SEO geolocation vs subdirectories vs local search vs traffic
-
My dear community and friends of MOZ, today I have a very interesting question to you all.
Although I´ve got my opinion, and Im sure many of you will think the same way, I want to share the following dilemma with you.
I have just joined a company as Online Marketing Manager and I have to quickly take a decision about site structure.
The site of the company has just applied a big structure change. They used to have their information divided by country (each country one subdirectory) www.site.com/ar/news www.site.com/us/news . They have just changed this and erased the country subdirectory and started using geolocation. So if we go to www.site.com/news although the content is going to be the same for each country ( it’s a Latinamerican site, all the countries speak the same language except Brazil) the navigation links are going to drive you to different pages according to the country where you are located.
They believe that having less subdirectories PA or PR is going to be higher for each page due to less linkjuice leaking. My guess is that if you want to have an important organic traffic presence you should A) get a TLD for the country you want to targe… if not B)have a subdirectory or subdomain for each country in your site.
I don’t know what local sign could be a page giving to google if the URL and html doesn’t change between countries- We can not use schemas or rich formats neither…So, again, I would suggest to go back to the previous structure. On the other hand…I ve been taking a look to sensacine.com and although their site is pointing only to Spain
| |
| | |
| | |
| | |
| | |
| | |
| | |
| | |They have very good rankings for big volume keywords in all latinamerica, so I just want to quantify this change, since I will be sending to the designers and developers a lot of work
-
Hi.
Normally changing the content but not the URL via scripts is not a good idea in International SEO. A good example of this use is Dropbox, which geolocalize different languages but does not change the URL of its homepage, which remains always dropbox.com.
Regarding Sensacine.com (a site I know well, because I live in Spain), the success it has also in Spanish Latin America is quite surely due to its very good link profile, and surely not to meta tags like:
because these kind of geotargeting metas are not taken into consideration by Google, but only by Yahoo! and Bing (and also for them they are not the most relevant geotargeting signals).
-
I can't seem to figure out your specific question, but I do agree that one news page with dynamic, location-based links will be a more challenging site to rank. Obviously, engines are accustomed to sites for multiple languages and countries. The extra subdirectory is of no real concern to the engines...they "rank pages, not sites" right?
Of course, managing various news pages could be a technical headache, which is prompting this change. That said, I think your approach is going to be easier for search engines (those dynamic links, ouch!). Sadly we have to balance SEO and such with business needs...
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
-
Local Business Schema Image requirement
Hello, I work exclusively with Dentists and we have been putting our json schema in the footer for a while now. Just recently they made 'image' a requirement for the Dentist category. We already use the logo in our schema and that is an image. Since the schema is in the footer, it is on every page, and the only image on every page is the logo. Does the image we add to our schema need to be on the actual web page or could it be anything related to the business, like an image of the practice or the dentist? Would it hurt to have the logo listed twice in the schema - once as the logo and once as the image? Trying to figure out what the best thing to do is for the required 'image' field for a dentist. Thanks! Angela
Local Website Optimization | | tntdental0 -
What's the best SEO solution for international targeting of different english speaking countries?
Hi guys, recently won a client who operates globally, their domain is .com and their head office is in the UK. They have built regional sub-directories and translated content and pages of their site for /ru, /fr etc. The issue comes with their /us and /ca pages. This content for the most part is identical to the main .com site. The content is still in English and can't in most situations be changed to be more localised, so there are duplicate content issues. Trying to think of options: Ensure hreflang is added properly, build regional links to regional pages, get local contact details / NAP on all regional pages, set up Google business listings for each regional office and link accordingly. Will Google be able to identify these regional pages as more suitable search results for US searches? Make the main .com version of the content the canonical, which takes away any ranking benefits of the regional pages altogether, but removes the duplicate content issues and means we can focus link building and content resources into making sure the .com version of the page ranks well. Thanks!
Local Website Optimization | | SamFanatic0 -
Schema markup for a local directory listing and Web Site name
Howdy there! Two schema related questions here Schema markup for local directory We have a page that lists multiple location information on a single page as a directory type listing. Each listing has a link to another page that contains more in depth information about that location. We have seen markups using Schema Local Business markup for each location listed on the directory page. Examples: http://www.yellowpages.com/metairie-la/gold-buyers http://yellowpages.superpages.com/listings.jsp?CS=L&MCBP=true&C=plumber%2C+dallas+tx Both of these validate using the Google testing tool, but what is strange is that the yellowpages.com example puts the URL to the profile page for a given location as the "name" in the schema for the local business, superpages.com uses the actual name of the location. Other sites such as Yelp etc have no markup for a location at all on a directory type page. We want to stay with schema and leaning towards the superpages option. Any opinions on the best route to go with this? Schema markup for logo and social profiles vs website name. If you read the article for schema markup for your logo and social profiles, it recommends/shows using the @type of Organization in the schema markup https://developers.google.com/structured-data/customize/social-profiles If you then click down the left column on that page to "Show your name in search results" it recommends/shows using the @type of WebSite in the schema markup. https://developers.google.com/structured-data/site-name We want to have the markup for the logo, social profiles and website name. Do we just need to repeat the schema for the @website name in addition to what we have for @organization (two sets of markup?). Our concern is that in both we are referencing the same home page and in one case on the page we are saying we are an organization and in another a website. Does this matter? Will Google be ok with the logo and social profile markup if we use the @website designation? Thanks!
Local Website Optimization | | HeaHea0 -
For a generic domain say www.purplecola.com where the company is based in India (IP address there too), how should they best optimize for US search traffic?
Let's just say that they want to target the US market. Should they add a US based IP address? Would love to hear insight from people who have managed this, experienced this or have expertise. Obviously, a US based physical address would help. Thanks!! Chris
Local Website Optimization | | Sundance_Kidd0 -
How to approach SEO for a national umbrella site that has multiple chapters in different locations that are different URLS
We are currently working with a client who has one national site - let's call it CompanyName.net, and multiple, independent chapter sites listed under different URLs that are structured, for example, as CompanyNamechicago.org, and sometimes specific to neighborhoods, as in CompanyNamechicago.org/lakeview.org. The national site is .net, while all others are .orgs. These are not subdomains or subfolders, as far as we can tell. You can use a search function on the .net site to find a location near you and click to that specific local site. They are looking for help optimizing and increasing traffic to certain landing pages on the .net site...but similar landing pages also exist on a local level, which appear to be competing with the national site. (Example: there is a landing page on the national .net umbrella site for a "dog safety" campaign they are doing, but also that campaign has led to a landing page created independently on the local CompanyNameChicago.org website, which seems to get higher ranking due to a user looking for this info while located in Chicago. We are wondering if our hands are tied here since they appear to be competing for traffic with all their localized sites, or if there are best practices to handle a situation like this. Thanks!
Local Website Optimization | | timfrick0 -
Is this cloaking or some dangerous blackhat SEO tactic?
Hey wonderful SEO guys, I need your advice. Would the following be considered cloaking, or a black hat SEO tactic. I performed the following search for Guess tops on Google: "Guess women's tops." Please see the attached image (Guess 1) of the description tag that comes up with this search. This not the primary page description tag, but when you visit the women's tops tag, that description is not visible on the page. In fact it is placed in the meta name section (see Guess meta-name description image). The information appears as a description on a SERPS depending on the keyword search performed, but the text is just not visible on the tops page. Can this be considered a form of cloaking? If not, is this a dangerous blackhat SEO tactic, or actually nothing to be worried about? We are thinking of doing something similar with some of lengthy homepage introductions-making them invisible, but still appearing on SERPS, as long as it relates to content that is clearly on the website, or what the website is about. Please advise. Thanks. qiNXxYR.png BXKZn08.png
Local Website Optimization | | Lovingly0 -
Image URLs changed 3 times after using a CDN - How to Handle for SEO?
Hi Mozzers,
Local Website Optimization | | emerald
Hoping for your advice on how to handle the SEO effects an image URL change, that changed 3 times, during the course of setting up a CDN over a month period, as follows: (URL 1) - Original image URL before CDN:www.mydomain.com/images/abc.jpg (URL 2) - First CDN URL (without CNAME alias - using WPEngine & their own CDN):
username.net-dns.com/images/abc.jpg (URL 3) - Second CDN URL (with CNAME alias - applied 3 weeks later):
cdn.mydomain.com/images/abc.jpg When we changed to URL 2, our image rankings in the Moz Tool Pro Rankings dropped from 80% to 5% (the one with the little photo icons). So my questions for recovery are: Do I need to add a 301 redirect/Canonical tag from the old image URL 1 & 2 to URL 3 or something else? Do I need to change my image sitemap to use cdn.mydomain.com/images/abc.jpg instead of www.? Thanks in advance for your advice.0 -
Local site went from dominating first page - bad plugin caused duplicate content issues - now to 2nd page for all!
I had a bad plugin create duplicate content issues on my Wordpress CMS - www.pmaaustin.com I got it fixed, but now every keyword has been stuck on page 2 for search terms for 4 months now, where I was 49 out of 52 keywords on page one. It's a small local niche with mostly easier to rank keywords. Am I missing something? p.s. Also has a notice on the Dashboard that says: "404 Redirected: There are 889 captured 404 URLs that need to be processed." Could that be a problem? Thanks, Steve
Local Website Optimization | | OhYeahSteve0