Shall I automatically redirect international visitors from www.domain.com to e.g. www.domain.com/es? What is best SEO practice?
-
We have chosen the one domain approach with our international site having different language versions in subdirectory of main domain:
www.domain.com/es
www.domain.com/it
etc.What is SEO-wise best practice for implementing international index pages. I see following options:
- entering www.domain.com will display without redirection the index page in language of user (e.g based on IP or browser) in www.domain.com
Example: www.booking.com - entering www.domain.com will always show English index page.
Additionally one may display a message in the header if IP from other country with link to other language version.
Example: www.apple.com - entering www.domain.com will always redirect automatically to country specific subdirectory based on IP
Example: www.samsung.com
Any thoughts/suggestions on what may be best solution from a SEO perspective? For a user I believe options 1) & 3) are preferable.
- entering www.domain.com will display without redirection the index page in language of user (e.g based on IP or browser) in www.domain.com
-
The solution you describe it's correct, so you can go with it.
-
good point. thanks Gianluca.
But in this particular case crawling would not be an issue since non-English language versions are in subdirectories which are accessable via country dropdown. US google spider seeing the EN version in the main domain is exactly as desired. So if crawling is not an issue, do you still see a problem with option 3). To address your point, I would also enforce that if someone clicks via country dropdown to English version, that this person would not be redirected again.
What do you think?
In case of websites following an international one domain strategy such as booking.com, redirecting to subdirectory may be most convenient for vast majority of users, since the name of the main domain is promoted to users in different languages.
-
Option 1 must be discarded.
Option 2, which is also what Amazon does, is the best one IMHO, even though should be also present a country selector html page, so that Googlebot can discover it and crawl it.
Option 3 is a no no, because you are pretending that someone is visiting your site just in his language, which may be not true. More over, this is also discouraged by Google for that same reason, and because googlebot IP is american... it would end always seeing the version assigned to US IPs.
-
Subdirectories can work very well. Those subdirectories can benefit from link juice above them. I would also consider different sitemaps for the different languages. Again, I like your third option from a user experience standpoint. Given the search engine's emphasis on that coupled with improved click through rates, you should do well as long as the content end of things is good.
-
Thanks.We believe in our case language versions in subdirectry over country specific TLDs is the better choice. My doubt is really just about how to best deal with international visits to www.domain.com.
-
There's a lot of good info out there on this subject. The ideal for ranking in a specific country would be to have domain.es with a hosting provider in Spain that has a local Spain billing address. Aside from that, I personally like option 3 in your list but provide links to other languages in case the user is on a VPN that confounds geolocation.
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
-
International targeting
I submitted each language URL as a separated website to google webmasters, I've submitted Hreflang sitemap which has language codes only(without countries codes) each page in my website has hreflang language and country code. Should i use international target option for each language to target the countries? will that hurt the language targeting? or I have to leave international targeting option unchecked for each language? My Goal to target by languages, not countries.
International SEO | | MTBE0 -
International SEO Mobile directory
I was wondering, What if I went with international sub-directory route (not ccTLD), for example: sitename.com/fr (fr being france)...But the question is, what's the best practice for MOBILE?sitename.com/mobile/frORsitename.com/fr/mobileORm.sitename.com/fr Again, ccTLD is not an option (currently, sites are in ccTLD but we are now transitioning to sub folders)Now, the next question is WHY is it best practices for it to be sitename.com/mobile/fr or sitename.com/fr/mobile or m.sitename.com/fr ? Please cite source. Thanks!
International SEO | | ggpaul5620 -
International Site Merge
Hello, I've never had to deal with an international site before, let alone a site merge. These are two large sites, we've got a few smaller old sites that are currently redirecting to the main site (UK). We are looking at moving all the sites to the .com domain. We are also currently not using SSL (on the main pages, we are on the checkout). We also have a m.domain.com site. Are there any good guides on what needs to be done? My current strategy would be: Convert site to SSL. Mobile site and desktop site must be on the same domain. Start link building to the .com domain now (weaker link profile currently) What's the best way of handling the domains and languages? We're currently using a .tv site for the UK and .com for the US. I was thinking, and please correct me if i'm wrong, that we move the US site from domain.com to domain.com/us/ and the domain.tv to domain.com/en/ Would I then reference these by the following: What would we then do with the canonicals? Would they just reference their "local" version? Any advice or articles to read would really be appreciated.
International SEO | | ThomasHarvey0 -
Google Analytics - whats best way to set up to track users on geotargeted sub folders & tlds ?
Hi ive got a client site just about to launch into 2 new territories (German Germany & Turkish Turkey) The existing/main site is in English & targets English keyword usage globally via domain.com and is not geotargeted in anyway. Analytics is set up for this on domain.com and tracking accurately and GWT is set up too. Now we have added a Turkish language site via a subfolder (domain.com/tr/) & the German site (domsain.com/de/) BUT this German subfolder will be domain mapped to a TLD (domain.de) eventually.. So what's best way to configure/set up Google Analytics to track users so can view the international sub-sites as individual sites etc ? (& GWT for that matter) ? Also after doing this i will be setting up in Moz Anlytics as separate campaigns so how do you set up so only draws in the Analytics data specific to these sub-folders ? All Best Dan
International SEO | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
Can multiple hreflang tags point to one URL? International SEO question
Moz, Hi Moz, Can multiple hreflang tags point to a single URL? For example, if I have a Canadian site (www.example.com/ca) that targets French and English speakers can I have the following: or would I use: Any insight would be very helpful and greatly appreciated! Thank you in advance!
International SEO | | DA20131 -
Help with .asia domain extension
hi there i m planning to buy a domain with .asia extension. I want to know ....values of these tlds regarding seo.did i chose wrong tlds?? purely targeting emd traffic. One of my site with .biz for a emd in "biz op" ranked less than 2 weeks ..now i have 200-300 traffic daily. i asked here because of i have no experience with .asia extension. 1.can i target the audience demographically with these .asia for u.s. , u.k .or brazil. 2. these extension can be good for seo ? can i ranked high in serp for low ocmpetition terms any suggestion or idea & tips for me??? thanks in advances.
International SEO | | ranktrack0 -
Cross domain rel alternate, will it help or hurt?
I have a website that has similar pages on a US version and a UK version. Currently we want Uk traffic to go to the US, but the US domain is so strong it is outranking the UK in the UK. We want to try using rel alternate but have some concerns. Currently for some of our keywords US is #1, UK is #4. If we implement rel alternate, will it just remove our US page? We don't want to shoot ourselves in the foot and lose traffic. Is this worth doing, will it just remove our US ranking and our double listing? Any anecdotes, experiences or opinions are appreciated. Thanks.
International SEO | | MarloSchneider0 -
How to replace my .co.uk site with my .com site in the US Google results
My customer and I are based in the UK. My customer's site, www.blindbolt.co.uk has been around for years. Last year we launched their American site, www.blindboltusa.com. Searching on google.com (tested both via proxy and using the gl=us querystring trick), a search for blind bolt on the US Google returns our www.blindbolt.co.uk site. We would like it to show our www.blindboltusa.com website in US searches. Webmaster tools has the Geographic Target set correctly for each site. Does anyone have any ideas or suggestions please? Thanks.
International SEO | | OffSightIT0