Update: A very heartfelt thank you to everyone who left comments giving me suggestions and pointing out my errors in the original version of this post. It is great to have a network of people who go out of their way and take the time to offer me constructive criticism. It is very much appreciated and helps me make my work better so other people can get the most out of it. Specifically, I want to thank RedCardinal, robbothan, salomonitc, PowerfulSEOTools and Robert Chapman.
So what are you supposed to do as an SEO who wants to build a search engine friendly website with international versions of content? Prepare to summon your inner SEO scientist. You are going to need to pick between three very different options depending on your circumstance.
SEO Guide: International Versions of Websites
Task: Weigh the following options and decide which is best for your organization.
Subdomain - uk.example.com/
Great option for websites where strong international push is expected from within the company.
Pros:
- Maintains some of the metrics (domain trust, domain popularity) of the root domain.
- Users will easily understand that this is the country specific version of a site they are familiar with.
- Each subdomain can be hosted on a server with a corresponding country IP address
Cons:
- While you maintain some of the value of the root domain metrics, you do lose a significant amount.
- Higher risk of mislinking. Many linkers will link to the "www" of the site out of habit.
ccTLD - www.example.co.uk/
Great option for websites that have a strong attachment to country of origin and are vastly different from their foreign counterparts.
Pros:
- Very obvious and intuitive to the user.
- Good chance of getting correct links.
- Provides the ability for each domain to be hosted on a country specific IP address. This can be essential for ranking in country specific search engines.
Cons:
- Completely different domain than its foreign friends, amigos and amis. This means they do not share any of the benefits of inbound links.
Subfolder - www.example.com/uk/ or www.example.com/en-gb/
(See meta content below for explanation en-gb)
Great option for an already well established website that is looking to expand into new international markets.
Pros:
- All links to any version of the site help boost the domain. It's a rising tide raises all boats situation.
- Less prone to linking mistakes as this format follows the standard website convention www.example.com.
Cons:
- In my experience, this option has not performed as well in country specific search engines.
- Potentially confusing for users looking for a ccTLD (ex. .co.uk) version of the site.
- Not able to have different country sites hosted from different country specific servers with proper IP addresses.
Other Considerations:
Google Webmaster Tools:
Google provides a service for making the problem of internationalization a little less nasty. If you sign up for and verify your website with Google Webmaster Tools, you have the option of geotargeting your website. See below:
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This won't work for all ccTLDs but if your country is available, changing this setting will help your efforts. Keep it mind though, that like most things in SEO, this is only a hint to the search engines and will not negate the necessity for normal internationalization efforts.
Language:
Language is a extremely important hint to the engines about how and where to rank content. Quite frequently this is done poorly with similar languages (US English vs UK English) and results in duplicate content problems. To prevent this be sure to make it as mind-numbingly easy for the engines to determine which language speaking group of users is being targeted. To do this, combine the URL conventions above with some of the tactics below.
IP Addresses:
The IP address of your server makes a big difference in country specific search engines. If you have a small to medium sized site, make it a priority to get a server hosted in the same country as your primary audience.
Meta Content:
Declaring a meta content attribute helps make it easier for engines to understand which language is being targeted. This also makes it easy to make it clear which version of a language is being targeted. For example, the UK version of English is shown below.:
<meta http-equiv="content-language" content="en-gb">You can find the entire list of language codes at Microsoft's Developer Center.
Links from Websites Hosted in Targeted Country:
There is an ongoing debate in SEO about whether or not this helps. While I have seen evidence that this is helpful for local search (think cities rather than countries) I have not seen any convincing evidence for this helping in international search. That said, I still do recommend it as a low level priority tactic. Additional relevant links is always a good idea.
What If I Am Lazy and Don't Want To Think Through All of The Options?
First, consider a new career (perhaps a politician?) and then go with the following configuration:
- Use the subfolder option ( Ex. www.exmaple.com/en-us/my-page/ )
- Verify each country specific homepage with Google Webmaster Tools
- Assign each country specific homepage to the correct country
- Automatically redirect users based on IP while defaulting to one version (For many sites this will be English but this is not universal)
- Include links to alternative language versions of the site on the top of every page (Many sites use images of flags to do this)
- Set the meta content attribute for all appropriate pages
More Resources:
Geolocation & International SEO Frequently Asked Questions
If you have any internationalization tips, tricks or advice that you think are worth sharing, feel free to post them in the comments. This post is very much a work in progress. As always, feel free to e-mail me or send me a private message if you have any suggestions on how I can make my posts more useful. All of my contact information is available on my profile: Danny Thanks!
You can actually change the country targeting on a subfolder, I'm not entirely convinced with how effective it is, but I'm doing it on https://terroir.me/countries/new-zealand
To do it, you need to add a new site in webmaster tools with the address of the subfolder and then change the country targeting.
Wow! This is nice information here. Thanks Wakeless.
I didn't realize that, post updated. Thanks :-)
Couple of glaring errors in this article:
1. "Note: You can't use this tool with subfolders as it only works for domains." - You can geotarget both subfolders and subdomains using the GWT tool;
2. "If you go with the subdomain or ccTLD option, changing this setting will supplement your efforts." - the GWT tool is not available for most ccTLDs. Up until recently it was unavailable for all ccTLDs, but Google now lets .me and a few others use this tool.
3. Subfolder "Does not perform as well in local results." - fairly general conclusion there, and I'd qualify that by saying "May not...". It depends on so many other factors.
I think there are a lot more rather odd statements in this post (subdomains can also have different IPs), and I don't think you're really offering your readers much actionable intelligence here. Hopefully you can update these inaccuracies, and maybe include some best practice examples and guidelines.
Rgds
Richard
got a question on your 1st point. since this is what you can read, when asking for help on the webmaster tool/geotargetting :
If your site targets users in a particular location, you can provide us with information that will help determine how your site appears in search results, and also improve our search results for geographic queries. You can only use this feature for sites with a neutral top-level domain, such as .com or .org. Country-specific domains, such as .ie or .fr, are already associated with a country or region.
they do not speak about subfolders at all, but TLDs only
As mentioned by wakeless, "you need to add a new site in webmaster tools with the address of the subfolder and then change the country targeting".
Google may not mention anything of this, but it can be done. Who knows how effective it is (especially considering your verbatim copy/paste of Google's docs).
It can be extremely effective, esp. if you have the right site to start off with :)
Thanks Richards,
Rewrote the ambiguous parts of the post and implemented your corrects. I think it is better is much better now.
Cheers!
As per other comments I thought the orignal post was a little light on options and breadth so I gave it a thumb's down - the rest of this thread though fills in some of the gaps.
I would love to hear what strategies/techniques there are for implementing a CMS for content that is pushed to multiple TLcD's that are hosted in local countries.
Distributed/replicated database?
RPC over the internet to get content?
Is there a proxy solution?
Thx.
Ah my question exactly...old thread but I'm desperate
I'm a student, so forgive my ignorance on this one. If I have a single SMB CMS ecommerce site (platform undecided at this point) that I need to launch in say 5 different countries, how do I do it?
All the SEO oriented solutions provided here (thanks everyone!) call for the creation of multiple websites? What if I just want one site served to all countries? If Im trying to provide a CMS based solution that allows a client to add/remove products. I can't be asking them to do so 5 times over for each TLD/subdomain etc ?? Nor would I be able to be competitive in all locations if I chose a single .com site.
I know I'm getting a little off track but of anyone could offer advise or even a link I would be very greatful!
This is great, Danny. I have one addition; As for 'www' and 'non-www' versions of a website I think it is important to go for URL Canonicalization which simply tells search engines what version of a website I want to use, especially for the subdomains (sub.domain.com)
Hi Danny,
I thumbed down as your previous posts have been spot on- but this one doesnt seem to have been as thoroughly researched - and misses some important point's if its to be a one off guide.
Edit: This post today by Bas van den Beld from Search Cowboys also address's the issue of European SEO
#2: Can't agree here Rob. Towards the end of last year it was confirmed by Google, that duplicate content because of country targetting isn't an issue anymore.
I am going to agree with Rob about the duplicate and provide a current example. www.stalcop.com (This is a well performing site with some SEO issues but overall it does very well both for the international landing pages and general website content. Important to note that this site is hosted in the US)
www.stalcopeurope.com (Hosted in Germany some original content and while they companies share the name "stalcop" and are divisions of each other technically they are different companies)
When Stalcopeurope.com was launch about 4 months ago and has performed horribly and while Google shows the pages index they are ranking very poorly if at all. On both Bing and Yahoo this site is not showing up at least to my knowledge. My only explanation is duplicate content plenty as this same approach has been taking by several other companies on the web. My recommendation is to completely redevelop the website and write the content in German however, since I am a outsider to the people who developed the website I am being looked at as crazy.
Thoughts?
Thoughts? Yeah, guesses as always :)
I think it's an entire different issue, because these domains are different.Google says, that when dup. content occurs and they have to guess, they take the one they think is the most relevantIn this case it's a who comes first issue. The one found first is the one with unique content. In a .com situation, with dup content in subdirectories, there's no question who's the original author.And if you verify the subdirs then Google has a solid clue about relevance.
I think. Maybe...
Well Google have said a lot about international TLD's recently.. like the UKserps debacle.
Either way - I've seen and still see enterprise level sites that have issues ranking due to these issues.
And its also a user/company resources issue - can you afford to populate and host extra sites?
Oh, but I am talking about dup content within the same domain.
And yes, it's a matter of concern to have mutiple sites. Let alone the linkbuilding and other problems. That's why I could advise a .com with subfolders. Which essentially are also multiple sites, but easier to maintain.
I am not going into the discussion if the spokesmen of Google are trustworthy or not :)
*edit for typos
look for my comment at the bottom as my reply got a bit long :P
hey danny,
two additions:
1. subdomains can have differing dns info
2. with the ccTLD and subdomain version you can have multiple occurrences in the SERPs. good for reputation management campains, where you want to push a bad review down, because it is normally easy to rank for your own company name.
Good call,
Does anyone else have thoughts on the multiple versions in the SERP comment? I have had mixed feelings and haven't been convinced either way yet...
Great post, thanks Danny,
I would say I will go for different TLD, although it takes a bit time to build trust.
But from long term consideration and local business potential, it's definitely worth it.
Another point is, think what people will think, is it easier for them to remember uk.google.com, google.com/uk/ or google.co.uk
It's possible via some DNS jiggery-pokery to host uk.website.com on a UK based IP and fr.website.com on a French IP for optimising international websites. This is the approach I would take even if it is quite costly and time consuming.
A few other notes: I believe Google is doing a better job of integrating TLD's into the search results. I do not have the link but Matt Cutts talks about this a little on his blog. I think sooner rather than later this will become more mainstream at least for certain types of keyword searchs such as industrial manufacturing.
My suggestion for a company is to make sure your registrar, host and TLD are country specific and the content and keywords need to be written for that exact country. This is in my opinion the only way to ensure you will be optimizing the website.
What makes this option very hard is that the countries in Europe are very small and having 50 websites is not exactly cost effective but if you ask someone from France to list three countries they would not purchase products from I promise you they will have no trouble naming at least one.
Lastly and it hasn't been really said but if you can get links from TLD's from that particular country your targeting this will help in my opinion establish your international geotargeting and of course the linking helps SEO efforts.
Hi
It is nice to see international SEO mentioned without there being a big deal made of "language differences" in English! (I know that Brits have holidays when folk from the US have vacations, but the markets I deal with are UK and NZ - and I'm targeting Brits in New Zealand.)
It might be me just hearing what I want to hear, but Google's Greg Grothaus' presentation at SES suggested that duplicate content across a couple of international domains is perhaps not such a big deal - Google will just pick the one it thinks is the best one for the searcher - https://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/09/duplicate-content-and-multiple-site.html (fast forward to around 11.5 mins in if you're in a hurry).
Any thoughts?
Nice work with the collaboration on this post everyone. It's a real pleasure to read the comments when they're as useful as this.
Cheers Danny, another excellent and interesting article. Any more news on the book that you are releasing?
(I'll pay you later ;-p)
The book is going really well. I have been getting some great feedback from lots of people and I think it has changed it dramatically for the better.
It's planned debut is March 8th and it currently available on Amazon for preorder.
Thanks fof asking :-)
Good post. I think this is still very unclear though what is the best option for companies: I think it depends of the industry a lot.
I guess in retail, this is much more appropriate to use a local tld domain (.fr, .co.uk), to build your brand, and be sure you show well in local search results.
Regarding the subfolder, I only heard that it was not working. I always learnt that several languages within the same domain was real pain for Google. I'm with Danny on this one: RedCardinal, please let us know which factors could make the subfolder a good idea for multilingual project.
Quick question: I'm aware that if you want to target UK visitors, you should host your website on a UK based server. Is that really true? Or is it an indirect correlation based on the page load which is quicker for english people if the website is hosted in UK?Does my question make sense??
Question makes sense and I have to admit that I only have anecdotal evidence to support my stance.
I think at the end of the day, physical location of the server is small metric that should not be obsessed over. I think it helps if it is in the targeted country but it is far more useful to spend your time earning links and writing content.
Language only really becomes a problem when you use multiple languages on the one page. In general I'm into using subdomains if you're more likely to actively promote each country site, and favour subfolders if you want to get more support from the parent domain. From a management perspective subdomains are probably easier. On the quick question - using page load as a positive signal is very tricky due to multiple factors (where do you test from - search engines need to test this from a similar location to average user of each site). I think load times are more likely to be used as a negative signal - extremely long load times may have a negative effect. On the IP space part of your question - if you're targeting the UK I'd be inclined to host on UK IP space farts if possible.
please note that the webmaster tools let you choose a target country only in case your domain is a generic one (like .com) . if you already have a country domain (ie co.uk) you're stuck with it.
Hi all,
I wonder how effective would it be for Yahoo! and Bing hosting subdomains on servers with the corresponding country IP addres, since they don't have this geolocalization webmastertool to override the .com issue
Thanks,
Dictina
An Excellent post Danny with lot's of interesting comment on this topic.
I currently use sub-domians, as its solves majority of Google issue through GWT Geo-Specification.
I also suggest to use Titles and Meta based on the country -for eg: Brand.com/IN
Title can be customized with default "Main Title | Brand | India".
I had another issue, which you mentioned above on automatically redirect users based on IP while defaulting to one version. I believe you are referring to Geo IP detection and serve the most relevant page. This is a good idea, but I think from a PPC point of view, Google always denies to approve your ad copies because it can go to a different page. I don't know if anyone had the same issues before, and work around on this? Appreciate your feedback.
Thanks,
@Smarketer
If a company with a global presence had a lot websites and were consolidating them into a single domian, what option would you go for?
(You being anyone reading this)
Thinking about it, I'm liking the sound of subfolder, redirecting existing domians into a single one would build significant authority almost straight away surely.
Yes, this is a real world situation we're dealing with at the mo :)
I would go with the bulleted list at the end of the post. That said, I don't know all of the details of your sitituation so I can't give you a fully qualified answer.
Very interesting and timely post - I've been dealing with a lot of these issues lately. I have one question however and it revolves around the transfering of link pop / juice.
Let's say you have a global website, www.client.com which has a 302 redirect setup to https://www.client.com/index.jspx;jsessionid=FC0E3C8ED0366FD801DD7EE9F44CAADE.pa05, which is then redirected to the English version of the site, https://www.client.com/en-US/index.jspx;jsessionid=FC0E3C8ED0366FD801DD7EE9F44CAADE.pa05. So in the search results for the brand, you see www.client.com but when you click the result, you are redirected to https://www.client.com/en-US/index.jspx. They have an IP detection set in place so that the main site, www.client.com, redirects you to the proper internatinal version of the site, which are all sub-folders / directories; it detects where you are and redirects you to the proper site. So my question is, is the 302 redirect the proper HTTP header for www.client.com, or should it be a 301 redirect, or should it even be that www.client.com returns a 200 HTTP OK? I want to make sure that the proper redirects are in place so that when we begin building links for the site, that all link popularity is funneled down properly from www.client.com, and transferred properly, and that there aren't multiple URL's indexed for the same page because things are not redirected properly. Essentially we want www.client.com and https://www.client.com/en-US/index.jspx indexed in the US search results, but we want the search engines to still see https://www.client.com/en-US/index.jspx as www.client.com.
Given the complexity of the situation, this is a bit out of the scope of being able to answer in a blog comment. I am hesitant to answer it without knowing all of the details. I don't want to unintentionally give you bad advice :-p
If you are able to ask it in Q&A using the actual website as the example, we can give you a comprehensive answer.
Thank you. I liked the article and implemented the subfolder option and verified it with GWT. I am eager to see the results. My site is a World fashion directory, which is entirely in English, but I want it to rank higher in different countries. It has country related pages like this world-fashion.info/countries/United-Kingdom-fashion-directory
So it is not multilingual, but I guess the exact term is multi-regional. I will be happy to read more advices for better SEO of such sites.
What happens when you've got a site: mydomain.fr clearly targeting the French market with a nice and healthy Domain Authority.
And you decide to start targeting other markets as well and translate your site for example into English for the UK, Portuguese for Brazil and Italian for Italy.
Would it be ok to use: mydomain.fr/pt-br for Brazil for example? So that you can inherit some of the DA? Or is the .fr cctld to strong of a local signal and this setup would diminish our chances in another country? in which case it'd be better to use mydomain.br?
Appreciate the advise! thanks!
This largely depends on the type of content and business structure you plan on using for each domain. Usually the large country specific TLDs are related to content or an audience specific to that country. If your brand is very closely tied to France it might be ok to use folders for the translated content. However, if you're expanding into markets and specifically targeting those locations+people, it's usually better to use the location specific domains.
How to work on website for globally seo , plz tell me on page and off page steps
Hi guys
I know this is an old thread but I find it to be the most relative / comprehensive on the topic of International websites and best SEO practises for them.
I am trying to deal with a client's situation here in Greece and I would like to hear opinions on what to suggest. They have an existing website on a Greek ccTld and they are launching their brand in other European cities and setting up websites for each country. Other ccTld domains exist for each country however as they would like to keep central control and would not like the sites to compete against each other but rather all benefit from specific keyword rankings I suggested they all move under a general .com domain. This however will have implications for the live site as well as the new sites which are currently in development.
I have a few questions:
1. Are subfolders a good solution with all ccTld redirecting to an appropriate folder on the new .com domain? example:freezies.gr [domain redirect] freeziesicecream.com/greece/
2. If I did a ccTld redirect would it be OK to use a URL variable to specify default language or do you think sub-folder again would be best - examples:
[GR] freeziesicescream.com/greece/?language=el [EN] freeziesicescream.com/greece/?language=enOR [GR] freeziesicecream.com/greece/el/ [EN] freeziesicecream.com/greece/en/OR [GR] freeziesicescream.com/ελλάδα/ [EN] freeziesicescream.com/greece/
3. Is it better to use country specific words / characters for URL slugs (eg. freeziesicescream.com/greece/προϊόντα/ OR is freeziesicescream.com/greece/products-el/ better)?
your help is very much appreciated.
We have a .co.uk version of our site for the UK and an international version for other markets with a .com domain. The problem is that our .com domain ranks above .co.uk in Google.co.uk. What can be done about this?
Google lets you specify a target for your .com site but we don't want to restrict to one area, we simply want the local version to rank higher than the .com version in local versions of Google.
Thanks for any help.
Thinking this one through, excuse my SEO ignorance for a moment....
I've got a number of ccTLD domains I intend to use for my business as the oppurtunity for international expansion presents itself.
As per above, the Subfolder appears to be the approach that is well suited to my situation, however, what to do about the ccTLD's?
301 redirecting them to the subfolder is simple, however are there any issues with SEO, IP Addressing (assuming the server is hosted in the coutnry of my primary audience) and the way I'm likely to rank or be found in search engines?
Understand there are other issues to consider, however this is the one that perplexes me the most...
If you 301 the ccTLDs they will not pass any of the benefits described in the "pros" above.
Instead, it will only be assuring that visitors or links to the ccTLD version will be redirected to the main version.
Does that answer your question?
The con of a completely different domain with ccTLDs is somewhat negated by the opportunity to interlink (in a non-spam way) the various international sites. One such way is by offering localized (localised?) content to a visitor that might prefer their esses to zeds, and of course completely different languages for those that hablar, sprechen, parler, and falar. If your content aligns well you can even create contextual links from one focused page to another without cannibalizing your links (because they're in a different language) but still maintaining topical focus.
This also ties in well with Rob's post after this: "The most valuable links you can get, are those which your competitors will never be able to have."
I doubt you'll give competitors links on your own site(s).
Hello Danny,
Thanks for confirming my thoughts and exceptionally well timed, I must say! :)So a recap with a question. Please comment anyone if you would.
So we need an example.com site. Decision has been made.So example.com/fr/ and example.com/fr/ are seperately verified at webmaster tools for targetting obvious countries.Now, what to do with the root. Is it fair to assume, that we do not do anything with the root in webmaster tools and if you don't the root will target the rest of the world?Or is a better option to let the root be a portal to the different folders?Are there other options?
Thanks.
*Edit for typos
Hi Muffin,
I would leave the .com untargeted in GWTs and have it 301 redirect to your default langauge homepage. For me this would www.exmaple.com/en-us/.
(Note the difference between /us/ and /en-us/ is a matter of semantics. The former is referring to the country and the latter is referring to the langauge.)
Hm. I wouldn't be so happy with a 301.First off you lose some linkjuice by a 301 and in my experience quite a lot I must say. So if someone would link to your root, you get less PR.
Secondly, I as webmaster would not like to link to a root when I were to be redirected.
Thirdly:
It just so happens, that my client has a .eu domain. So he will need to target nl, sp, uk, de, fr, etc. All possible candidates for geo-targetting in webmaster tool. Enhanced with local info and local references and hopefully local links as well. But for instance in Spain they'll likely to do a search in English inside Europe, because his specific services are internationally orientated in Europe. So I was planning to making the /uk/ subfolder geotargetted and the root untargetted for those international searches. Possibly with minor differences. I think that's a sound strategy, what do you think?
You could do a country selection page, however a word of warning on those:
I've seen usability testing (where you've the video of people & their mouse movements) where people have gotten really confused on a travel site thinking they were selecting which country they wanted to visit...
Yeah. In my case a confusion problem is very real indeed, which got me thinking.
Thanks for the $1000 tip. I'll have to think this one over...
ATM we didn't opt for a selection page, but I like the ideas I am getting thanks to that tip...
I'd be interested to know if the ccTLD version of a domain name 301'd to the .com version has any effect on geo targeting the country of the ccTLD - since often the .com is used as a primary domain.
Interesting question, especially if you had a load of backlinks from that targeted country pointing at the ccTLD.
Pretty sure the answer is no.
I think the subfolder option is a non starter if the (example) US site is hosted and built on one technology platform and the UK site is on a different technology platform server, right? With subdomains it's very easy to have them resolve to different IPs, but with subfolders, how would you do that?
You can't! This should actually be one of the "Cons" for that particular section of the article.
Not being able to change the IP for a sub-folder prevents you from being able to host country-specific servers.
Good point. Added it to the post
im partial to the uk.example.com way. still keep same root domain and you can host in correct country as well as webmaster tools to help get message across that it should show in foreign serps
Being as how simple it is to add an A record for the subdomain, I'd say this is the easiest method as well. You're using the domain you've always used.
It might also be a good idea to purchase the ccTLD and 301 it (along with adding it and the subdomain to GWT for geo-targetting). What do you think?
For me, the subdomain is a close second for the "best option". I slightly prefer the subfolder option as it means all of the domain metrics are shared between folders.
In my experience, subdomains don't share metrics nearly as well.
Again, the best option depends on the circumstance. That is really the deciding factor.
Would using a subdomain with a 301 from a subfolder on the main site get you the best of both worlds? i.e.
www.example.com/widget redirects to
widget.example.com/
No because you then lose some of the domain metrics AND the lose due to the 301. :-)
Dagnabbit! Thought I'd cracked it there :) Though you've lost me a bit on the domain metrics. Are you talking web analytics here, or something else?
My bad,
Rand did a good job of explaining this on a recent post. Read the first part of https://www.seomoz.org/blog/17-ways-search-engines-judge-the-value-of-a-link and we should be on the same page :-)
@Muffin Ok take these examples:
1) You have a US and UK subsections within your domain. On Enterprise level - likely you'll have dupe content.
2) You have .com and .co.uk domains - again likely you'll have dupe content.
Why? Its not always possible to create unique content for each site and every page. Again esp at Enterprise level.
So your left in a dilema (which is why I dont think there's a perfect one-size-fits-all solution).
a) Have .co.uk .com etc and unique content (dedicate the resources to this & the additional hosting & domain purchasing)
b) Have .com and language subsections
I'm not a big fan of the uk.domain.com system as I just dont think it "looks nice"... maybe thats just me :)
Well then we don't agree entirely, based upon the de info Google gave us :)
#1 You can define www.example.com/uk/ and www.example.com/us/ as seperate sites in webmaster tools if you verify them seperately.
Even more so, you can even define www.example.com/nl/, www.example.com/be_nl/ and www.example.com/be_fr/ as seperate sites without the dup content issues.That's what they say... There are no issues there. Some time ago I also verified that in the Q&A also.
Now apparently you have experience with this issue and I have just a bit from the time this type of dup content was an issue, so I take into account your opinion, but I don't agree on #1... Yet...
lol always open to someone disagreeing with me!
TBH I wasnt aware they'd stated that defining the country for different subfolders (ie .com/us/ and .com/uk/ in Webmaster tools could seperate the dupe content issues if they were in the same language. Have you got a link to it?
I'll hopefully be testing this exact issue soon so I'm hoping your right :)
How dare I, don't I? :)
https://groups.google.com/group/Google_Webmaster_Help/web/q-a-from-the-3rd-live-chat-oct-2008?pli=1
It takes some search: "geo" wil do. Tell us what you think of it. It's pretty authoritative.
You as a pro member might want do a search for geo-targetting in the Q&A.
Here's the link. Rand answered. Dunno if it works.
Google may say one thing, but the reality is that dupe content filters will regularly filter the "wrong" version.
I've seen this too often in the wild now, and as robbothan mentions, at enterprise level this is a very tricky issue to overcome.
Do not rely on Google getting this right - they don't currently, and I've not seen anything to suggest this issue is improving.
Hi Muffin, can you point me to the information that Google gave on dupelicate content across international versions of a site.
Thanks.
We've been having this debate internally for months now. Thanks for bringing up the topic. The comments were also especially useful today.
Great article. One thing it doesn't talk about, however, is the use of a .com domain in a country other than the US. I own a UK-based website (https://traxor-designs.com/), so would it be worth purchasing a .co.uk TLD? I have everything set up to the United Kingdom, so I can't see any other benefits it may have. For example, my webmasters is set to 'United Kingdom', I have a UK dedicated domain and a UK-based server.
Is there much more I can do?
There is evidence that Google is trying to consider country-specific relevance of .com domains. There has been quite some discussion about it lately, saying that they failed miserably though. But they are working on it, so much is clear.
I'd say you sit this one out with the current situation. You'll be ok. So the drawbacks of a .com domain which is country specific targetted seem to disappear gradually.
Okay that's cool. I've had the domain for over a year now and it's showing up in 'pages from the UK', so as long as my ranking won't be affected by anything, that's cool.
Even without the SEO arguments about sub-folders, sub-domains etc., it is always worth buying the .co.uk version of a UK-based company's domain purely to stop someone else from doing it! See the whole "introducing monday" fiasco (https://www.b3ta.com/newsletter/issue44/)
Just to add onto Tim's point here, if you have a domain that you are using for branding, you really want to buy all the different versions straight away. It's much cheaper than waiting and buying them off squatters and domainers a year later.
Excellent points fellas. It should be seen as a very cheap form of insurance, much like buying a trade mark.
Again great post Danny,
Would you say that this previous post on International SEO is out of date ?
By the way, your post goes great with mine about site internationalization (user metadata)
Cheers ! (love the mustache)