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Hi,

Sorry for not answering before but I was expecting some more thoughts from Seomoz or the community..

Although your thoughts are good, I don't think you answered my question. I think the problem was the question itself, after some thought I can rephrase it:

The real question may be: What is the best international/multilingual website structure to target google local, where you only have 1 location and compete in many countries and different languages?

Any thoughts?

Hi Moosa,

Thanks for your time and personal insights.

I tend to disagree with you on most part. Being a "hotel" we are in a different situation as a, lets say, fashion store. We do not have and will not have any locations at any given point outside our country or city (at least for now) but we do have customers on any given point of the world. Hell, the place where I have less clients is actually the place where we are located.

The thing is that, nowadays, google local results show on the top for most "hotel+city" searches. Those searches will only feature 1 TLD wherever in the world they may come from. We can optimize our local TLD how much we want but if it doesn't rank above google local results we won't be having any benefit. At least for us it would be difficult to rank above google results and keep racing with them.

I think that google places/local was mostly designed for businesses that would be searched for from local customers, but with hotels it is the opposite.

How should this be juggled?

Hi guys,

I own a guesthouse which is facing a messy structural problem in its own web presence:

Portuguese: www.residencia-aeminium-coimbra.com.pt

English: www.residencia-aeminium-coimbra.com

Spanish: www.residencia-aeminium-coimbra.com/espanol

Looking for success in the long term, a few years ago, we decided to host 3 TLDs: 1 for global international english, 1 for local portuguese and 1 for the main foreign market Spain (we already redirected it to a subfolder in the .com in the meanwhile). We tried to promote each one of these in their targeted markets -  mainly the .com got back-links links and authority.

With time, google local appeared and changed the face of google accommodation rankings. Google local are now the top results for most searches, even outside the country, and I came to the conclusion that the TLD assets were now a problem.

For instance, I can only add 1 domain to google local..what language should this be? It is the same for most social media presence..How should international markets be targeted in a local page?

Since TLDs do not seem to be an advantage right now, I am thinking we should be moving to a single domain and use a folder structure so we can use it everywhere.

Questions:

1. In terms of structure (TLD or Folder) and multi-lingual targeting what is the current best practice for hotels that show in local results but promote internationally?

2. What language should I point google local results to? And our Facebook page, etc?

3. If I move things around to a folder structure, what domain should I use?

• the .com is in english and has the most authority and links according to opensiteexplorer
• the .com.pt is in portuguese, our local language and our main market (but only 35% share)
• should I create a new domain ".pt"?

4. I don't think that geo-targeting the languages is worth it in this case, what do you think?

Kind Regards
Ricardo Madeira
Residencia Aeminium Coimbra