Multi National Company that Doesn't Want to Implement International SEO
-
I have got an interesting situation where I have a client who wants to merge two ccTLD's into one. They currently have .fi and .com and they want to merge both sites to .com
.fi is for finland and .com for USA.
They want to merge the sites and the original plan was to use subfolders for each country and pair with hreflang.
However the team now wants to merge both sites with NO subfolders differentiating between finland or the US.
My understanding of International SEO that this is the most opposite from best practices, but is there any specific reasons why they wouldn't want to do this?
I'm struggling to find any specific reasons that I can cite to the client that would argue why we should at least do a subfolder or some sort of international seo strategy.
-
@webuniversalp1 Yes, hreflang tags need to be created for each page "appropriately" as covered in my previous response to help search engines show the right version page to the right geo/audience.
-
El tema es que vas a tener que redireccionar las dos webs, no sé si mantendrás el contenido de la .com pero si no te espera un auditoria grande dependiendo de la web, en cuanto a lo que dicen en los anteriores sobre hreflang pienso lo mismo.
-
@naeemgari Hello,
You need to use the hreflang tags for each page, with this Google will not penalize your content and will understand that they are two versions with different languages.
-
@naeemgari I agree with that.
-
Hello,
You need to use the hreflang tags for each page, with this Google will not penalize your content and will understand that they are two versions with different languages.
-
@jkhoo for international SEO the strongest signal for search engines is ccTLDs. The next best option would be a sub-folder URL structure with the correct hreflang tag declarations.
For your core keywords is there low / no search volume in Finland? From a business standpoint, managing two websites can be tedious. You need to build content & backlinks for two domains.
However, from an SEO standpoint, the preferred option would be to keep the ccTLDs. They are the best indicator of relevance to local SERPs. Think about your audience in Finland are they likely to visit a .com domain from SERPs or a .fi domain? Search engines would also prefer showing more targeted and relevant results to users. Therefore, ccTLDs for target regions and international SEO are the best options.
The next best route would be sub folders with appropriate hreflang tag declarations & xml sitemaps.
Additionally, site mergers/migrations generally result in a loss in organic traffic and visibility which can range from a quarter to over year(s).
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 -
Moving from single domain to multiple CCTLDs
Hi, I have a website targeting 3 markets (and therefor 3 languages). I was currently using a single domain with each market being targeted in the following format: www.website.com/pl
International SEO | | cellydy
www.website.com/de
www.website.com/hu It's clear to me by looking at organic results, that in my industry (Real Estate) Google is putting a large emphasis on local businesses and local domains. Top 10 organic results for all my keywords in all markets have country specific CCTLDs. I decided to migrate from a single domain strategy to a multi domain strategy. I own the domains. The new structure is www.website.com/pl -> www.website.pl
www.website.com/de -> www.website.de
www.website.com/hu -> www.website.hu All the website have been added to google search console and 301 redirects are in place and working correctly. The pages are all interlinked and have rel=alternate to each other. The sitemaps are all done correctly. My question is how do I tell Google about this. The change of address feature only works for changing one domain to one other domain. It's been a week and the old www.website.com domain is still showing up (even considering 301 redirects). Or do I just need to be patient and wait it out? Any tips?0 -
Question about International SEO
We've just recently launched our website in Canada and our web crawler is showing some pages with "&Country=CA", even if the current page already includes Country=CA. Why is this and how would we go about resolving?
International SEO | | nicole.nelson030 -
Tracking International Keywords
Hi I haven't had much luck tracking keywords on my international sites let alone discovering new keywords. What are some strategies/suggestions to accomplishing this? Currently I have campaigns set-up for the UK, Germany, France, and China in additional to our main US-Canada campaign.
International SEO | | Julie.P0 -
International websites : hreflang
Hi, i'm looking for good examples with 'href lang' tag (rel="alternate" hreflang="x") Have you examples of websites with this tag? Thanks D.
International SEO | | android_lyon0 -
How to make Google consider my international subdomain relevant?
We have recently started to look deeper into international SEO. We have search engine optimized our international landing pages, title tags and meta descriptions with keywords etc. so each of the international language we support is SEO'ed for the local market. We support 12 languages, and each of them are located on a subdomain. That means if we say our site is helloworld.com, a person from Germany that lands on this site can switch to German and will then be redirected to de.helloworld.com and all content will be in German. Our problem is that we develop cloud-based software, we have a significant amount of traffic, but whenever we get media coverage or people link to us from anywhere in the world they always link to the root domain which in this case then would be helloworld.com. That means if I go to google.de and type in the exact meta description or title tag we use in German, the Google search engine can't even find us because "I assume" Google don't consider our de.helloworld.com relevant because nobody has ever linked to this site. I would appreciate very much if anyone can give me some advice on how I can address this issue. Thanks a lot! Allan
International SEO | | Todoist0 -
International Hub site: .uk vs domain vs subdomain
Financial company with 2 sites: 1- Mybrand.com for the US market.
International SEO | | FXDD
2- global.mybrand.com is the hub for international with selection for 10 languages: drop-down allows selecting between mybrand.jp, mybrand.fr, etc Now we have the opportunity to redesign the site from zero and I am exploring to get rid of the subdomain for the global site What would be your preference to use as the international hub? a) mybrand.co.uk: I have to use lawyers to get the URL from squatter b) mybrandGlobal.com : URL easy to get, and can be geo targeted using google webmaster tools. Cons: It might not rank as well as .co.uk in the UK, which is our biggest market c) global.mybrand.com-- pros: keep using it because it is aged and has some authority. Google might now see subdomains as part of TLD, thus making it a valid way to separate international from US .. Cons: SEO best practices advice to avoid subdomains because it might not pass full link value across domains. There is not really different content the subdomain, it is just the hub for international Thanks in advance for the help0