Country domain: Seo for other languages

[depi]

Hi,

I have an italian domain (.it) for an italian hotel, it is an old authoritative domain (1997) and it is well optimized for the keywords that include the city the hotel is in, now the page is decently positioned in Google Italy.

There are many problems to have the same rank for German version (in google.de, google.at). The German version is in the /de folder.

The hotel has another .com domain, much less authoritative (2007), in a German server, but it was and is only a simple redirect 301 (by code) to the German version in the .it domain. (obviously the rank for this domain is almost nonexistent).

Do you have any suggestion? Thank you.

[Alex-Harford]

Have you targeted the /de folder to Germany (assuming Germany is your preference over Austria) in Google Webmaster Tools? That will help immensely. You need to add it as a new site. It'll also help if you get links from the countries you want to target.

Did the .com used to be the German version of the site?

Here are some (I'd say must-view) links on the subject of international SEO:
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2010/03/working-with-multi-regional-websites.html
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/international-seo-where-to-host-and-how-to-target-whiteboard-friday

You can also make use of the meta lang and country attributes and have a native German speaker check over the content if you haven't already.

[depi]

Have you targeted the /de folder to Germany (assuming Germany is your preference over Austria) in Google Webmaster Tools?

No, unlucky it is not possible for Country domains.

Did the .com used to be the German version of the site?

No, there is only the index.html 301 redirected on the domain.it/de

Thank you for the links.

[Alex-Harford]

I'm not sure I understand what you're saying - it is possible.

When you add a site in Google Webmaster Tools, just add http://www.example.it/de/ as the site and upload the verification file (if you verify that way) to the de folder.

[depi]

When I add www.example.it/de/ to my GWT sites, it don't ask about verification (because the main domain was already verificated**).**

In Setting/Geo Target there is:

Destinazione geografica Il dominio del tuo sito è già associato alla destinazione: Italia

Translated: Geo target the domain is already associated to target: Italy

the same is for the root domain.

Geo target is only for generic domains (and some other particular domain)

bye

[Alex-Harford]

Ah, I apologise. I knew someone from South America who targeted a .co (Colombia's TLD) subfolder to Brazil, so I thought it was okay to do that for others. I've just looked it up and Google started to allow .co to be geotargeted in 2010, so I must have missed that. The clues are even in at least one of those links I provided. Slaps forehead

I don't think you want to mess with 301 redirecting the .it to a .com and risk losing some of the authority that's built up - would you say there's also a chance Italians prefer to click to a .it rather than a .com? Do you see yourself expanding to target other countries in future? If so it might be worth using the .com and geotargeting a .com/de, .com/fr etc. You also have to consider whether you have the resources to keep more than one website updated.

Other than that I can only think it's best to continue in your current form and do everything else you can to get the /de ranking higher in German speaking countries - obviously the language (use a native to write your content as well as help with the keyword research), and if possible include an address based in the country you're targeting on localised pages, is it possible to include some German information on your Google Places listing (if you don't have one, set one up!)?

Get inbound local links (maybe encourage German-speaking visitors to post on local review sites?) and get listed on every review, booking and tourist information site you can in the target country. Maybe you could get some German travel guides written for your city if you haven't already, perhaps something that could act as link-bait if there's anything unique or quirky you could come up with (a top 10?) or get guest posts written for German-speaking sites with a link to your /de subfolder?

The upside of doing this over the .com solution is all the links you get from Germany etc. will go towards the overall Domain Authority, rather than it being spread between the .com and .it. Of course all this helps even if you can geotarget.