Hotel Multi country targeting + Google Local + TLDs => "MesSEO"
-
Hi guys,
I own a guesthouse which is facing a messy structural problem in its own web presence:
Portuguese: www.residencia-aeminium-coimbra.com.pt
English: www.residencia-aeminium-coimbra.com
Spanish: www.residencia-aeminium-coimbra.com/espanol
Looking for success in the long term, a few years ago, we decided to host 3 TLDs: 1 for global international english, 1 for local portuguese and 1 for the main foreign market Spain (we already redirected it to a subfolder in the .com in the meanwhile). We tried to promote each one of these in their targeted markets - mainly the .com got back-links links and authority.
With time, google local appeared and changed the face of google accommodation rankings. Google local are now the top results for most searches, even outside the country, and I came to the conclusion that the TLD assets were now a problem.
For instance, I can only add 1 domain to google local..what language should this be? It is the same for most social media presence..How should international markets be targeted in a local page?
Since TLDs do not seem to be an advantage right now, I am thinking we should be moving to a single domain and use a folder structure so we can use it everywhere.
Questions:
1. In terms of structure (TLD or Folder) and multi-lingual targeting what is the current best practice for hotels that show in local results but promote internationally?
2. What language should I point google local results to? And our Facebook page, etc?
3. If I move things around to a folder structure, what domain should I use?
- the .com is in english and has the most authority and links according to opensiteexplorer
- the .com.pt is in portuguese, our local language and our main market (but only 35% share)
- should I create a new domain ".pt"?
4. I don't think that geo-targeting the languages is worth it in this case, what do you think?
Kind Regards
Ricardo Madeira
Residencia Aeminium Coimbra -
Hi,
Sorry for not answering before but I was expecting some more thoughts from Seomoz or the community..
Although your thoughts are good, I don't think you answered my question. I think the problem was the question itself, after some thought I can rephrase it:
The real question may be: What is the best international/multilingual website structure to target google local, where you only have 1 location and compete in many countries and different languages?
Any thoughts?
-
Sorry about that... must be my bad!
Well yeah Google Places is more focused on delivering the results from the area and surroundings so it’s almost impossible for you to rank in local searches...
I think in that case Matt’s suggestions are helpful in that case and that is to make country specific pages with keyword and make it rank accordingly (not not over optimized to make it look spammy... do it the natural way...)
Hope this helps...
-
In the past when aiming at local search results for different places I have always created pages for the specific locations + term I am targeting. I have made sure the on page factors are naturally optimised well to incorporate this and I have also made sure the url of the page is location+keyword.html. Then I have created an internal navigation structure that points to this content with the appropriate anchor text. I have then built links that point to the specific location pages in terms of local listings etc. I have found this very successful, and yes I am still having success in a post penguin world, as I haven’t done anything in a spammy over-optimised way. I have not done this in terms of international SEO, but I don’t see why you couldn’t successfully do this on your site.
In terms of whether you should bring your sites under one with sub folders or not I think this article is a very helpful guide for international SEO.
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/international-seo-where-to-host-and-how-to-target-whiteboard-friday
Bringing your sites under one domain with sub folders and setting geo targetting in webmaster tools, then building links in the specific country as mentioned by Thomas Høgenhaven in the comments might be a good plan.
Good luck with this - I hope my thoughts might have helped give you some ideas...
-
Hi Moosa,
Thanks for your time and personal insights.
I tend to disagree with you on most part. Being a "hotel" we are in a different situation as a, lets say, fashion store. We do not have and will not have any locations at any given point outside our country or city (at least for now) but we do have customers on any given point of the world. Hell, the place where I have less clients is actually the place where we are located.
The thing is that, nowadays, google local results show on the top for most "hotel+city" searches. Those searches will only feature 1 TLD wherever in the world they may come from. We can optimize our local TLD how much we want but if it doesn't rank above google local results we won't be having any benefit. At least for us it would be difficult to rank above google results and keep racing with them.
I think that google places/local was mostly designed for businesses that would be searched for from local customers, but with hotels it is the opposite.
How should this be juggled?
-
Hello Ricardo,
This is actually a difficult question to me or may be the information is too much scattered but I got a way to reply you that might help you come up with answers to many of your questions...
If it would be my business or if I will be working for this website this is something what i would recommend.
- Domain
It is always great to talk to customer in their own language so if we can talk to customer in their own language and with their country TLD this will help them trust us easily instead of a single website that is based in English (universal language).
I would prefer to have 3 domains with content in 3 different languages that is English, Spanish and Portuguese.
Example:
Let’s take English version as the main website (as it’s a universal language) and the other two websites as branches.
- Google Maps
Google Maps does offer local listing for Portugal, Spain and England. If you have physical location available within 3 areas you will be able to register each website within the targeted area.
- Facebook Page
Again as I said it’s great to talk to customers in their own language. If cost is not the big issue the it’s great to have language based pages targeting the right kind of people but if budget is the issue then its great to come up with one but active facebook page (English should be the language).
When you have one page in English you should understand and take care of the customers in other countries as well and entertain them from time to time accordingly.
Hope most of your questions are covered... let me know if you have further question in mind...
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
-
Expanding into new country & what to do with Seach Console
Hi! We're looking at expanding into new countries, and will probably go with the subfolder route. Our main website is focused on Ireland on Search Console (and probably always will be), so will this be affected if I add subfolders onto the end? And can I shop the main site from crawling the new URL's in the subfolder. So if www.example.com is focused on Ireland, and we add www.example.com/de for Germany, can we let Google know not to index the German pages in Ireland? And will I need to do anything to the Irish version (e.g, change www.example.com to www.example.com/ie)
International SEO | | Frankie-BTDublin0 -
Google Search Console "International Targeting" is reporting errors that are not present on my site
We are currently handling search for a global brand www.example.com/ which has presence in many countries worldwide. To help Google understand that there is an alternate version of the website available in another language, we have used hreflang tags. These hreflang tags are implemented only via the XML sitemap across all geo-locations. Under the “Search Analytics -> International Targeting” section, in Google Search Console, for the Malaysian website (www.example.com/my/), there are a number of “no-return tags (sitemaps)” errors arising. For example, for India as a geo-location, there is one ‘en-IN’ – no return tags (sitemaps) errors listed. The error is listed below: Originating URL - www.example.com/my/xyz/ Alternate URL - www.example.com/in/xyz/ When the XML sitemap for the URL – www.example.com/in/ was checked for the hreflang tags, it was noticed that the implementation of hreflang tags for the URL – www.example.com/in/xyz/ was perfectly fine and it was providing a return tag to the URL – www.example.com/my/xyz/. After the code level verification, it was identified that the implementation of hreflang tags was perfectly fine via the XML sitemap. Even though at the code level it was verified that the implementation is fine, the error still persists in Google Search Console. Kindly suggest a solution to this situation, and also advise the effects of these errors on search engine performance
International SEO | | Starcom_Search0 -
Google is still indexing with https,i removed ssl for my website
My website is claydip.com. I removed ssl for my website, but when i type claydip in google search it is still displaying with https and saying no description available..i lost visitors from search..kindly help me. I moved from bluehost to deamhost. I had a ssl at bluehost, when i move to dreamhost i am not using it.
International SEO | | knextweb8190 -
Delivering different content according to country
Hey, I have a question regarding different content according to country (IP)-
International SEO | | Kung_fu_Panda
We planing to serve mobile users using dynamic HTML serving (on the same url)
Is it possible to serve different content for different devices + different IPs (for example different content for a user from US android and someone from UK android ) thanks!0 -
"Hreflang=x" tag and multinational websites
Hello, We have multiple websites targeted at multiple countries and languages, each with the correct country extension. We have a corporate blog for each of these websites, where the blogs are subdomains of the main website. Currently we have a process of rewriting our blog posts completely – while keeping the same subjects – in order to have original content on each of our blogs, although we have up to 3 blogs in the same language. These are the languages we target: French – FRANCE French – SWITZERLAND French – BELGIUM Italian – ITALY Italian – SWITZERLAND German – GERMANY German – SWITZERLAND German – AUSTRIA Spanish – SPAIN Spanish – COLOMBIA Spanish – PANAMA Czech – CZECH REPUBLIC Swedish – SWEDEN Dutch – BELGIUM / NETHERLANDS English – UK English – INTERNATIONAL The process is obviously very tedious, and not always applied rigorously – i.e. some of the texts are posted on 2-3 different blogs, creating duplicate content.
International SEO | | ESL_Education
The questions : Would there be any reason for us to privilege the use the rel="canonical" tag over the "hreflang=x" tag, thus giving privilege to a "master" version for each language? Are there any risks in using the "hreflang="x" tag for our blogs considering that the posts would be very similar, except for references to additional content? Could there be any risk that Google would consider our sites as duplicate content after all? Should we specify on each blog that we have all the above versions, or should we only specify the other markets versions in each language? For example, should we specify on our French, Swiss and Belgium blog that we have 3 different French versions, on our UK blog that we also have an international version, and so on, or should we list all versions on each of the blogs? Does the "hreflang="x" tag facilitate the indexation of each of the versions in the SERPs of their targeted market? Lastly, are there any precautions we should take in order to put this in place? Looking forward to your feedback. Best wishes, Maëlle0 -
Moving webserver to another country and downtime
Hi all, We are going to move our server location to another country, and our webpage will be down for about 24 hours. Is there anything that I should be aware of with SEO while doing this?
International SEO | | helgeolaussen
Any way to tell SE that our site will be down, without having alot of errors in Webmaster tools etc? Best regards, Ceran0 -
Geographical targeting and rel=”alternate” hreflang=”x”
Let me paint you a picture, a site attempts geographical targeting by using sub-directories. However, 'targeting' is used loosely in this case. One sub-directory targets the US, the other is for everywhere else. For example: example.com/us/ <-- US example.com/en/ <--- Everywhere else The homepage is a map, they get taken to the US site if they click on US, they get the other site if they click anywhere else. The site is effectively duplicated in both folders, the only difference being one is written in US English, the other in UK English. So, while I am able to set the preferred geo in Google Webmaster tools for the US site, I can't for the everything else site. Recently I came across rel=”alternate” hreflang=”x” and thought it may be useful. Does anyone know if I can specify more than one language per URL using this method? For example using multiple instances such as: Is this possible at all? Thanks in advance, and I'm open to any other suggestions! 🙂
International SEO | | David_ODonnell0 -
Google Directory Listings in multiple countries
I was doing some competitive link research and one of the sites I was looking at has links in multiple Google Directories of other countries. By that I mean a listing in: www.google.pl www.google.hu www.google.pt www.google.co.nz www.google.ie www.google.com.sg www.google.vg and a few others It seemed kind of odd because the site getting these links is a ranch in Oregon. Here is the Open Site Explorer info. I'm a bit of a noob so I've never seen this before. Are these kinds of links worth pursuing? If so, how did they get these multiple listings?
International SEO | | AaronParrish0