International SEO

[dee]

Hi all,

Quick question for the SEO experts here please. If uk based company is targetting international customers for quite a specific industrial niche. Are they better off having a series of local sites with content translated into appropriate language ie

company name .fr
company name .de
company name .ru etc etc

OR have a unified web site (com) with appropriate languages on site. Does the local search preference make it better to have a series of sites in country extension ?

Hope that makes sense. Any pointers gratefully recieved.

 

[Oceanic]

Hi Dee,

Unless you have a lot of resources, stick to one central domain (a .com) preferably and build your country/language pages on this, the reason I say this is that for every link you earn, all the territories/countries on this main site will enjoy the benefit. Having a lot of localised satellite sites might seem like a good idea but you have to then multiply all the link acquisition for each one. Not to mention all the extra server / development overheads etc.

Hope that helps.

Stephen

 

[dee]

@Oceanic Thanks Stephen. Totally makes sense, and indeed what I thought might be the case. I'm in a situation where I may be possibly taking over a company website and its a mish mash of dead links and international sites with translations.

I just thought there may be an advantage in having search tending towards local results, but guess not. So do you think id be better of starting again with internationals and 301 to main site ?

 

[Oceanic]

@Oceanic Thanks Stephen. Totally makes sense, and indeed what I thought might be the case. I'm in a situation where I may be possibly taking over a company website and its a mish mash of dead links and international sites with translations.

I just thought there may be an advantage in having search tending towards local results, but guess not. So do you think id be better off starting again with internationals and 301 to main site ?

If you are a large team with people on the ground in each country a local site makes sense, but when resources are limited I'd always recommend pooling everything on to one site and making sure it is optimised for each country and language you are targeting. There is also nothing stopping you going after local search via Google My Business and optimising the profiles correctly in each location.

 

[dee]

@Oceanic Thanks a lot. Very helpful

 

[Oceanic]

@Oceanic Thanks a lot. Very helpful

No worries, I see this question pop up from time to time and not many good answers!

 

[dog]

I would subdomain the main site like this.

fr.example.org
ru.example.org
uk.example.org

Then use hreflang to make sure search engines will see the correct country and language.

 

[Oceanic]

I would subdomain the main site like this.

fr.example.org
ru.example.org
uk.example.org

Then use hreflang to make sure search engines will see the correct country and language.

Using subdomains, you might as well use separate domains based on what I said above. The search engines treat subdomains with quite a big degree of separation from their parent/root domain.

I'd go this way (if) possible

root.com/fr
root.com/ru
root.com/uk

That way all the of the authority will flow into these pages and inner pages.

 

[martin-s]

I'd agree, apart from in one scenario. If you already have a lot of SEO value in .uk, then .fr would make a logical secondary.

 

[dee]

I'd agree, apart from in one scenario. If you already have a lot of SEO value in .uk, then .fr would make a logical secondary.

You mean as a subdomain rather than a subpage of main site ?

 

[martin-s]

No, I mean fr as a separate site.

 

[Admin]

@Oceanic Thanks Stephen. Totally makes sense, and indeed what I thought might be the case. I'm in a situation where I may be possibly taking over a company website and its a mish mash of dead links and international sites with translations.

I just thought there may be an advantage in having search tending towards local results, but guess not. So do you think id be better of starting again with internationals and 301 to main site ?

One important aspect has not been mentioned here. You put your foreign language version of pages in a directory acme.com/fr/ (not sub domain) and then set geotargeting accordingly for each one in google search console. You can set href lang additionally.

 

[figleaf007]

This may help you as well https://www.smartinsights.com/onlin...rnational-domainurl-structures-of-top-brands/

 

[dee]

This forum bloody rocks.

 

[dog]

You are basically hosting a new type of site. Geotargeting with a different language.

In this case using subdomains is fine. Link to the other versions in the footer.

How does the site currently handle different countries and languages?

 

[dee]

How does the site currently handle different countries and languages?

It has local country domains ie .fr , .de However most of them seem to be copies of the main site, with front page translated then a bunch of broken links. Only one that is okay is french. I wondered if was worth starting again and 301 to main site basically.

 

[Oceanic]

It has local country domains ie .fr , .de However most of them seem to be copies of the main site, with front page translated then a bunch of broken links. Only one that is okay is french. I wondered if was worth starting again and 301 to main site basically.

A lot of this will depend on the existing rankings and traffic to each of these properties, but also how much time/resources you have.

Perhaps start a plan to build everything on one domain and once all of this is in place, 301 the legacy local sites to their refreshed replacements on the .com

 

[dee]

Perhaps start a plan to build everything on one domain and once all of this is in place, 301 the legacy local sites to their refreshed replacements on the .com

Thats what i was starting think myself ! Cheers

 

[dog]

I agree with @Oceanic

If it is just you managing an international site, less hassle to manage it all on one domain. Either way you do it with subdomains or subdirectories.

In general it's better to go the - Example.org/whatever - route.

However you are in fact hosting different types of content. In this case, different languages. Exactly what subdomains are good for. It also makes it harder for you to get hit with a duplicate content penalty. I've seen it before, search engines (Google) can be whack.

http://seoschool.net/

 

[dee]

mmmm..... two separate schools of thought on this it seems.