What is the best way to make country specific IP redirect for only product pricng pages?
-
My website has 3 services and its price will be different for US/EU/Developed world and Asian/African countries.Apart from pricing page, all other things remain same.
I want to use IP based redirect .I heard this thing is called cloaking and used by black-hat guys.
What kind of instructions should I give to my web developer to look best to Google/Search bots and correctly show visitors the intended prices.Is there any caution to be taken care of.
Thanks for your time
-
Points noted.
I am targeting users continent wise.
1)North America
2)Europe,Australia
3)Rest
Hopefully,that will reduce the border overlap problem.(?) I do not mind 1 and 2 be mixed just 3 has to be separate due to my business model and vast Purchasing power parity difference.
Will the error be less than 10-15% seeing the above conditions? Any best practices to minimize?
I appreciate your time,Ryan.
-
In my opinion, you absolutely must offer visitors the ability to manually select their country. I do everything possible to avoid legal contracts, but if a client requested country-based content and refused to allow users to manually change their country I would either refuse to accommodate the request, or would have a legal disclaimer written up. The disclaimer would read something similar to:
"I have requested a change be made to my site which is against the advice of my consultant and the best practices of the SEO industry. I have been advised this change will lead to a negative user experience which will impact my sales and other statistical measurements of my site. "
The issue is however the geo-location is created, there is a 100% guarantee to be errors. There are people and companies who live near borders and otherwise choose ISPs or IPs from other countries. There are also people living, working and visiting other countries. You are forcing these people to view information in a format they do not desire and may not understand.
10-15 years ago, many people felt stuck with the options available on the internet. Those days are long gone. If your website is not presented in a very easy to do business with manner, you will turn buyers into visitors who bounce off your site and go to competitors.
-
Thanks for the answer.
I do not want average users to know what price is offered at other country .Though, somebody going via proxy can know .But,that is not an issue! So,country selection is not an option for me!
I have seen some websites making errors on detecting my country.How to minimize such errors?Is it that difficult for assigning country from IP technically?
-
You might also serve the exact same page to everyone but read the environment variables of the inbound visitor to determine which prices to show.
Or... serve same page to everyone and simply have a dropdown menu or radio buttons for the visitor to select proper pricing.
One problem that you will have is... some people from country A will be buying the service for a location in country B. Lots of transactions on US websites are made by people who are working in or visiting other countries. You might be surprised at how often this happens.
-
Cloaking is defined as presenting different content to search engines then you do to other visitors. Cloaking is an attempt to manipulate search engine rankings and is indeed a black hat practice.
Geographic redirects is a perfectly legitimate practice whereby you wish to show users from specific countries content which has been localized. The localization includes not only currencies but language, units of measurement and cultural references.
Some suggestions for your localized pages:
-
separate content based on country, not language. For example the USA and UK both speak English, but they each use different dialects, currencies and measurements. Depending on what products or services you are offering, you may need to update more then just the pricing.
-
keep the pages on the same domain but use folders to separate country-specific content
-
use the language meta tag on each localized page to indicate it's target
-
offer a method for visitors to change their country manually. I recommend small images of each country's flag. They are very recognizable and understandable.
-
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
-
Is there a Risk Around Creating a Website for Each Country in The World?
Is there a risk around creating a website for each country in the world with similar to identical content depending on the language? We need to serve prices and the local currencies and be compliant with regulations. We're planning to use rel=canonical and HREFLANG tags to help with consolidation and GEO-targeting.
International SEO | | ari_seo0 -
Google Webmaster tools localization for double country
Hi, I have the following url structure in my webshop: www.example.com/nl www.example.com/de www.example.com/fr www.example.com/uk I have set up each local store in Google Webmaster Tools with the correct localization.
International SEO | | mikehenze
But for the Belgium market i dont have a seperate site. Half of them speak dutch (nl) and half of them speak french (fr). Will Google show the correct site (nl or fr) based on their language? Or will my sites not show up because belgium is not being used in my GWT ? Thanks.0 -
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 -
Can I point some rel alternate pages to a 404?
Hi everyone, I'm just setting up a series international websites and need to use rel="alternate" to make sure Google indexes the right thing and doesn't hit us with duplicate content. The problem is that rel="alternate" is page specific, and our international websites aren't exact copies of the main UK website. We've taken out the ecommerce module and a few blog categories because they aren't relevant. Can I just blanket implement rel="alternate" and let it sometimes point to a 404 on the alternate websites? Or is Google going to find that a bit weird? Thanks,
International SEO | | OptiBacUK
James0 -
International SEO whats best 2 sites co.uk and com.au ?
We have the co.uk and com.au ccTLDS and currently operate out of the UK only but plans are in place for Australia. We can't get hold of the .org or .com so it has to be the ccTLD. I want to use the same site for both countries and either host 2 identical sites (same content) or 1 site with different domain names + meta tags for the 2 countries. Whats the best way to make this happen without screwing things up?
International SEO | | therealmarkhall0 -
Use country-specific domains or stick to already strong .com domain?
We run an online store with the majority of our customers coming from 4 different European countries. The site is accessible through TLD's of all of these countries. However our .com domain currently has the most links pointing to it and the highest domain authority. Unfortunately, we are unable to tell through which TLD visitors reach our site. The niche is rather competetive, and therefore I am unsure whether it would be worth it to solely use our .com domain for the English language, and try to rank for each of the seperate languages with its own country-specific domain. **Question/discussion: **Will it be worth the costs and time to spent to build links for the country specific domains in these countries, or should we focus on making our .com domain stronger and use it for all countries? I'm aware of the benefits of ranking with a domain in the country the user is in. Note: We have major duplicate content issues at this moment, due the content being available in different languages, on a handful of domains. On each domain, users can view the site in different languages. In addition, the language indication in the url is not very clear (?lang=x) so I believe this should be improved to make it easier for search engines to tell which language is presented. If I choose to use a different language for each TLD, then the language flag in the navigation on the site will point to a different domain, so each language is hosted on 1 domain and there is no more duplicate content. However, I'm afraid this will lead to lower rankings, as the (strong) .com domain will no longer host the content in different languages.
International SEO | | 1200wd0 -
The best SEO practice for a .hk domain
We are currently working on a project which involves 3 separate .com domains in relation to a UK company selling/renting residential, commercial and investment properties within the UK. We are now working on producing a .hk site for the overseas customers. Can anyone advise what the best practice is for a .hk domain and where best to start? Should the domain be hosted in that geographical location for example? We are relatively new to this so any advise would be greatly appreciated.
International SEO | | SoundinTheory0 -
What's the best strategy for checking international rankings?
Hi There- I am looking to optimize sites serving the UK and Austrailia markets. I feel like I have a good handle on how to go about doing that, but what I am fuzzy on is, what's the best way to monitor the SERPs for the keywords I am targeting. I know based on experience that if I just search google.com.au from here in the states, my results will be 'americanized' and may/probably won't accurately reflect what someone would see if they were search from Austrailia. Are there any good tools or tactics for seeing what searchers in the countries I am focusing on woudl see? Thanks! Jason
International SEO | | phantom0