Will creating sub folders for foreign versions of the website, remove rank juice from the main site?
-
Hi,
We plan to create sub-folders for our german, spanish and italian language versions. If we do will this pass rank juice to the new sites, but at the same time badly effect our main site, regards link juice/serp?
Or is this not such a huge factor in people's experience?
Many thanks.
James.
-
No. We are just telling the search engine that the German version of the website (www.example.com) is located at www.example.com/de/
So all the pages/folders originating from that directory become the part of this process. (www.example.com/de/2ndpage OR www.example.com/de/another-page.html )
-
Do I need to create a new <loc>for each separate page (eg www.example/de and example/de/2ndpage) or just for each separate URL or Folder?</loc>
-
As far as I'm aware James, using sub-folders will mean that authority is passed to your domain as a whole but you will still need to build authority separately for each of your subfolders for them to rank in each country SERPs that you have targeted in webmaster tools and using the hreflang tag.
-
Create all the language lines in a single XML file. Don't create multiple XML files for this. And follow the same instructions mentioned in the above Google link
-
That was very helpful, thanks a lot, i did not realise there was a sitemap annotation available, so I just need to add the code indicating each different version + href lang to each language pages' site map?
-
Hi James
Hope you are planing to target users for different languages or countries. You can achieve this by adding rel="alternate" hreflang="x" annotations in sitemap
Using rel="alternate" hreflang="x"
Using rel="alternate" hreflang="x" anotations in sitemap to tell Google that there is different versions of same website exist on the web. Otherwise Google will consider it as duplicate content and block it from SERP
Example Steps
- For your German version of your website create a sub-folder like www.example.com/de/
_- Now you need to create a XML sitemap for this and you can name it as _languages.xml
_- Upload the sitemap and tell Google where it is located _through Google Web Master Tools
Useful links for this process
http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=189077
http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=2620865
Hope this will help you
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
-
Search Analytics update in Google Webmasters Tools? Where can we find search queries bringing traffic to website?
I just got up and see Search Analytic's being updated today totally. Their is no option to see old reports. As Search Analytics only share 999 keywords.
Search Behavior | | csfarnsworth
Whats next now?
How can a webmaster finds all search queries bringing traffic to his website?
Any paid or free tool?
Google Analytic's > Acquisition > Search engine optimization > search queries will this area helps? Whole question revolves around. Any good tool that will help you find all the queries bringing traffic to my website?0 -
Does Not listing the prices on my website hurt?
Hey Mozers, I currently run a catalog type website and there are no prices listed. Would you happen to have an article of some sort that could back up why not listing prices is bad? I'm trying to express the importance of listing prices on the website. Can anyone help, The more articles the better!
Search Behavior | | rpaiva0 -
Time Spend on Site from Smartphone vs Desktop
On a website with a well optimized website for smartphones, how long time should one expect the average user spends on the website - from their smartphone - as a % of the time users spends from a desktop.
Search Behavior | | khi5
Example: if average user spends 10min on the site from a desktop, is 5min (50% of..) a decent number to expect? If anyone has any done any studies or have data on this, would be appreciated. thank you0 -
When Googling site:mydomain.com what does listing order tell us?
To find all the pages on my site that are indexed by Google I can search using site:mydomain.com and it gives pages of results. But what does the order of results relate to? Is it page rank or strength? My list of pages doesn't appear to be in order of strength. And it's definitely not by age or alphabetical...
Search Behavior | | GregB1230 -
2 websites for 2 dealer locations or one website for both locations - Thoughts?
I'm trying to decide what would be the best option for my client. They are a car dealership group who own 2 dealerships about a half hour away from each other. The dealerships have the same name but are just located in different locations. One dealership is in a small city in competition with several other dealerships within the city. "Dealership name city name" The other dealership they own (Same dealership name) is located in a small town close to an even larger city. "Same dealership name small town name" My options are: 1. Creating 1 authoritative website optimized for all 3 locations. The 2 cities both dealerships are located in as well as the large city close to the small town. This option would be less time consuming, we would only have to earn links, citations & blog for one website. However we'd still need to have citations using both dealership addresses. So that's still double the work. This site would probably be more authoritative and we could have a page promoting each dealership & have shared vehicle inventory. We'd attach 2 Google+ pages using the different addresses & have both location addresses prominently in the footer of the site. 2. Create 2 separate websites for each dealership & target the surrounding towns/cities in their respective areas (even though both dealerships are only a half hour apart). This option is more time consuming as we'd have to earn double the amount of links. Work on citation building, blog for 2 websites etc. But we wouldn't be diluting our SEO by trying to rank for all 3 locations. We'd have a better chance if we focused on each locations separately on 2 sites. BUT the 2 sites would have less authority. What is everyone's thoughts? What would you recommend to be the best option. Money isn't an issue. Thanks so much for any help.
Search Behavior | | DCochrane0 -
Local vs Global Search Results Yield Very Different Rankings Lately
When I monitor my website's rankings, I always do it from Canada (direct connection) and from the USA (using a VPN in Arizona). I've been monitoring rankings this way for the last 3 years. Most of the time, I got similar results (-5 / +5) from both location. My website is a ".com" and targets an international audience. Lately (is it since Panda 22?), I've seen dramatic differences in rankings from both locations. Some keywords will rank in the top 10 on Google.com (from the USA) while they will appear on page 3, 4, 5 and even lower on Google.ca (from Canada). The thing is, the top 10 results on Google.ca are not even from canadian websites. Fact of the matter, there are even some results from India websites (.in) in the top 10! I understand that Google.ca will give advantage to websites from Canada (or targeting the canadian market / .ca domain name) over international / US websites but there's never been such a huge difference in rankings until lately. Has anybody else experienced this? What are your thoughts?
Search Behavior | | sbrault740 -
Better rank VS Better Title Tag
I changed my title tag to encourage a better CTR by looking less keyword stuffed and my rank dropped from #2 to #5. So what do you think is better a title that business name first unlike everyone else who is just keywords first or a more google friendly title that looks like everyone else?
Search Behavior | | greenjoe0 -
Multiple keyword rankings declined dramitically. Why??
SEO Moz has reported 7 of my keywords declined dramatically overnight. One word even went down 18 positions in Google. I have a few ideas on why, but none of them really make sence. 1.) The night before the decline I deleted around 6 "test pages" from our website. None of them could be reached through our website but they could be found by typing in the url. Most of these pages only said things like "test", but one of them was a draft of a keyword rich page within my website that only included some of the keywords that went down in ranking. Could the fact that I deleted this page be the cause of the ranking decline? 2.) About two weeks ago I purchased a url volusion-store-design.com which is one of my keywords and forward the address to an internal page within my website http://netonesystems.com/E-Commerce-Volusion-Store-Design. Could have this hurt my rankings, like Google is considering it duplicate content or something? If anyone has some ideas please help. Here are the keywords that I lost ranking for: volusion developers ---- down 18 volusion features ----- down 5 volusion store design ----- down 2 volusion templates ------ down 11 volusion designers ------ down 4 free volusion templates ------ down 4 ecommerce volusion features ------ down 3 Here are the pages these keyword were pointing to: http://netonesystems.com/E-Commerce-Volusion-Store-Design http://netonesystems.com/E-Commerce-Volusion-Features http://netonesystems.com/E-Commerce-Volusion-Templates
Search Behavior | | DTOSI0