommend is to build a page to satisfy both intents. Have an air conditioning service page that speaks to people wanting air conditioning and those looking for repair. Then have a child page for repair that you can link to with more information on that aspect.
So you want to know if you should use country targeted top level domains (ccTLDs).
I can't say for certain if that is the right answer for you. It depends on your market, your products, and your resources. Check out the tool I built here: http://outspokenmedia.com/international-seo-strategy/ and report back with what result you get.
And never redirect based on IP address. Promise me you won't do that. 
Cool, that rules out one issue. My guess is that since there are mixed signals, that the information through the sitemaps are being ignored. I would work on cleaning that up and resubmit. In the meantime, consider detecting the user's location and if it is different than the page they landed on, asking them if they want to go to that country's content.
Example: US user lands on UK content, popup asks if they want to see US content, user clicks yes and cookie is set for that user so that they always see the US content, regardless. Don't set this automatically as Google still just crawls from the US, you want them to see all the content not just the US content.
As for removing the nofollows, you should be good. Google is good at understanding country/language specific content. Make sure that location selector page has the x-default hreflang indicator.
You don't, it's not the same content. Unless you make a general pebbles page for /be/, the hreflang won't make sense, it's not the same content. Those subfolders should be claimed in GSC and geo-targeted to those countries.
Thanks.
IP base redirection is many times inaccurate. The IP address is perfect, especially in regions like Europe. IN addition to that, immediate IP based redirection does not allow Google to crawl other country content as Google bot only crawls with a US IP address.
As for hreflang, given your answers, it's not of use to you because either you are targeting countries without multiple languages or don't have the means to translate everything. OR your business is best for geo-targeting only (different product offerings, etc) and are not focusing on countries with more than one official language.
hreflang is only intended for use between pages of the exact same content that have been translated. If your products change or there is something else different and that depends on the country, geo-targeting is needed. Since that content changes and there are not multiple languages needed for each country, you do not need hreflang.
Based on your business, or your answers in that tool, you should either launch ccTLDs or use the main domain and use country based subfolders.
A ccTLD (.com.mx) is a strong signal for targeting to that country, but it is a brand new domain, and totally separate from other domains. This means you have to work harder to build up both domains, but given the right amount of work and dedication, these will be a stronger signal of targeting that country. That's why top companies pick those.
However, if you want to utilize the strength of your current gTLD (which I assume is generic ie .com, .net - not country focused), a folder structure that is based on country will allow you to use the strength of the main domain. You will need to ensure each subfolder is claimed in Google and Bing Webmaster Tools and geo-targeted. The ccTLDs do this automatically but subfolders have to be set up manually if they are targeting a country.
I hope this helps!
Perfect candidate for geo-targeting! You can keep them on one domain though if you're interested. You can do subfolders and geo-target each, but not sure if that works with your setup. Regardless, if you do the .com, and want that to be US only, make sure to claim that domain in GSC and Bing WMT as the US. .com is a general TLD, so it doesn't auto-geo-target. ccTLDs like .co.uk do automatically take care of this.
Keep in mind that in best practices, if you have two pages with the same content across two domains, usually the SEs will pick one, the older stronger one. Try to find a way to differentiate the content that is the same across the two sites. You can also use hreflang between the two sites to help the association, but that is really meant for translated content only. However, people have seen it help.
To ensure people are getting to the right content, I recommend detecting the user's location by IP and ASKING if they live in the US, UK or others you might geo-target. Then set a cookie. They will always get to the right content. Google will crawl from the US, ignore the JS for the most part, and will index everything.
Think about the .com and subfolder idea, that might be better for you.
Hi Tammy,
First, a few questions, what terms did you drop for? I see many of your pages indexed and link equity flowing through the site. It's new and only has 8 external links from 2 root domains from what I can tell. The 818 links are mostly internal links. So from my point of view, you added the site, Google indexed and tested it, but after the initial bump, it knocked back down. It's annoying but not unheard of with new sites.
What are your plans for outreach? Did this dentist have a site before that is redirecting at all?
Kate
Cody has some good resources. I'll follow that up with asking for specific instances of pages that are autocreated. It sounds like the way they are made doesn't add anything to the site, so rather than using a canonical, I'd go the noindex route first, but I'd need to see these pages to be sure.
I don't think they mean removing the duplicates, but make them unique instead. What CMS are you on? Who makes these pages? And again (sorry), can we have some examples?
Hi Moon boots!
First be aware of the .eu TLD, it isn't a geo-targeted TLD as the EU isn't a country. Keep that in mind, you can't target regions, just countries.
Can I ask why you want to go down the route of ccTLDs? Does your content need to be different in each country? There is no problem with keeping everything on a .com, but let me know if there are external factors at play here.
Where you host the TLDs doesn't matter much. The localization is a signal, but not a huge one. If you can give us some insight into your situation, we can help better. Thanks!
If they are causing you to have duplicate content and there isn't much search traffic going to them, there should be no penalty for removing them. 404s don't ever cause penalties. You can tell Google to stop crawling them though, but it is a time intensive process that is probably not worth your time. https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/9689846?hl=en
If you are deleting and then remaking the tag pages in a different URL structure, I would note which ones are getting organic search traffic and are most used by site visitors. Then when you remake them, put in a 301 redirect from the old URL to the new one.
For reference, here is the question:
Thank you for helping me in this. I now have the clarity in making the right recommendation to my client. However we are now left with 2 options:
I appreciate the time you've taken in replying to my query and I look forward to your thoughts/recommendations in the above mentioned issue.
Redirecting to .co.in will keep the domain focused to the Indian market, and if I read right, you want to focus on the US market as well. So I'd recommend designing and developing new content for brandnamebianalytics.com and optimize from scratch.
Hope that helps!
If the page is https://www.example.com/us/product/ then the hreflang on that page should be:
If it is on https://www.example.com/product/ then it is actually the same
The other two lines are not needed. x-default is for your homepage when there is no target and you are asking users to set their target. If you visit https://www.ikea.com/ in an incognito window, you'll see what I mean.
And general en is not needed here. You are using hreflang for helping the SEs understand the difference in the content across countries that use the same language. As much as I hate it for that purpose, they do use this as a signal. General "en" is if you had a business that didn't geo-target and rather just had translations. One page in English, one in Spanish, etc. But no localization.
There are a few tools: SEMRush, SearchMetrics, and SpyFu.
I would focus on the goals that historically lead to revenue. If they all do, calculate that. None of these things should be a page visit though, that's not a strong engagement metric. If I were you, I'd do:
Visit duration threshold (objective:people explore the online catalog)
This might help, it talks about support sites, which isn;t you, but if you implement it correctly, it can help you, just don't copy this implementation https://blog.kissmetrics.com/pageviews-time-on-site/
Click on a distributors website, track each individually (objective: people visit the distributor page)
https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1033068?vid=1-635779271421213638-3696063864
Click on top social sites share buttons (objective: people share the pictures and info in social media)
https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1033068?vid=1-635779271421213638-3696063864
After 30 seconds of video watch, it registers the goal (objective: people watch videos)
analytics.js and Tag Manager: http://www.lunametrics.com/blog/2015/05/11/updated-youtube-tracking-google-analytics-gtm/
ga.js: http://www.lunametrics.com/blog/2010/11/09/video-tracking-google-analytics-introduction/
Contact form completion (objective: new distributors contact them to be a new distributor)
The articles above are sometime ga.js, the old version of analytics. If you are running analytics.js, you'll need to work with Tag Manager. Hope that makes sense and helps.
Same to you! Happy to help!
Huh. You have a really good head on your shoulders. They are both good options. Unless there is something that makes the .lu/fr imperative to have for the users, I think I prefer option 1. Your logic sounds good there and is customer first.
Good luck!
**1. If we start using "" to make Google (and others) aware of alternative language versions of a given site/URL, how big a problem will "duplicate titles" then be across our domains/site versions? **
If you have translations, that is content that is exactly the same, just translated, HREFLANG is highly recommended for Google. Bing uses another tag though. However, your titles should be different give that they are in different languages. Check out my presentation here: http://www.slideshare.net/DistilledSEO/searchlove-boston-2013kate-morrisinternational-seo
**2. Is it a problem that we in our sitemap include (many) URL's to pages that are marked with noindex? **
I wouldn't put pages in the sitemap that have a noindex. It won't hurt you by any means, just seems a waste of time.
**3. Are there any problems with having a sitemap that includes pages that includes canonical URL's to other pages? **
It's not recommended but it's also not a problem. The only issue comes in having pages that redirect or break all together.
I do not know of major differences, but it might be worth taking the time to research what is ranking in Bing/Yahoo over your client and compare. Back in the day (2 years ago) I heard rumor that some of the old things still applied: H1, H2, H3 tags, keyword density, etc. That and there was a bigger focus on just number of links. But none of this should change what you are doing. There should be a focus on good site structure, on page tagging, and page/domain authority through links.
The only other thing is to remember that Bing has a relationship with Facebook and can use Facebook social data directly. Not to say that it's the major factor here, but it is something Google does not have.
Just a thought.
Okay, you should be able to use Tag Manager to track this.
I would recommend tagging the traffic that click on the one link to London from the homepage. Using that tracker, you can see any conversions that happen over time from anyone that ever clicked on that link. That means those that convert immediately or those that convert later. Anyone that clicks that link.
Is that what you're looking for? If it is, I'll help you with instructions for the tag; or I'll try to. I'm not a Tag Manager major user, but happy to work you through this or get someone that is better with it. What I am hoping is if you tag the click, then you might be able to segment using that tag.
Sorry Lisa, this got lost in my email box. You are looking for tips for how to set things up for an international site? Can you tell me more about your site and what you are looking to get out of your Moz account when it comes to international search?
There isn't anything different you should be doing for Bing on site. The page you mentioned is indexed in Bing (url:https://www.sitegeek.com/000webhost is indexed in Bing). So it's tough to understand what might be going on.
There are many potential issues here.
1. The language changes causing an issue. Bing's tag is different from Google's.
2. The site quality or content quality is not enough for Bing to want to index. I doubt that, but it's a potential issue.
3. Sitemap issues. Bing is not as good as Google at telling us what the issues are with sitemaps. Without doing a full analysis, there isn't much we can do to tell you the problem.
4. Sometimes it's just Bing. They are always behind ...
Sorry for my delay in replying.
The URL builder is meant for external campaigns. I would be worried about using that and losing the actual referral data. Are you going to need to see where the traffic came from before they got to the homepage? If not, you can use this. Make sure there is a canonical on the London page if you do to ensure the URL Builder URL isn't indexed. If you do need that data, we will need to explore another area.
In that instance for tag manager, I'm suggesting using the current setup to pull in specific click tracking, not pageview like you showed. Something like here: https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/6164470?vid=1-635804359701533130-3696063864
1. Yes, usually the "best" is a matter of preference. You always should start with the country and then language if you go down that route so that the first subfolder is the geotargeted folder. But other than that, there is no real "right" answer.
2. UK vs GB is because GB is a part of the UK. The recognized country is the UK so that is used for geo-location. GB is the region in the UK that speaks a recognized version of English. Make sense?
3. Yes, companies use languages when they are going to geo-target their company or material for specific countries and then offer translations within those countries. If you are only operating in the US in English, then you don't really need all of this. However, it won't hurt to set it up for future structuring.
That data should be straight from Search Console when you link your GA account with Search Console. Can you compare your reports from GA in August with the same data in Search Console? Is that different? What about what you see in Search Console vs what you see on screen in GA? Let's start there.
Hi Marty,
There seems to be some miscommunication going on. Let me see if I can help. If you don't mind, I am going to summarize the problem here. Can you confirm if I have that right? Then we can move to a solution.
You have a page you want to track clicks from the homepage to that and then to conversion (enquire or book). The pages in question are: flightcentre.ca (calling this home) and flightcentre.ca/flights/london (calling this london).
You have 2 goals: booking and enquiry. I assume those are set up as goals and are reporting correctly?
If that's the whole problem, I might have a solution for you.
1. Nope. What you put in the URL is not relevant to SEs, just users. Whatever you think is best there will work.
2. There is a difference between recognized countries and languages.
For the English language, there are different dialects. US, GB, AU, etc. The HREFLANG tag uses the code for the region of the dialect. So it is en-gb for that region.
For the geo-targeting portion, the UK is a recognized country. Great Britan is not. The United Kingdom is made up of Great Britain ( which is made up of the "countries" of England, Scotland, Wales) and Northern Ireland.
Can you add screen shots of your report download settings? Is this report automatic? Is is from a GA dashboard or pulled by hand every month?
I suspect something might be going wrong with the report pulling from GA.
HI!
There are a number of things I want to address in your situation, so please bear with me.
First, I can't see the site, so I can't verify the content on your site as 100% unique, relevant, and design with the user experience in mind. You need more than just reviews and images to have a great page, so if that isn't already the case, that is the first place to start. For any user search, ask what the best page is and beat that in terms of content. If you aren't sure how to be better than the best, find users that are looking for that via surveys and ask them.
Second, I am assuming a number of things. It sounds like your site just launched late 2013. This is based on your timeline and relatively low DA. If that is true and your timeline is accurate, you should be going through some major fluctuations. Your site is new, which means Google is actively testing it's content. Your rankings will change heavily in the first few months. You then noticed a number of onpage issues, and those were just changed as of last week. It's going to take some time for that information to be updated.
Third, based on the above and what I've seen in the past, it's very normal for your rankings to fluctuate. If you're checking by a rank checker tool, it'll fluctuate as none of them are accurate right now. If you're checking yourself, then the same IP is looking it up repeatedly, acting like a rank checker. Normal users can see ranking fluctuations per day based on the tons of factors that go into ranking.
I would highly suggest not tracking ranking, but rather watching the organic search traffic going to the page you are targeting here. That's the only way to show real success.
Fourth, tracking domain authority over time is not valid. Domain Authority change numbers based on the Moz data set. You could "lose" domain authority in one time period and still get more traffic. DA is only to be used in comparison to other sites related to you.
In the end, be patient, focus on your content and track organic traffic to important URLs to see how things are performing.
I'm not sure I understand. I assume you are in travel something, and usually, the English speaking audience is of more interest. Now, it is your local audience due to lack of traveling. To be clear, a title tag change can have an impact in under a week. However, the search engines retain the right to ignore your title at any time - they do it all the time with titles that they deem irrelevant.
I'd need to see the pages to be sure, but as long as they are relevant to the audience you are targeting, you should be okay in theory.
It sounds like you have a few options. Since you need to geo-target since the content is different and NEEDS to be different in each country, except for the standard About Us, etc, you are on the right track. Using ccTLDs automatically tells Google and Bing that you are geo-targeting. All good there.
You should not need hreflang. Each site's main content is different. It's not just translated. You're fine not marking that up.
For the general content, I would recommend a canonical to the original content. That content won't be useful in the SERPs much for you, mostly branded content, so you shouldn't worry about them appearing for each country. You could just have each page on each ccTLD, but they won't perform well. Again, these are not real important pages, so don't fret too much.
I am with Moosa, placing it on another site just for links isn't a good idea. But this isn't content that will get links as it is.
These aren't really articles, but rather requests for services. I am not sure how much traffic this content will bring you but if you want to open it up, I'd still recommend keeping it on one site.
Wish I had something more to add here, but this is the best answer I've seen. To me it sounds like Google is testing something and it is probably just with a handful of brands. I would be interested if this continues through to next week. But it really does sound like a test to see if people searching for branded terms really don't want to see ads and how hard they will work to get to the ads.
At least no one is beating you?
Can you tell me more? Is your target market multi-lingual? Can you expand on why you would change your title language but not the site language?
I actually think you might be thinking about it too much.
Are the articles written by your company about your company like guest posts? If they are and you are asked to link back by the site that posted the guest post, that is a bad link. Those will be detected.
Are they real articles written about the company? If so you should promote these in many ways.
Why is your company linking to the articles? If it's so that they can point people to what's being said about them, you don't need to remove those links. They are there for a good reason.
If you're doing the linking for your customers and potential customers, you're fine. If you're doing it for SEO purposes or to make someone happy so they will link to you, don't do it.
I am not sure there are titles that will ensure anything. Just like any direct mail or email marketing tactic, people get used to overused ones quickly and easily. My advice is not to use the same title every time, but craft each on to each person you are reaching out to. Trying to do guest posting en masse is not going to be worthwhile for you.