How to test a geo tagged homepage?
-
The e-commerance system we have has a geo tagged hompage system so you can set up different homepages based on the user country IP. But I want to test what the default homepage is, if the system can not get the user IP, does anyone know of a way to do this?
Also does googles bot, not give an IP for this, or is it always an American IP (even if your site is set to a different country)?
Thanks
-
Unfortunately it seems that the e-commerce (which is closed sourced) is built around this geo IP location system.
When I checked the cached version of the site it was indeed the American version, which was just the default simple version of the homepage (no keyword text)
I then google searched stings of texts from our UK / Irish homepages, and no results found
So I then created an American version of the homepage (just a dup of the uk/irish homepages)
A week later did my search test, and got a hit.
Now we are starting to rank for a few more keywords on the homepage
-
I do not recommend redirecting people to different content based on IP. Googlebot may change IP addresses but it's always from the US. This makes it impossible for Googlebot to see any of your international content. You can use the IP address to ask the user if they want to set their settings to a different country and be placed there every time, but do not assume.
-
There are many proxy services out there so you can do Geo Testing. Basically they have a server in that country and using their settings you funnel your requests through that server and it's just like you were in that country. I know there's Wonder Proxy and I'm sure you could find others.
-
I'm not sure about the 'testing tool' thing, but Google says that Googlebot's IP Address changes from 'time to time' but that same explanation says you can look in your website's logs and do a reverse DNS lookup.
In terms of a 'default' page... in my opinion you should ensure you have a standard (unmodified/non-redirected) home page. So if your primary market is the USA then that's the default and then only redirect non-US based folk. That way you determine the default home page and aren't reliant on Googlebot's IP (or any other crawler's for that matter).
Hope this helps.
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
-
Optimal use of keywords in header tag
what does optimal use of keywords in header tag actually mean given you indicate this as hurting seo factor?
Technical SEO | | Serg1550 -
Setting title tag with javascript/jquery
Hi there, I'm looking for some advice. I've recently implemented a few jQuery functions which gets specific content from the page and then sets the title and description. See working example here. It seems to work fine but my question I have is whether Google bots can read it and whether it might actually hinder my SEO efforts? Any advice would be really appreciated! Peter
Technical SEO | | peterallen0 -
Title Tags in 2013
For blog posts do you think it is better to use something like "Atlanta Plumbing Company" or "Choosing an Atlanta Plumbing Company" (article title). I have been using the article titles but I think it might be hindering rankings a bit. I use to use the keyword but it seems a bit spammy now. I want to create titles for the readers but rank well too. Any suggestions? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | SeattleJoe0 -
Canonical tags
How hard is it to put in Canonical tags on a webpage? My web guy didn't do it because he put in redirects in place for all old URLs and all content
Technical SEO | | Boodreaux
(except error pages and advanced searches) should have a unique URL. By not having canonical tags does it lose link juice? Not sure if that question makes sense. 🙂 Poo1 -
Duplicate Title Tags On Blogs
Hello Mozzers, I have a client who has a blog and articles section on their website, due to the amount of content they have in these section they have multiples pages so it would be like.. www.bluewidgets.com/blog/p1 www.bluewidgets.com/blog/p2 www.bluewidgets.com/blog/p3 www.bluewidgets.com/blog/p4 All obvioulsy with seperate content in each blog/article posts but the meta descriptions on title tags for this p1,p2,p3,p4 and so on are all the same, is this a major issue? and if so how do I fix it?
Technical SEO | | Prestige-SEO0 -
Magento Canonical Tags
Magento pages have been giving me a lot of trouble with the canonical tags. In some cases duplicate pages are showing up, so I need to add the canonical tag. In other cases I'm getting an error that there are multiple canonical tags per page. How can I get my pages canonized without duplicate tags? It seems like it's either too much or not enough, no matter what I do. Note: this only applies to category and product pages.
Technical SEO | | GravitateOnline0 -
Title tag keyword prioritizing
It's widely accepted that in title tags, the first word ranks the highest, and each word after that contributes less than the one before. So a page with the title "Philadelphia Parks" will rank higher than "Parks in Philadelphia" for Philadelphia, but the second page will rank higher for Parks. With this in mind, which keywords should I put first in the title tags of my product pages? Brand name? Product SKU? Is it better to prioritze general words with higher search volume (more impressions) or more specific terms with lower search volume (stronger long tail)? Any guidance would be appreciated. Thanks
Technical SEO | | AmericanOutlets0 -
Removing GWT Geo-Targeting
Hi, if I have a website in Google Webmaster Tools > Geographic Target set to United States, but I want to promote it in other specific countries, 1. Do I have to change the geo-targeting in GWT so it does not target a specific country? (discarding the option of adding sub-domain to GWT) 2. If I remove the GWT geo-targeting would it affect my rankings in the US? Thank you
Technical SEO | | andresgmontero0