Interlinking sites in multiple languages
-
I am working on a project where the client has a main .com site and the following additional sites which are all interlinked:
.com site targeting US
.com site targeting China
.HK site targeting Hong KongAll sites contain similar information (although the Chinese site is translated). They are not identical copies but being shopping sites, they contain a lot of similar product information.
Webmeup software (now defunct) showed that the inbound links to the main site, from the additional domains are considered risky. Linkrisk shows them as neutral.
The client wants them to be interlinked and would not want to remove the additional domains as they get a good amount of traffic. In addition, the messages and products for each country domain have been tailored to a degree to suit that audience. We can rewrite the content on the other domains, but obviously this is a big job.
Can anyone advise if this would be causing a problem SEO wise and if so, is the best way to resolve it to rewrite the content on the US and Hong Kong sites?
Alternatively would it be better to integrate the whole lot together (they will soon be rebuilding the main site, so it would be an appropriate time to do this).
-
Many thanks Andy.
-
Hi Rachel,
This is similar to another question asked just yesterday and the same could apply very well to yourself too.
HREFLANG is used in cases like this where a site could encounter duplication issues through this kind of setup. There are two areas to look at and consider here - this answers your question if you decide to keep all TLD's the same.
**Q: <a name="q16"></a>Can I use “rel alternate hreflang” across domains / across TLDs?
A: **Yes! Keep in mind that this markup is on a per-URL basis, so if there are alternate URLs across those domains, you would need to add the markup for each individual URL.You can get many questions answered here: https://sites.google.com/site/webmasterhelpforum/en/faq-internationalisation#q16
If you decided to pull everyting into just one site, then this would fit what you want to do:
- Your site content is fully translated. For example, you have both German and English versions of each page.
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/189077?hl=en
In terms of inter-linking, this seems to be down to the whim of Google, if they wish to see it as problematic or not. If you are concerned about it, leave the links in place and just add the rel=nofollow attribute - this will remove possible issues.
I hope this helps.
-Andy
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
-
How To Optimize A Page For Multiple Keywords
Hi Guys, In this video by Brian Dean he talks about how to go about optimising for multiple keywords. He basically said the main factors for optimising a page for multiple keywords are the following: Identify other keywords with same search intent as your primary keyword. Add them to title tag strategically, don't stuff them in there. Add as many of those keywords as h2 tags into the content, again when it makes sense. Are there any other more advanced ways you can use to optimize a page for multiple keywords with same search intent that could be good? Any suggestions would be very much appreciated! Cheers.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | spyaccounts110 -
Open Site Explorer - Spam analysis: need help with inbound links... from my site!
hallo, reading my spam analysis report from open explorer, I found somenthing I don't understand (please see attached image): The long list of links inside the red rectangle are inbound links with a spam score of 5 coming from my same site. How is that possible? Should I remove those links? Also , I see that many of those links are links present in the top navigation bar (about page, home page, service description etc.) or in the sidebar section of the website (categories, recent posts, recent comments). Should I treat them differently? Thank you for your time.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | micvitale0 -
Why my site not ranking
Hello everyone, can anyone suggest me, where i am having problem in my site www.suntechengineers.com, i know content is less,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | poojathakar
but any other things that i am missing in my site? Is There any on page query please let me know, i need urgently getting up this,please help thanx in advance0 -
Transferring Domain and redirecting old site to new site and Having Issues - Please help
I have just completed a site redesign under a different domain and new wordpress woo commerce platform. The typical protocol is to just submit all the redirects via the .htaccess file on the current site and thereby tell google the new home of all your current pages on the new site so you maintain your link juice. This problem is my current site is hosted with network solutions and they do not allow access to the .htaccess file and there is no way to redirect the pages they say other than a script they can employ to push all pages of the old site to the new home page of the new site. This is of course bad for seo so not a solution. They did mention they could also write a script for the home page to redirect just it to the new home page then place a script of every individual page redirecting each of those. Does this sound like something plausible? Noone at network solutions has really been able to give me a straight answer. That being said i have discussed with a few developers and they mentioned a workaround process to avoid the above: “The only thing I can think of is.. point both domains (www.islesurfboards.com & www.islesurfandsup.com) to the new store, and 301 there? If you kept WooCommerce, Wordpress has plugins to 301 pages. So maybe use A record or CName for the old URL to the new URL/IP, then use htaccess to redirect the old domain to the new domain, then when that comes through to the new store, setup 301's there for pages? Example ... http://www.islesurfboards.com points to http://www.islesurfandsup.com ... then when the site sees http://www.islesurfboards.com, htaccess 301's to http://www.islesurfandsup.com.. then wordpress uses 301 plugin for the pages? Not 100% sure if this is the best way... but might work." Can anyone confirm this process will work or suggest anything else to redirect my current site on network solutions to my new site withe new domain and maintain the redirects and seo power. My domain www.islesurfboards.com has been around for 10 years so dont just want to flush the link juice down the toilet and want to redirect everything correctly.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | isle_surf0 -
Focusing on Multiple Niches for one site: good or bad?
Is it wise to focus on multiple niches for one site, rather than zoning in one or two different niches? On one hand, you can target many more topics and go after tons of keywords, but on the other hand doesn't google get confused of what your site is really about? Won't google just focus on one of the niches that you provide more than all others? Any input would be great!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WebServiceConsulting.com0 -
Why Did My Site Go Limp On Me?
One of my clients was once in the #1 position for "Philadelphia interior designer" and other related terms, but her site has dropped significantly. Still it is on the first page, but far from its former glory. http://www.interiorsbydonnahoffman.com is the site. What really confuses me is why in her home turf search of "Bucks County Interior Designer" a competitor, http://www.miriamansellinteriors.com, is above her in the SERPS. According to OSE her competitor has a PA of 32 vs my client's 39. My client has 35 Linking Root Domains (and some of high quality) compared to just 11 for the competition. In all aspects her competitor looks weaker and less relevant to me. Her site has been weak in the SERPs since May/June. We are redesigning her site- she has a high bounce rate compared to my other interior design clients, something like 55%. Any insights from y'all?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | dfhytrwy0 -
What is value in a back-link from article with multiple links pointing to various other sites?
In a standard article with 400-500 words my site got a back-link. However, within the article there are 4 other links pointing to other external content as well (so total 5 links within articles all pointing to external sites, and 1 of the links is to my site). All links are to relevant external content that is. Question: wouldn't it be much more valuable for my site if only my site got a back-link from the article, as less link juice is now passed to my site, since there are 4 other links pointing to various sites from this same article? Or, is the case that given the other links are pointing to quality material it actually makes the link to my site look more credible and at the end of the day have more value. Conclusion: is it that on one hand less links in same article is better from a link juice perspective, however, from a credibility perspective it looks more convincing there are other links pointing to quality content?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | knielsen0 -
Does Google punish sites for Backlinks?
Here is Matt Cutts video, for those of you who have not seen it already. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4dAWb5jUws (Very Short) In this Video Matt explains that Google does not look at backlinks. Many link spamming sites have detected, there have been many website receiving warning messages in their Google web tools to deindex these links, etc.. My theory is that Google will not punish sites for backlinks. However, they manually check for "link farming sites" and warn anyone affiliated with them, just in case these links were built from a competitor. This way they can eliminate all the "Bad Link Farm" sites and not hurt anyone who does not deserve to be hurt. Google is not going to give us all their information to rank, they dont want us to rank. They want us to PPC. However, they do want to have the best SERPs available. I call it Google juggling! Thoughts?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEODinosaur0