International Sites - Sitemaps, Robots & Geolocating in WMT
-
Hi Guys,
I have a site that has now been launched in the US having originally just been UK. In order to accommodate this, the website has been set-up using directories for each country. Example:
As the site was originally set-up for UK, the sitemap, robots file & Webmaster Tools account were added to the main domain. Example:
The question is does this now need changing to make it specific for each country. Example:
The sitemap and robots.txt for the UK would move to:
and the US would have its own separate sitemap and robots.txt. Example :
Also in order to Geolocate this in WMT would this need to be done for each directory version instead of the main domain? Currently the WMT account for the UK site is verified at www.domain.com, would this need reverifying at domain.com/en-gb?
Any help would be appreciated! Thanks!
-
Thanks for the insights. Very helpful. What about the robots.txt, though? Should it stay under http://www.example.com, where crawlers can find the file?
-
Yes, that's how I did it.
-
Thanks for the response, much appreciated.
Would this mean that the sitemap featured at www.domain.com would need to reference each directory version (UK & US etc etc), leaving the en-gb & en-us to reference just their own?
-
Hi, here's what Google officially has to say:
Webmaster Tools data and reporting work best on a site level. For example, if your site http://www.example.com has separate sections for different countries, we recommend adding each of those subsites or subfolders as a separate site. For example, if you have a travel site with specific subfolders covering Ireland, France, and Spain, you could add the following sites to your Webmaster Tools account:
- http://www.example.com
- http://www.example.com/france
- http://www.example.com/ireland
- http://www.example.com/spain
Following this I have solved the exactly the same problem you had for a client. And it works perfectly.
- _The question is does this ["sitemap"] now need changing to make it specific for each country. _What I have done is add the sitemaps for each subdirectory as well as the main domain. It works (tracking and all that) and is easy to do.
- _Also in order to Geolocate this in WMT would this need to be done for each directory version instead of the main domain? _Yes, that is the way to go.
- _Currently the WMT account for the UK site is verified at www.domain.com, would this need reverifying at domain.com/en-gb? _Yes, it does. And so do every other subdirectory you add down the line. That allows precise international targeting per subdirectory via the hreflang and country targeting settings and setting the main GWT site for the root domain to be for global traffic.
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
-
International website sharing with .com/.au/.uk
I have a small business in the United States and would like to copy our main website for my international partners. My website is a .com. I think that their domains will end in their country codes: .au and .uk. We are open to using different domains. We plan to share blog articles and other content, but do not wish to be penalized for duplication. I have tried to read articles on this topic, but am unfamiliar with a lot of the terms. Is there any way to do this simply? Many thanks, Steph
International SEO | | essential_steph0 -
International SEO Sub folder Structure
Hi Could anyone offer some advice on the best way to structure sub folders on a website that we are launching worldwide. We are a UK based business and currently run a UK site on www.website.com and we are planning on launching into Europe using a sub folder structure. We will use /de, /fr, /es for the new countries that are coming on board but the question is should the UK site url be: www.website.com or www.website.com/uk As have an established web presence in the UK I'm thinking it should remain as www.wewbsite.com but are there any advantages / disadvantages to changing it to .com/uk Many Thanks
International SEO | | SmiffysUK0 -
Geo Targeting & Geo Keywords
Kindly clarify the below scenario. I have set Geo Targeting for my Website to 'India' in Webmaster tools. So Google should give preference for the searches happening from India. Is there any preference given for the Geo keywords? Like 'SEO Services in India' or Web Design Companies India' while searching from USA. Thanks
International SEO | | FlavoursMedia0 -
International SEO
Hi If you were developing a US version of an existing UK site then is this the correct format/instructions for on-page SEO. Ive taken quite a lot from Aleydas great post: http://moz.com/blog/the-international-seo-checklist but just want to confirm below is a good overall checklist to provide to clients developers ? Create US & UK country & language subfolders such as: domain.com/en-us/ and domain.com/en-gb/ Add 'rel=alternatehreflang' attribute according to google guidelines Add individual site map to each subfolder or will the hreflang attribute do or vice versa or both best? Don't redirect users via IP sniffing their location and serving up country/language version. Instead obviously link between language/country versions with a crawlable and very visible menu. Use the meta content language/country by adding the 'country-language' meta-tag in your html head Create individual profiles in GWT & GA for each country/language version and geotarget accordingly Localise content: spelling, currency, contacts etc Anything else re on-page/technical im missing ? Many Thanks
International SEO | | Dan-Lawrence
Dan [edited to fix formatting]0 -
Using Javascript to alter ONE or TWO keywords in International Site
Hi, What is the best way to target a language that has slight variations in it without actually targetting specific countries? Scenario: Ecommerce site that sells mobile phones in Spanish, initially created to target Spanish from Spain. We call a mobile phone a "movil" Now we want to target LatinAmerican users, which also use Spanish with variations, the most notable being mobile phone called "celular". We don't want to create specific sites via new ccTLDs, nor subdomains, no directories for each new country, and we want to avoid having two sites - one for spain, one for latinamerica- given that the only major difference is we say MOVIL in spain and CELULAR in LatinAmerica. What is Googles take if we simply decide to modify THAT specific keyword in each page where it is mentioned? Either by: a) Server based. IP Detect. that is, render the page with either one or the other term b) Javascript based. i.e. Have BOTH terms on all pages but using Javascript show/hide according to user preferences. c) Display the keywords with different font sizes/emphasis, depending on the visitor. Any ideas?
International SEO | | doctorSIM0 -
Impact of Japanese .jp site duplicate content?
Our main website is at http://www.traxnyc.com and we just launched a Japanese version of the site at http://www.traxnyc.jp domain. However all the images used on the .jp site are linked from the .com site. Would this hurt me in Google at all for hotlinking images? Also there is quite a bit of duplicate content on the .jp site at the moment: only a few things have been translated to Japanese and for the most part the layouts and words are exactly the same (in English). Would this hurt my Google rankings in the US at all? Thanks for all your help.
International SEO | | DiamondJewelryEmpire0 -
Anchor text for international SEO
HI I am looking to rank sites in multiple foreign search engines. I am thinking about the anchor text strategies I need to employ. My key phrase: golfschläger (golf club) I am targeting a German page (written in German). Would Google understand that if I use the anchor text “golf club” to my German “golfschläger” page, it is infact the same word and therefore give anchor text benefits to that page, or for anchor text benefits to pass does the anchor text have to be in the same language? thanks for any help!!!!
International SEO | | Turkey0 -
Multi-lingual SEO: Country-specific TLD's, or migration to a huge .com site?
Dear SEOmoz team, I’m an in-house SEO looking after a number of sites in a competitive vertical. Right now we have our core example.com site translated into over thirty different languages, with each one sitting on its own country-specific TLD (so example.de, example.jp, example.es, example.co.kr etc…). Though we’re using a template system so that changes to the .com domain propagate across all languages, over the years things have become more complex in quite a few areas. For example, the level of analytics script hacks and filters we have created in order to channel users through to each language profile is now bordering on the epic. For a number of reasons we’ve recently been discussing the cost/benefit of migrating all of these languages into the single example.com domain. On first look this would appear to simplify things greatly; however I’m nervous about what effect this would have on our organic SE traffic. All these separate sites have cumulatively received years of on/off-site work, and even if we went through the process of setting up page-for-page redirects to their new home on example.com, I would hate to lose all this hard-work (and business) if we saw our rankings tank as a result of the move. So I guess the question is, for an international business such as ours, which is the optimal site structure in the eyes of the search engines; Local sites on local TLD’s, or one mammoth site with language identifiers in the URL path (or subdomains)? Is Google still so reliant on TLD for geo targeting search results, or is it less of a factor in today’s search engine environment? Cheers!
International SEO | | linklater0