Help: Newbie trying to optimize for several international domains
-
We have three domain names co.nz, com.au and com. We are very new and have been told to optimize for co.nz first before going into com.au and com. Having said that, we have outsourced an seo company to optimize our co.nz site, however I would like to optimize the com.au and the com based on the information we currently receive for co.nz.
Any suggestions on how to go about doing this? I looked at our competition and it seems they have the same content across all 3 domains, but they have changed the meta tags for each domain and that's about it.
Any tips or ideas on how we could possibly do better? I know its early stages.... but as a newbie some advice around this would be great!
Thanks
-
I appreciate it if people tell me when I am on the wrong path.
-
I'm sorry gobro, but I had to thumb down your answer because, even if not completely wrong, it was too much generic.
Suggesting the beginners guide to SEOs to someone asking for International SEO, is like offering the Encyclopedia Britannica for consultin about a very specific topic :-).
Moreover, what Matt Cutts told and that you cites was proved incorrect by hundreds of professional specialized in International SEO.
-
I strongly suggest you to check the section dedicated to International SEO, which you can find in this part of the Learn SEO part of the Moz.com site.
Remember that if you published the same content, or even clone sites in different territorial domain names, risks are high of having very poor organic visibility for all of them.
Even if they are in the same language, remember that culture is different in those countries, as well that their English is not the same (New Zealand English has expressions that are not used elsewhere).
As gobro wrote, small things as currencies, addresses and any other "localization" elements are essential too for helping Google understanding what country a website is really targeting.
At the same time, then - as you can see more deeply in that section I linked above - you should implement the international seo mark up rel="alternate" hreflang="x-X".
Finally, remember to earn local links for each web site. Not only them are needed for making each website more authoritative, but also for reinforcing the geo-targeting of the websites themselves to Google eyes.
i.e.: if a website has more links from australian sites then american ones, that probably means that it is more relevant for australian people than american one, hence it should be shown more in google.co.au than google.com
-
You can do a lot better if that's really everything they did. This is a great resource to get started: http://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo
Side Note:
Matt Cutts told in a video in 2011, that it's not a problem to have the same content on like 3 or 4 top level domains, if they are for different countries but in the same language. But you should make sure that country specific words and for example currency signs are correct.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
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
-
href lang questions - please help
Hi I have a few questions about href lang implementation and I was hoping for some guidance / opinions. An international website is using mostly a folder structure, but for some locations it might have standalone sub-domains. Some folders are there to target locations and languages, with others just targeting languages. See the list below: domain.com/es-mx [Language: Spanish - Location: Mexico]
International SEO | | MarkCanning
domain.com/pt-br [Language: Portuguese - Location: Brazil]
domain.com/ja-jp [Language: Japanese - Location: Japan]
domain.com/en-jp [Language: English - Location: Japan]
domain.com/fr-ca [Language: French - Location: Canada]
domain.com/en-ca [Language: English - Location: Canada]
domain.com/en-ie [Language: English - Location: Ireland]
domain.com/ar [Language: Arabic]
domain.com/ph [Language: Tagalog]
domain.com/it [Language: Italian]
domain.com/tr [Language: Turkish]
domain.com/kr [Language: Korean]
domain.com/fr [Language: French]
domain.com/ru [Language: Russian]
domain.com/vn [Language: Vietnamese] domain.in/en [Language: English - Location Indian]
domain.in/hi [Language: Hindi - Location Indian] My questions are: Is href lang sitemap equally as good as the href lang meta tag in terms of effectiveness. I know that the sitemap is easier to maintain and upkeep but i don't know which one is better as google recommends both. How do you mix your listings when some are targeting language and country and others are just targeting language speakers (not tied to any specific country). So take for example in the list above: there would be a general site for french speakers and then one for french speakers in Canada. Thanks for your advise in advance.0 -
Does not having any hreflang tags for U.S Visitors lead to an increase in International Visitors?
I have seen a massive increase in International Visitors on our website and visitors within the United States dropped off hard this month (by about 20%). Could it be possible that not having any hreflang tags can lead to an increase in International Customers visiting the site even though your sitemap is set to "Target users in United States" within the Google Search Console? In the Google Search Console, I have International Targeting set to "Target users in United States." However, Google Search Console is saying our site doesn't have any hreflang tags. In the Google Search Console, it says "Your site has no hreflang tags. Google uses hreflang tags to match the user's language preference to the right variation of your pages." I'm not sure when that was flagged, but recently we have seen a massive increase in International Visitors to our site from countries such as Russia, Vietnam, Indonesia, the United Kingdom and so on. This poses a problem since our chances of turning one of those visitors into a customer is extremely slim. Along with that, nearly every international customer is contributing to an extremely high Bounce Rate. Attached is a screenshot of the Error about hreflang tags. https://imgur.com/a/XZI45Pw And here is a screenshot of the Country we are targeting. https://imgur.com/a/ArpWe9Z Lastly, attached is a screenshot of all of the Countries that visited our site today: https://imgur.com/a/d0tNwkI
International SEO | | MichaelAtMSP1 -
International corporate SEO - menu and preferences
Hi all, for internationalization we have used subfolders structure (e.g. domain.com/us/) and since we have approx 150 countries to cover, then country selector is quite a link-base, especially if pages itself can have even several hundreds of internal links as well. Currently, all links to other countries are set as rel="nofollow" and I'm planning to change them to "follow" to distribute a juice. Do you please have an experience with such internal links voluminous websites and this follow/nofollow settings? Also we are having and issue with other countries outperforming local search. So for example in US, searching for kind of "Brand America" keyword, our UK branch outperforms US. Hreflangs are set in the sitemaps and each branch (country) is set in search console correctly as well. Since there are some issues with sitemaps (e.g. not actual links, or links returning 404), I assume that google is not using these sitemaps therefore hreflang information is lost as well. Am I correct ? thank you in advance, Tom
International SEO | | execom990 -
International SEO question domain.com vs domain.com/us/ , domain.com/uk etc.
Hi Mozzers, I am expanding a website internationally. I own the .com for the domain. I need to accommodate multiple countries and I'm not sure if I should build a folder for /us/ for United States or just have the root domain .com OPTION 1:
International SEO | | jeremycabral
domain.com/page-url -- United States
domain.com/de/page-url -- Denmark
domain.com/jp/page-url -- Japan OPTION 2:
domain.com/us/page-url -- United States
domain.com/de/page-url -- Denmark
domain.com/jp/page-url -- Japan My concern with option 2 is there will be some dilution and we wouldn't get the full benefit of inbound links compared to Option 1 as we would have geo ip redirection in place to redirect users etc. to the relative sub-folder. Which option is better from an SEO perspective? Cheers, Jeremy0 -
Impact changing domain from ccTLD to .com
I've got a couple of clients who have an international market for their products or services. Both of these clients have a .co.uk domain. For one site the US market is the major audience, the other it's european countries. At the moment, neither of these clients have translated page or content targeted to a specific country. There are no plans at this stage to create such content. Google considers the .co.uk to be targeted to the United Kingdom. The assumption is that by changing this to .com it will increase their international reach. For both the domains, referral and direct traffic is much more diverse than organic (which as you'd expect is heavily UK weighted - but there is some international organic traffic) Does anyone have any experience making such a change? How did the change affect your international reach/visibility? Does anyone have any metrics that they'd like to share that could be used to make a case to clients? (Note, I'm not interested in how you'd go about handling the domain change - I'm happy/confident about doing this.)
International SEO | | DougRoberts0 -
Huge spike in referral traffic from international domains
We have recently experienced a huge spike in referral traffic from .fr domains (we are in the UK). They all lead to our 404 page. Its been going on for the last 3 days, and its still happening with about 20 visitors browsing the site from these domains at any one time, staying approx 3-7 seconds and then bouncing. The top domain appears to be a parked page. We cant see any obvious links or ads coming from any of these .fr domains and they are quite irrelevant to our sites industry anyway, which leads me to believe these may not be real visitors. Any advice on what may be causing this? And how to stop it? Needless to say none of these referrals have converted.
International SEO | | Silkstream0 -
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 -
International Link Building - France, Spain, Germany, Italy, Switzerland
I've got a partner agency (non-SEO) in Europe who wants to send some additional SEO business our way, but I don't currently have a system in place geared specifically towards international, country specific link building. Does anyone know of any resources (blogs, lists, tools) specifically geared towards getting links from country specific TLDs for France, Spain, Germany, Italy and Switzerland? (.fr, .es, .de, .it and .ch are the TLDs.) .co.uk sources would also be handy. A list of potential link building sources in those countries would be most helpful. I fully understand the SEO elements in play for international SEO, I just don't have any decent resource lists for those specific countries. Sites in those countries that accept guest blog posts, language specific infographic sites, foreign PR platforms, high-quality non-penalized directories...really anything would be awesome! Thanks in advance folks!
International SEO | | Point_It0