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It is most likely the names of campaigns you might have set up. It's best to discussion with your marketing and advertising departments.

Buying the exact match domain just to rank should be treated as that only if that is what you want to do. It needs to have its own content and own marketing plan as it's a separate domain. I'd recommend one page that then pushes people to conversion, whatever that is, or to your main domain.

I think that's what you had in mind. But this is a new site totally, so it really needs the support of your own content linking to it and some marketing around it to gain links.

Don't duplicate your content and you'll be fine. See it as a microsite for that traffic in particular. Have fun with it!

hreflang and geo-targeting are in fact two different things.

If you have exactly the same content, no changes for the regional variations in the language, hreflang is not intended for that.

Why do you have two sets of pages that are the same? If you have the same content on .com with no geo-targeting, then Google is going to offer up the original content on .com rather than /lu because you never changed the content in any way to target Luxembourg. Had you changed the content to translate or really geo-targeted the content to that audience, I think the situation would be different.

Check my tool here, answer the questions and see what is right for your situation. Then follow the instructions at the end.

http://outspokenmedia.com/international-seo-strategy/

My deepest apologies. I don't know how I missed your response.

If each franchisee has their own section of the site that they can keep updated, then I would go down the route of geo-targeting. I doubt you would use multiple translations within any one specific section of the site per franchisee. Let me know if you think that would be needed. And what I mean specifically is a new franchisee in UAE wants their part of the site, their content, in Arabic and English. I don't even know if that would be an ask someday for those specific languages, so please forgive my ignorance, but I hope you get the idea. If that will not ever be needed, stick with just geo-targeting.

There are two options from here in terms of structure.

1 - Based on current UK setup - all on .com

You'd need to change URLs for current providers to get on a new setup that will allow geo-targeting. This might cause temporary organic traffic drops, but best in the long run in my opinion. The URL structure would be:

domain.com/uk/belfast
domain.com/uae/dubai

Now, this is assuming the same structure of franchisees and one per city. You would geo-target the first subfolder and leave the content to the franchisees. If needed, general content not specific to a city or location would be at the country level (first subfolder) and that is the geo-targeted part.

2 - Only one set of content for UAE - Change URLs

If you are not following the same UK structure and only want one set of content for the UAE and want to use the same domain, you need to change URLs like the above, but not add cities to the UAE section.

URL Examples:

domain.com/uk/belfast
domain.com/uae/

3 - Based on current UK setup - ccTLDs

Another option is to have a different site for each country. Go for the ccTLD in each country. Use the .com to geo-target to the UK if that is all that is targeted with that content. This is a heavier investment as each site would need its own dedicated marketing plan that includes outreach and link building.

4 - Only one set of content for UAE - UK on www subdomain

If you are not going to do the franchisee system per city like in the UK, it gets tricky. You can't, right now, geo-target by city. So to geo-target the current structure to the UK, you'd need to geo-target at least the subdomain www, if you use that. If not, see the option below. You could technically geo-target www.domain.com to the UK and uae.domain.com to the UAE. This allows you to use the same root domain, but many SEOs have different theories on how subdomains are treated in regards to domain authority pass down to subdomains that are not the root domain. This is an option, but I don't recommend it.

URL examples
www.domain.com/belfast
uae.domain.com

5 - Only one set of content for UAE - UK on root subdomain

If you are using the whole domain (domain.com) for the UK, you would need to geo-target the whole root domain to the UK to get the geo-targeting set up. That would mess with the UAE content being on that domain. You would need to purchase a ccTLD then. I doubt this is the route you want to take, but it's an option.

This is a lot but i hope you can see how things change based on your needs now and in the future. Sorry there isn't a direct answer, but it changes in every situation. Let me know if I can help with more clarification!

I agree. Never automatically redirect, but rather ask users what language they prefer and set a cookie.

Ah, I think we are getting to the root of the problem here.

If we are talking about hreflang used correctly between two identical pages that are translated, everything Google has stated about hreflang is that it acts as a canonical. The alternate language pages would be treated as changes of each other. Ranking is more than just link equity though, so where you rank is more than that.

In your specific situation, I see a few problems outside the use of hreflang. Can you share the domain you are talking about? If you're not comfortable sharing it here, please message me with it. There might be other things at play confusing the Google algorithm. But I need to see for sure.

After spending the last five years looking into international expansion of websites, I can say for sure I don't recommend subdomains for language translations. It's due to the fact that using subdomains isn't very clean and doesn't work well if you want to expand to country specific content in the future.

The way I read the original Moz post on subdomains is that the use of hreflang helps some of the assumed negatives of using subdomains, but subdomains are not the recommended solution. Mind you, the "negatives" of subdomains have not been proven in all cases either.

Let me know about your specific case and I'll see what might be happening.

Gianaluca was speaking of multiple "sites" but this is translation. Google does say it in fact:

"By specifying these alternate URLs, our goal is to be able to consolidate signals for these pages, and to serve the appropriate URL to users in search. "

https://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/12/new-markup-for-multilingual-content.html

It sounds like you want to put up different regional translations of the homepage up. This is not really geo-targeting, but translation since nothing else is changing about your content to target it to countries like Mexico and Spain.

You are right in placing them in subfolders and using hreflang between the different homepage versions. As long as you tag all of them and point out the different translations, you will be fine.

I actually disagree with the subdomain exception for languages. You can use a subdomain for languages, but it doesn't look right in my opinion. The reason that text is in there though is because if you use translated content (which is different from regional or country targeted content), you should use hreflang and that acts like a canonical. The possible downsides of a subdomain are negated with that tagging.

The writer of this text you are referencing is not saying subdomains are preferred, merely that with languages the downsides of a subdomain are not applicable.

Even though you don't have any geo-targeted sections, there are other indications on your site that let them know you are targeting Ireland and Google might be optimizing for that.

With that said, how are you checking these rankings? Do these keywords send you large amounts of traffic? Check Search Console. Are you having an issue getting UK traffic (North Ireland)? Are you worried about UK traffic due to North Ireland?

I am worried that what you are seeing is due to your own search history and settings and/or Google seeing the same search a few times and testing out different results. There might also be different competition in the Northern Ireland market. There is a ton that could explain this, but alas, as with most things SEO, it's hard to pinpoint.

I am hesitant to saying you just need one as I don't know the layout of your page. As long as the ads are clearly marked as ads and are in no way deceptive, you should be fine. If there is too much space between them, you'd need to mark each one. But if they are all in a marked box together, you should be fine with one.

Rules of AdSense

For organic traffic sake, the same thing goes. Make sure there is no confusion as to what is an ad and what isn't. Use your gut,

Do you mean you are serving ads on your own site from the Google Ad Network? And you want to know how to mark those as ads on your own site?

Hi! I built a tool just for this question. Can you go to the link below, answer the questions and let me know what your result is?

http://outspokenmedia.com/international-seo-strategy/

I see two possible problems here. Both have been pointed out but I'll address both.

First, duplicate content from the same owner. If they have another site that has the same intent ... same topic ... reason for the site, you might want to merge them. I can't tell as I don't speak that language, but if they are competing sites, you don't want to pour resources into two places. That's my recommendation to the site owner.

Second, the bad links. It is possible that even links that have worked in the past for other sites might be hurting this site. Again, it's hard for me to tell, but if the link brings no value other than being a link and no one uses the link to get to the site ever, you run the risk of hurting that site with that link. Free directories are prime targets for Google. I am not sure how stringent Google Greece is on this yet, but this might be an issue.

With both of those things being said, if the links are hurting the site and you merge the two sites, you might hurt both by merging them.

I'm sorry I can't be more explicit of the cause, but with some poor links in the past and some less than stellar links now, and a possible duplicate intent site from the same owner, either or both of those could be the cause.

If it were me, start with merging the two sites. If the rankings drop for the well ranking site, clean up all poor links to either domain. If it stays down, unmerge and just let the poorer ranking domain die.

Your other option is to tell the client to focus on the site that is doing well, drop this one. But be careful with the link building. You don't want the same thing to happen to the other site and that's possible.

From what I am picking up, you are only offering translations. Be careful not to associate one language with one country when it comes to the major world languages like French and Spanish that are spoken in a number of countries. Therefore I highly recommend removing those flags and bringing a language menu up to the top.

I am happy to hear you are changing from ccTLDs to another solution. ccTLDs are only meant for content targeted at one country. If you are doing translations, then Spanish would need multiple ccTLDs (example Mexico and Spain) and then the content would be duplicated across those sites unless something else changed about your offering on those country sites.

Anyway, I am babbling. You are headed down the right path. Remove those flags and have a language menu up top.

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.

• domain.com/es (Spain)
• domain.com/mx (Mexico)

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!

So good to hear!

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.

Alright, so this is going to be a long and involved answer.

You are geo-targeting the root domain to the UK, but you also have it double tagged in HREFLANG. One is general English (root domain) and other GB English to the same place. Then you have an x-default pointing to the same place.

Google officially thinks that www.allsaints.com is a general English landing page and are probably ignoring the UK geo-targeting. Due to that, the fact that your root domain homepage is stronger than any other version, and because the content is basically the same, it's seeing what you see as your UK homepage as the root domain homepage without any targeting.

In short, you are sending mixed signals and need to sort that out. This might not all make sense but right now you need to:

• Remove the "en" hreflang tag since you have english variations.
• Remove the x-default hreflang tag since that page is not a place for anyone to land and choose a location/language. (ex. fedex.com)

Doing those two things might help clear up some of the confusion, but I also think you have the wrong international technical strategy. That's a whole other thing. Please DM me if you would like to talk about that, but the above should solve your posted problem.

You're sending a few mixed signals via hreflang. I need to ask a few questions.

• Are you geotargeting www.allsaints.com to the UK?
• Where are you located?
• How did you do the search attached? From what country? Incognito?

How long has the site been up? What about IP?

Good content and links are how you build a good strong site, but there are many other factors at play here. It seems from SEM Rush that IP has been around a bit longer and might be ahead of you in terms of business development on the web (marketing, link building, outreach, etc.).

Are you focusing on one area of printing in particular? What do your goals look like?

As Claudio said, there are many things behind the scenes we can't always know. The sheer number of links, PA, DA, etc, those are from a third party, Moz. As much as it is the best external look at link equity, domain strength and more, it's still not from Google.

There is more to ranking than just links and strength though. On page factors are important of course, but there are so many other pieces of the puzzle.

In this instance it looks like a language preference issue. Your screenshot shows that the first result is in English. The others are not, as they offer translation inside the SERP. The first result is the best result for this particular search for this particular user. It might not be across the board, but that is why you are seeing this result right now. It's a relevance to the user issue.

I think the API will help, but for the same date range, no filters, etc, the data shouldn't have changed. BUT Google has been known to edit their Search Console data, or they have in the past when they found discrepancies. There are any number of reasons why, but I am sorry we couldn't nail it down for you. I really do think the API will help. Best of luck!

No, it doesn't change my answer, but it's a good distinction to make. It sounds like the international expansion is in process. If the client needs geo-targeted content (sounds like they might), the countries need to be treated differently. Each subfolder as it's own site really. But it sounds like the translation is a good place to start for the time being.

For the mobile, my answer remains the same. There isn't anything other than making the translated content mobile or responsive that will help the traffic.

Ooohh!!!! Yes, I did misunderstand. I think the discrepancy here is that the CSV download only downloads part of the total data, the first thousand rows to be exact.

For example, in an account I have access to right now, for the last 30 days Search Console shows 35,145 clicks and over a million impressions. The download shows, upon summation of the data, 404,923 impresssions and 20,309 clicks.

You can't use the download to use as an overall view. The API should give you more accurate numbers.

Lots going on here. First, let me clarify, your client's desktop content is only translated? They don't change the content and the offerings don't change by country? There is a very important distinction here. Language and country are two different things.

Regardless, if the mobile site is only in English, because of mobilegeddon, if they think they are penalized, it's because they lost mobile traffic or are seeing declines. This is only because there is not good mobile content in the users language. Once that is available, I expect the traffic will rise. It's not a penalty like duplicate content isn't a penalty, it is just not optimal.

For anyone doing brand searches, I think the answer is it depends. If Google thinks the user is okay with the English mobile site, they will show that. If the user has only ever searched in their particular language, and that's not available on mobile, they might show the desktop local site (better but not perfect) or they might test showing the English mobile site. I think you'll see both over time until the mobile issue is fixed.

Yeah, there had to be something off with the dates pulled or something like that. It's always possible that the data came out wrong but more than likely something was missed in the report pulling. Human error and all. I've done it so many times myself.

If I might recommend, if you have the resources, pull this data from Search Console directly, rather than GA. Using their API, you can pull it directly: https://developers.google.com/webmaster-tools/?hl=en

This might be helpful: http://searchwilderness.com/gwmt-data-python/

Let me get this right before I start answering.

You have one article having an issue (just one) that is AU and UK, has hreflang implemented, is indexed for keyword searches but not showing for site: searches in Google. Few questions.

1. Have you geo-targeted the subfolders for AU and UK?
2. What version of Google are you using to check indexation?
3. When you say you checked internal links for both, how did you do that?
4. Your own site search (searching on your own site) does not return the UK article? Or do you mean that the site: search is not bringing up the UK article?

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.

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.

Brand Name - do you have a turkish ccTLD or subdomain or subfolder you can look at Search Console for? This is to check that the top brand name search is what you mentioned. You can confirm that in the search queries area of search console. Once you've confirmed that is what people use, use that. Don't add Turkey if the name is different enough.

I would hyphenate a name like that. People don't type in FB urls and the hyphenation makes it more understandable.

No apologies needed, happy to help!

Hi Dan,

Long Description: Naturally having something written for FB would be best, but I don't think it's going to hurt if it's the same. The Facebook page and Homepage are two very different pages, so there shouldn't be a duplicate content issue. Is there any way to have someone at the client rewrite it for you? An assistant, etc?

As for Mission and General About, leave those alone until you need them. It's best to have everything filled out of course as it gives the room to add different ways to describe the company, but it's not going to make a big difference.

Vanity URL: Always the brand name. Always. If the customers in Turkey called it something different (translated words) use that. If they call it the English name, then you'll want to keep that plus Turkey if the focus market is in Turkey

Hope this helps!

You would be able to set up a custom segment using the defined Event Label, Action, and/or Category you set up. Then to see how many convert, you just change the segment to that new segment you made and look at conversions.

That sounds a little vague, but does it make sense to you?

Hmmm, then this is most likely a Bing over-optimization issue. Like I said before, they are infinitely pickier and they don't communicate as much.

Your URLs stayed the same, but did you add any content in the redesign? Are you willing to share the site with us?

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

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.

Any number of things. I'll try to list a few here:

• Banned bingbot or its IP address range in your robots.txt or .htaccess file
• Changed to https recently?
• Sitemap has many errors - Bing is much pickier than Google on this.

Did anything change about the site recently? Bing is much pickier about the data they get, the links you get, and ANY kind of overoptimization.

Have you claimed the site in Bing Webmaster Tools? How's the indexation in there?

I see code for Google Tag Manager, are you using that?

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.

Have you confirmed that Googlebot is being redirected as well and it's for sure a 301 redirect?

If the redirects are IP based, it's possible Google figured out that there is an IP redirect (which is NOT recommended) and therefore, for a brand search, are giving the main domain with the US content - which is all they can see with an IP based redirect.

For your third question:

1. Stop the redirect. Use a JS prompt to ask people to set a location preference and set a cookie based on that.
2. Use sitemaps to push all country content to the SEs.
3. Think about a responsive site rather than an m.domain.com - but if you must have that, make sure to make a separate sitemap for that and claim it in Webmaster Tools.
4. Ensure that your mobile content is marked up correctly and if needed, the right canonicals are in place.

I'm so sorry Adrien, I never saw this response. Did you figure this out?

Did this ever get resolved?

That sounds like it. You need to add both versions of your site (http and https) to WMT and see if there is data in the https. Then make sure that you pick one (if you go https, make sure you have the right certificates set up) and redirect any requests for the other to the right one.

Hi BT,

About WMT vs Analytics, it depends on how you are looking at the data. Can you tell me the specific reports and time ranges? Remember, organic traffic in GA is not just Google, there are a number of other SEs out there. It could have to do with a number of things outside of that as well. Are you looking at the right profile in WMT? HTTPS vs HTTP and www vs non-www, plus subdomains in all of that can make a BIG difference. Same thing with Analytics, it depends on where the code is installed.

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:

1. Visit duration threshold (objective:people explore the online catalog)

2. 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/

3. Click on a distributors website, track each individually (objective: people visit the distributor page)

4. https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1033068?vid=1-635779271421213638-3696063864

5. Click on top social sites share buttons (objective: people share the pictures and info in social media)

6. https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1033068?vid=1-635779271421213638-3696063864

7. After 30 seconds of video watch, it registers the goal (objective: people watch videos)

8. analytics.js and Tag Manager: http://www.lunametrics.com/blog/2015/05/11/updated-youtube-tracking-google-analytics-gtm/

9. ga.js: http://www.lunametrics.com/blog/2010/11/09/video-tracking-google-analytics-introduction/

10. 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.

The one issue I see is that at least for the homepage, these two sites are identical. You have so many different geo-target sites, but between two sites of the same language regardless of location, does anything change? I'm seeing no differences on the homepage so I need to ask.

This might be part of why .be is cached for .nl, you're not giving them something new to index. They are hreflang'd as well, which is telling them even more that the content is the same.

I am going to assume that .be launched before .nl, or has gotten more play in the search results. Something is making it the go to for Dutch.

Good Answer Tim, but I am going to add a bit.

Since there are varying services, Tim's recommendation of domain.com/us and domain.com/uk is spot on. If you don't want to change URLs, I understand. You can keep the current URLs, you can geo-target the root to the UK and /us to the US. This route is easier to scale and if you grow each country as it launches, the domain gets stronger which helps each expansion in the years to come.

Now, if you are geo-targeting, there won't be much need for hreflang. If there are some product pages that are IDENTICAL across the two countries other than a few changed words, you can add HREFLANG. Technically speaking you wouldn't need it if the content were written and the pages crafted to each country, but until you get to that point, you can use HREFLANG for the pages that are duplicated. Mind you, this isn't best for your audience, but I get that for starters, that's easier. Do test the pages in each market to see if any modifications can be made for each market.

I don't recommend launching a .co.uk unless your customers/market demand it. That's a lot of marketing work to build up each one.

It sounds like your best bet is / geotarget to GB using Search Console, create a /us for the US, claim that in Search Console and geotarget to the US. Then use hreflang for any duplicated content.

Hope that helps!

I actually wouldn't change the domain unless you are doing it for another reason. It's been around since 2007 and I am reluctant to tell you to dump it in favor of a new one. Changing your domain sets everything fresh and you'll most likely seen a bigger loss in organic traffic.

When was the reconsideration request accepted? Can you give us a timeline of everything that happened?

Question, as it was entirely clear in the original question (or I missed it) and I think addressed later ... but if people are coming in and viewing the video without clicking anything (think youtube) then leave, then the time on site and page are not going to register. Is that happening here?

Now to the questions of if engagements rate get better in GA, if that can impact ranking. I have seen no studies on that and I highly doubt Google ties things in your GA account to ranking. Too many people mess up implementations for that. But I have not seen proof either way.

Now, Dwell, or whatever you want to call it, the instance where a user clicks on a result and within a relatively short period of time (as I think it depends on the query) goes back to the same SERP, I think that is taken into account, or is being investigated. That's Google's own data and totally possible to use. Do they? I am not sure and have seen no proof.