Internationalization without losing SEO
-
Hi everyone !
For years we've had our e-commerce site targeting only our Brazilian customers, thus our domain name was domain.com.br . We've built a very strong AdWords account with the URLs within this domain and we've got a considerable SERP positioning as well.
Now we've also bought the domain.com (without the country extension ".br"), to target international clients. Our plan is to build the site using the following structure:
domain.com/en-US/
domain.com/es-ES/
domain.com/en-GB/and also
domain.com/pt-BR/ (for our brazilian audience).
We thing that just dropping off the original domain.com.br and redirecting everything to domain.com/pt-BR/ would not be a good move, as we would need to redo all our AdWords campaigns (the domain is different) and would lose all our reputation/quality score. In terms of SEO I don't know how Google would react with the redirects (if we would keep the quality or not).
So our plan is to keep both the domain.com.br and domain.com/pt-BR/ working simultaneously, but then there's the problem of duplicate content. Should we use the "canonical" tag and if so, where should we say the original content is?
Has anyone been through this before, ie. expanding a country-level domain to a .com with multiple languages, but keeping the reputation gained by the original language.
Thanks for any advice!!
P.S. - We've also though about setting up the new structure with subdomains such as en.domain.com , es.domain.com, fr.domain.com, but we though it would work better using subdirectories. Any thoughts on this is also very welcomed.
-
If it were a brand new site and the target markets were pretty equal (or the Brazilian market was relatively small), I think the sub-folder approach is a good bet. You could use <rel="alternate" hreflang...> for language-equivalent pages, and the combination of a .com plus language/country targeting should work fairly well.
In this case, though, since the Brazilian market is so strong, and you're already dependent on that .com.br domain, I think making the switch completely would be very high-risk. From an organic standpoint, I would advise against redirecting the .com.br domain to the Brazilian sub-domainfolder
I'd suggest either launching the new domain with <rel="alternate" hreflang...>and no Brazilian sub-folder, or, as you said, setting up <rel="canonical"...>from the sub-folder to the .com.br domain (and keeping that the main site for Brazilian visitors). As the new site gains ground and you see how it performs, you can always switch them out later.</rel="canonical"...></rel="alternate" hreflang...>
As Michael said, make sure you're not double-dipping on the Adwords side with two domains in the same region. That could land your account in hot water. For now, if the .com.br stayed canonical for Brazil, AdWords should continue to use the .com.br site. You can set up regional/country campaigns for the .com site and target them specifically. That shouldn't be a problem and will give you time to build up the quality score and history on the new domain.
-
"When you hit 10/10, dump the old domain."
10/10 QS - that's ambitious!
You can't have more than one domain used per ad-group. This would only be advisable to have in a new separate campaign within the account. But if I understand you right then you are competing for the same keywords so both campaigns go in the bid auction and can push up your CPC.
-
The simple answer:
- Keep your .br site for AdWords campaigns. Keep your AdWords landing pages live, but canonicalize them to the en-BR subdomain.
- For the non-AdWords landing pages, do a 301 redirect from your .br site to the en-BR subdomain.
This allows you to move all your organic traffic to the en-BR subdomain while not losing your AdWords domain strength. Have your cake and eat it too!
Over time, take your highest performing ads:
- Make 5 copies of your ad exactly as they are
- Make 1 copy of your ad pointing at your new domain
This will send 15% of your keyword traffic to your new domain. Once Google sees that your new domain performs just as admirably as your old domain (a few weeks, at most), you'll start seeing the Quality Score for the new keyword rise. When you hit 10/10, dump the old domain. Your AdWords account is fully transitioned.
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
-
Can Google shopping listings affect SEO rankings?
Hello everyone. Here is my question: Until 4 weeks ago we used to have just around 2,000 product/pages on Google shopping of our product pages, then we added over 40,000 more items/pages to it, and our Google natural search rankings dropped on most of our long-tail keywords pointing to the same product pages. Do you think that's just coincidence or could the number of products/pages on Google shopping affect natural search results?
Paid Search Marketing | | fablau0 -
Has anyone tried Captora? Curious about people's thoughts on potential benefits and risks for SEO.
We talked to a vendor called Captora today and I'm curious if anyone else has tried them. It seems like it's too good to be true and could lead to issues should Google get wise to this tactic. So what are people's thoughts? watch?v=SVSCPrcXXDQ
Paid Search Marketing | | VMTurbo-Marketing0 -
Looking for a competent SEO firm or consultant
Hello Folks, I run an eCommerce site for video surveillance equipment. We used to be on top of page one for related terms until about a year ago and now we are in page 2 or 3. We have 2 in house full time web developers and I have tried 3 different SEO firms with very poor results. I am looking for a competent SEO firm or consultant with proven & verifiable track record. If you or someone you know has used an SEO firm or consultant with good results, I would appreciate if you could point me to them. Thank You!
Paid Search Marketing | | 9Studios0 -
What is the SEO value of Thomasnet
Ok, the company I work for has had a paid listing on Thomasnet.com. This was started long before I took over the marketing. We get no real value from Thomasnet, just a lot of solicitation for unrelated things. And my company has been paying $15,000 a year for this listing. Thomasnet is a huge waste of money and I want to cancel it. The problem is that I do not have a good understanding of the link value from Thomasnet. They have a high domain authority and we have a good number of links from them because we pay for the listing. If we stop paying, those links go away and I am afraid it will hurt us in our rankings. Any insights? Thanks!
Paid Search Marketing | | dloeschen0 -
Using the same landing page for seo and ppc
When does it make sense to create one landing page for both seo and ppc?
Paid Search Marketing | | melen0 -
Seo and ads for Baidu (china)
Has anyone have experience doing seo for the baidu search engine? I have a client who wants to target businesses in china so we are exploring options for PPC and SEO. Any ideas or tips would be much appreciated? I was thinking of getting a bi-lingual mini-site made that would catch leads from seo and ads. Can anyone suggest any chinese PPC/seo freelancers?
Paid Search Marketing | | Netboost0 -
What is the effect of a proxy server replicating a sight on SEO
I have heard of PPC company's that set up a proxy server to replicate your site so that they can use their own tracking methods for their reports. What affect if any does this have on SEO for a site?
Paid Search Marketing | | prima-2535091 -
Adwords Quality Score and On-Page SEO
I'm trying to convince a large, multinational company that is very resistant to change, into making my on-page SEO changes. Compounding this resistance is the fact that the Analytics, SEO, PPC, and web dev departments are all under different people and they don't communicate very well. So, in order to get them to work together, I've decided to appeal to the places where they are sensitive; e.g., the PPC department where they surely have the desire to be more efficient with their budget. To appeal to this sensitivity, and with my goal of getting on-page changes done to help the SEO dept, I'm considering making the argument that my on-page changes will raise their quality score which will in turn lower the amount they are spending on PPC. Basically, is this a fair argument? Do you have an evidence to back this up? Best in the Midwest, Phil p.s. Hi, Joanna 😉
Paid Search Marketing | | PapaRelevance0