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Just in case you haven't seen it yet, I'd take a look at the linkbuilders in Moz's list of recommended companies. Good luck!

Hi Sam, To launch a new international version targeting a new country you have 3 options: ccTLDs, sub-directories and sub-domains, as shown here. All of them have pros and cons: ccTLDs: The best to geolocate and ideally if you have the resources this would be the way to go. However it might be harder at the beginning to grow their popularity as they will be independent domains (won't be able to inherit the popularity of the current, older domain). Nonetheless, by using the ccTLD search engines will identify in a much more direct way that you're targeting to another country. Sub-directories: Under the main domain, you would need to enable one for each additional country. With them you'll be able to "inherit" and consolidate the popularity of the main domain which will help at the beginning to get traction to rank. However, you will need to additionally geolocate each sub-directory with Google Webmaster Tools so the search engine identifies that they're targeting to different countries. Sub-domains: In the main domain, you would need to enable one for each additional country. Here the consolidation of popularity is not so straight-forward as in sub-directories as sub-domains are also seen sometimes as independent entities but they might be better when you need to enable a complex and deep Web structure for which you don't want a sub-directory as it will add a an additional level of deepness in the URL. Sub-Domains also need to be geolocated with Google Webmaster Tools. For all cases, you can also use hreflang annotations to specify the language and country targeting for each page. I hope this helps! Aleyda

Hi Marty! We checked the post and there are some things that we are definitely going to implement. Thanks for your help!

HI Andy, It really depends on the sector and the competition but I have seen quite a few examples of strong rankings in both the US and the UK for travel sites. This is a competitive sector although granted the rankings I was looking at were within niche and destination specific segments. If the site already has strong general metrics then a few decent incoming local links (and if needed adding some country specific hreflang content) is sometimes enough to give you a good boost. If on the other hand the sector is quite competitive with different market leaders in the two countries then it can be pretty tough.

If you don't use hreflang="x-default" there can be some potential search issues: 1. Searchers of a particular language/region aren't shown a URL tailored to them when one exists. Google might show: www.example.com/en-us/product-item (in Google UK - searcher was searching for example product item) 2. Search results might disply two similar URLs from yoru site, confusin users 3. Search engine might not be aware of all language variations However, if the main index page (www.example.com) doesn't exist and has been 301 redirected to en-us then you can keep en-us as your default page and use . Or, if you've have a URL that doesn't consistently serves content in one language - perhaps it redirects to different language pages based on the user's IP, or it dynamically serves different language content on the same page, or it's a page which only asks the user to select their preferred home page then your hreflang value can be x-default. x-default signals to search engines that the URL's language is broad, rather then specific Hreflang doesn't harm in any which way even if you're using proper redirects

From developer: "Looking into this, we need to have /uk/blog, /us/blog and /ca/blog in order for them to appear on the menus – we could put a noindex meta tag on the us and ca pages to avoid duplicates?" Or do you recommend href lang tag? Thanks.

Hi Christopher, You have added canonical tags to http://blog.fdmgroup.com/uk/blog/, pointing to http://www.fdmgroup.com/uk/blog/ so this takes care of the duplicate content problem between those two versions of the blog being the same. For pages like http://www.fdmgroup.com/ca/blog/page/8/, you could look at different pagination options to ensure you receive benefit from these pages. Option 1 in that post (noindex, follow) is one of the simpler ways of doing this, but have a look at the others too.

Thanks - it's my real name! I'm more a fan of Saruman...

Hi Thomas, I've seen that you're language targeting through different sub-directories, that although is not the ideal solution if you want to specifically optimize and target to different countries (not languages), is the least expensive solution at the beginning when enabling international Web versions. The sub-directories also allow all of your international versions to inherit and consolidate the authority of the domain as a single entity (instead of spreading it and need to develop independent authority if they were placed in sub-domains or enabled in ccTLDs, if you decide to geotarget). If in the future you identify that you're having issues to specifically target some countries with the language target approach and you already have enough resources, then it might be time to geotarget, enabling different countries versions of your site for the UK, another of the US, etc. Take a look at the following resources that will also give you more criteria to take into consideration and information about the International SEO process: International SEO Checklist International SEO Do's & Don'ts  International SEO Tools  I hope this helps!

Thanks for your response Oleg. But if I separate matching URLs into different sitemaps, then doesn't that go against what Google recommends by including them in 1 multilingual sitemap?

Modestos wrote a great guide at http://moz.com/blog/web-site-migration-guide-tips-for-seos that can help you with a few things to look for.

Hi James, Thanks for clearing that up - I don't like to assume and get anything wrong For this, you want to use rel="alternative" hreflang"nnnn". This will allow you to serve up duplicate content to different locations. Google goes into this in more detail here: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/189077?hl=en It has been introduced to help exactly this sort of problem. I hope it helps. -Andy

I hear the word 'cloak' and I immediately think 'bad'. Are you doing this in some way that won't get a site penalized? I'm genuinely curious.

Tks u !

Hi Maja, Thanks for your question. It can be hard to diagnose without looking at the site in question (the links you provided to Webmaster Tools won't work for anyone not given access to the account) so I'm shooting in the dark a little. Gut feeling says that this is a technical problem. Did you make any technical changes to your website around those dates? A few other suggestions: I'd suggest going back and double checking your code for Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools code to make sure they are working correctly. You can use a Chrome plugin such as Google Tag Assistant to do this. Check the hostname in your Google Analytics report to see if any other domains (not your own) are showing up in your reports. This can happen sometimes if someone has started using your Google Analytics code and your data can get very messed up. Here is a more in-depth article which may help you: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2300842/Google-Analytics-Hostname-Report-Great-for-Troubleshooting Use tools such as Spyonweb and Nerdydata to search for your Google Analytics and Webmaster Tools code snippets to see if other sites may be using them. Narrow down the problem by adding in landing pages to your Google Webmaster Tools report. This report allows you to see which landing pages people are landing on and may help to de-bug the problem a little bit more. I hope that helps! Paddy

Thank you Jane. Your information is very helpful. I am in the process of viewing the webmaster guidelines to make sure we've done the right things. Cheers, Ken

Hi Wayne, you case is interesting and, obviously, it would be a little bit easier offering a potential answer if - at least - you could tell us what is the market niche your client is operating. I don't if you are asking the question having in mind ranking for keywords like "xyz in "region"", xyz in "region"", and so on. Personally, I consider that the common product/service description pages should be just one and valid for all regions, than it should be in the conversion funnel, when people already are in a buying/requesting contact step, that you ask them in what region they reside, therefore funneling the customers to their regional funnels. Then, what I would do in order to have the site earning more relevancy on a regional/local base, I'd design a content strategy that look at local problematics related to the products/services your client sells, so to obtain the attention of local influencers, local news site, local bloggers... In this strategy I would not even exclude local offline marketing, paying always attention to have these very geo-targeted campaigns mirrored online in the site and social media profiles.

The solution you describe it's correct, so you can go with it.

Actually I don't think it exists any public list of meaningful directories per country. Said that, apart very very few, almost every directory is at least partially penalized or doesn't pass pagerank (because it was cut off by Google). So... sincerely, I would think in another link building tactic

Hello Tommy, I am 100% agree to use hreflang to remove duplication issue. But, We're planning to go with TLD. And, We're getting issue to use similar images, content and meta on different region website.