International Link Building
-
Can anyone weigh in on their own efforts to build links into international TLDs?
Which tactics have been successful? Which have failed? Have you engaged any agencies to manage this for you and if so, how did they perform and who are they?
We have nine ccTLDs plus our .com site to manage so it's a bit overwhelming! Fortunately, we have teams dedicated to managing day-to-day operations of each site. Each team is comprised of managers who speak the targeted language as their first language and have intimate knowledge of the targeted culture. I want to leverage them to help my SEO efforts, but I'm not sure how my advice should be different than what we do for our .com site.
-
Thanks for the input, Barry. I like the idea of sharing exclusive content. We have considered that, but haven't ever moved on it.
-
Well, the biggest protip is that international version search algorithms are a bit behind the .com
Ultimately there's not too much difference, but be aware of location specific sites. For example if you're in Brazil get on Orkut rather than (or actually as well as) Facebook. Be prepared to switch off your anglo-centric brain, the sites we all know and love could be completely different to the big sites in other countries. This should be discovered through analysis of competitors and any real engagement with customers though.
Ultimately the same metrics are used to evaluate ranking, so getting quality editorial links from ccTLD specific sites is the long term way to go.
The way you approach people in each country is generally a little different though (and with your local knowledge you should be well placed to adapt to this), for example in the Scandinavian countries they are all very web savvy, know the value of a link and don't respond well to straight up link requests.
In these countries it's best to avoid buying links (were you to do such a thing anyway) as you'll very quickly burn through your budget and instead focus on offering people you want links from exclusive access to something. In your case, maybe an exclusive gameplay video or could even go as far as giving them a code for their site that if people put in game will unlock an exclusive costume, that kind of thing.
Other countries have their own particular idioms but it's hard to just give you a overview of what people are like in each
-
Thanks for the reply. Are you able to weigh in on actual tactics you've employed (or heard about) that have been successful internationally? What I'm getting at is...are there link building methods that are specific to the international market that differ from the domestic market? The answer here might be "no" and that would be fine (in fact, I think that might be what you are saying with "Apart from that it's not much different to normal link building.").
Yes, we do have a great setup - thanks for mentioning it! We've been dedicated to the international market for years and we invest heavily in it. Every game we publish on our international sites has been localized by hand by someone who speaks the language as a first language and knows the culture well. Much of this work happens in our office in Cork, Ireland.
Thanks again for your feedback.
-
Building links from same ccTLDs, sites hosted in those countries and sites in the same language are all preferred links when dealing with country specific sites (with preference to the first two). Apart from that it's not much different to normal link building.
You've got a great set up if you have managers who can speak the language and know the culture, teach them how to build relationships and evalutate sites for links. Get them to run independant social media channels as well if possible (as mixed languages in a single account really doesn't work) and don't be afraid to give each language it's own, slightly different, identity.
And don't discount normal .com links entirely, if it's more relevant to get a link to the ccTLD do that.
Agency wise you just need to make sure they have somebody in the country you're targeting and this was kind of discussed here - http://www.seomoz.org/q/would-you-hire-several-local-seo-company-s-if-your-targeting-multiple-countries
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 SEO
Okay, so I have read through the following link in respect to International SEO (https://mza.seotoolninja.com/learn/seo/international-seo), and I believe that the way forward it a ccTLD. My thought was to have .com, .co.uk and .eu. Currently my site is .com, but receives most of its traffic from UK sources. I'm concerned that when I switch over to ccTLDs, the .co.uk in particular, that my UK traffic could dry up. Switching from .com to .co.uk and then using the .com to target the US market makes sense, but I would like to know others opinions on the potential dangers of doing this. Also, are ccTLDs kept on the same hosting or would they require individual hosting? The link doesn't cover this question.
International SEO | | moon-boots1 -
International URL paths
Wanted to ask everyone a questions: So our company is going to be doing a website that is going to be full of videos. The url path will be country.domain.com/language/slug/content-id. We redirect the user when they go to the different country. So if you're in spain on a train to france your URL will change from es.domain.com/es/slug/content-id to fr.domain.com/es/slug/content-id. Each country can listen to each video in all languages. My question is with hreflang tags and canonicals. Aside from targeting users in a certain country via Google Search Console, how do I eliminate duplication and tell Google which I'd like to show up via which country. In spain I would like es.domain.com/es/slug/content-id to show in Google and would have hreflang tags on each of the es.domain pages but what about fr.domain.com/es/slug/content-id since it would show the same content? I can't canonical to one of them since I need them to show in their respective country. How do I show the difference in language and country without showing duplication?
International SEO | | mattdinbrooklyn0 -
International SEO Mobile directory
I was wondering, What if I went with international sub-directory route (not ccTLD), for example: sitename.com/fr (fr being france)...But the question is, what's the best practice for MOBILE?sitename.com/mobile/frORsitename.com/fr/mobileORm.sitename.com/fr Again, ccTLD is not an option (currently, sites are in ccTLD but we are now transitioning to sub folders)Now, the next question is WHY is it best practices for it to be sitename.com/mobile/fr or sitename.com/fr/mobile or m.sitename.com/fr ? Please cite source. Thanks!
International SEO | | ggpaul5620 -
International SEO strategy for an ecommerce with 3 languages.
Hi all, I've an ecommerce which ships worldwide and we maintain 3 languages, spanish, english and french. My main business is in Spain, so spanish will be shown in the root domain: http://domain.com/. English will have the /en/ subdomain and french the /fr/ subdomain. After some research, I've concluded that the best strategy for my business is the following. 1º- Translate all the URL's to the correct language, since now are in spanish. 2º- Implement Hreflang tag (with self-reference): Note: Due to the "universality" of english, Does it make sense? Or should I use spanish as default since it's the most important one. 3º- Create the 3 sites in Search Console and only geo targetting french sobdomain to France. Since I really want to boost in France rankings. Do you consider this as a contradiction with ? I could also target country in the hreflang. 4º- Add language tag in each language version: <meta name="language" content="spanish">in http://domain.com/</meta name="language"> <code class="broncode"><meta name="language" content="english">in http://domain.com/en/</meta name="language"></code> <code class="broncode"><meta name="language" content="french">in http://domain.com/fr/</meta name="language"></code> <code class="broncode">5º- Use canonical tag together with hreflang.</code> ``` Any opinion will be very appreciated. Thanks a lot in advance! Best regards.
International SEO | | footd0 -
Link juice on sub domains
We have got all our clients linking to our website blackpen.tv Based on a user's location they will be redirected to a sub domain. So for example someone in France clicking on a link blackpen.tv would be redirected to paris.blackpen.tv or blackpen.tv/paris Would this affect the amount of link juice passed down?
International SEO | | roberthseo0 -
Include mobile and international versions of pages to sitemap or not?
My pages already have alternate and hreflang references to point to international and mobile versions of the content. If I add 5 language desktop versions and 5 language mobile versions as https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2620865?hl=en explains, my sitemap will get bulky. What are the pros and cons for referencing all page versions in sitemap and for include just general (English/Desktop) version in sitemap?
International SEO | | poiseo0 -
International targeting
Hi I have a UK based website using a .com, we also own the .co.uk which points to the .com. We get IRO 40,000 UVs per month and we have good domain authority. I now want to launch the site in America however if I seperated the sites out and used the .co.uk for the UK and the .com for the US I would decimate my UK rankings. Am I able to target both the US and the UK under the one domain, or will the fact that I host in the UK ultimately impact on any rankings I may achieve in the US?
International SEO | | danielparry0 -
Internationally targetted subdomains and Duplicate content
A client has a site they'd like to translated into French, not for the french market but for french speaking countries. My research tells me the best way to implement this for this particular client is to create subfolders for each country. For ease of implementation I’ve decided against ccTLD’s and Sub Domains. So for example… I'll create www.website.com/mr/ for Mauritania and in GWT set this to target Mauritania. Excellent so far. But then I need to build another sub folder for Morocco. I'll then create www.website.com/ma/ for Morocco and in GWT set this to target Morocco. Now the content on these two sub folders will be exactly the same and I’m thinking about doing this for all French speaking African countries. It would be nice to use www.website.com/fr/ but in GWT you can only set one Target country. Duplicate content issues arise and my fear of perturbing the almighty Google becomes a possibility. My research indicates that I should simply canonical back to the page I want indexed. But I want them both to be indexed surely!? I therefore decided to share my situation with my fellow SEO’s to see if I’m being stupid or missing something simple both a distinct possibility!
International SEO | | eazytiger0