SEO friendly way to redirect users based on IP address

[dancape]

Hi There

I have an issue where I need to redirect all visitors from a specific country to a sub-domain, which has content explaining to those users that our service is not offered in that country. I would like to know the most SEO friendly way to do this?

Thanks

Sadie

[ChristopherM]

The trickiest part about IP redirection is that a lot of crawlers are US based, and therefore the crawlers may not see many of the pages that currently exist on your site and deserve crawling/ranking. There are cases that I've been involved in where IP detection was crucial, but I've also experienced problems with it.

The best advice I can give you is that if you must redirect, then monitor the website on a daily basis and if the site bounces up or down (all other factors equal), then look at removing the redirection.

Here's a thread that you might like to look over: http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!category-topic/webmasters/chit-chat/c2gk9cKWJYY

I really hope this helps!

[dancape]

Thanks for your reply to my question Christopher!

When you say I should monitor the site, are you just referring to the website traffic? or do you mean rankings as well?

Also, what effects will the IP redirection have on SEO?

[ChristopherM]

@Melanie - I would monitor both the traffic and rankings - just to make sure that there isn't a sudden change in any regard. I would create an Analytics alert should the traffic suddenly drop by X% so that I was notified immediately and I would use a Rank Checker like SEOmoz has, or WebCEO or whichever one you prefer. If often depends on the site in question though, but I'd just keep an eye on things and if the traffic drops or the ranks decrease, then I'd remove the redirect.

Redirects are tricky and that guide that pasted above (perhaps use this: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2010/09/unifying-content-under-multilingual.html) covers quite a lot of what you're after.

The redirection could mess with your rankings, so that's why I suggest monitoring those. If you're not tracking a fairly large keyword basket, then watch the organic traffic closely for fluctuations (or use the notification I mentioned above).

This also depends on what countries you're taking into account and so forth.