Hotel Multi country targeting + Google Local + TLDs => "MesSEO"

[retsimister]

Hi guys,

I own a guesthouse which is facing a messy structural problem in its own web presence:

Portuguese: www.residencia-aeminium-coimbra.com.pt

English: www.residencia-aeminium-coimbra.com

Spanish: www.residencia-aeminium-coimbra.com/espanol

Looking for success in the long term, a few years ago, we decided to host 3 TLDs: 1 for global international english, 1 for local portuguese and 1 for the main foreign market Spain (we already redirected it to a subfolder in the .com in the meanwhile). We tried to promote each one of these in their targeted markets -  mainly the .com got back-links links and authority.

With time, google local appeared and changed the face of google accommodation rankings. Google local are now the top results for most searches, even outside the country, and I came to the conclusion that the TLD assets were now a problem.

For instance, I can only add 1 domain to google local..what language should this be? It is the same for most social media presence..How should international markets be targeted in a local page?

Since TLDs do not seem to be an advantage right now, I am thinking we should be moving to a single domain and use a folder structure so we can use it everywhere.

Questions:

1. In terms of structure (TLD or Folder) and multi-lingual targeting what is the current best practice for hotels that show in local results but promote internationally?

2. What language should I point google local results to? And our Facebook page, etc?

3. If I move things around to a folder structure, what domain should I use?

• the .com is in english and has the most authority and links according to opensiteexplorer
• the .com.pt is in portuguese, our local language and our main market (but only 35% share)
• should I create a new domain ".pt"?

4. I don't think that geo-targeting the languages is worth it in this case, what do you think?

Kind Regards
Ricardo Madeira
Residencia Aeminium Coimbra

[MoosaHemani]

Hello Ricardo,

This is actually a difficult question to me or may be the information is too much scattered but I got a way to reply you that might help you come up with answers to many of your questions...

If it would be my business or if I will be working for this website this is something what i would recommend.

• Domain

It is always great to talk to customer in their own language so if we can talk to customer in their own language and with their country TLD this will help them trust us easily instead of a single website that is based in English (universal language).

I would prefer to have 3 domains with content in 3 different languages that is English, Spanish and Portuguese.

Example:

1. www.my-hotel.com
2. www.my-hotel.com.pt
3. www.my-hotel.es

Let’s take English version as the main website (as it’s a universal language) and the other two websites as branches.

• Google Maps

Google Maps does offer local listing for Portugal, Spain and England. If you have physical location available within 3 areas you will be able to register each website within the targeted area.

• Facebook Page

Again as I said it’s great to talk to customers in their own language. If cost is not the big issue the it’s great to have language based pages targeting the right kind of people but if budget is the issue then its great to come up with one but active facebook page (English should be the language).

When you have one page in English you should understand and take care of the customers in other countries as well and entertain them from time to time accordingly.

Hope most of your questions are covered... let me know if you have further question in mind...

[retsimister]

Hi Moosa,

Thanks for your time and personal insights.

I tend to disagree with you on most part. Being a "hotel" we are in a different situation as a, lets say, fashion store. We do not have and will not have any locations at any given point outside our country or city (at least for now) but we do have customers on any given point of the world. Hell, the place where I have less clients is actually the place where we are located.

The thing is that, nowadays, google local results show on the top for most "hotel+city" searches. Those searches will only feature 1 TLD wherever in the world they may come from. We can optimize our local TLD how much we want but if it doesn't rank above google local results we won't be having any benefit. At least for us it would be difficult to rank above google results and keep racing with them.

I think that google places/local was mostly designed for businesses that would be searched for from local customers, but with hotels it is the opposite.

How should this be juggled?

[Matt-Williamson]

In the past when aiming at local search results for different places I have always created pages for the specific locations + term I am targeting. I have made sure the on page factors are naturally optimised well to incorporate this and I have also made sure the url of the page is location+keyword.html. Then I have created an internal navigation structure that points to this content with the appropriate anchor text. I have then built links that point to the specific location pages in terms of local listings etc. I have found this very successful, and yes I am still having success in a post penguin world, as I haven’t done anything in a spammy over-optimised way. I have not done this in terms of international SEO, but I don’t see why you couldn’t successfully do this on your site.

In terms of whether you should bring your sites under one with sub folders or not I think this article is a very helpful guide for international SEO.

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/international-seo-where-to-host-and-how-to-target-whiteboard-friday

Bringing your sites under one domain with sub folders  and setting geo targetting in webmaster tools, then building links in the specific country as mentioned by Thomas Høgenhaven in the comments might be a good plan.

Good luck with this - I hope my thoughts might have helped give you some ideas...

[MoosaHemani]

Sorry about that... must be my bad!

Well yeah Google Places is more focused on delivering the results from the area and surroundings so it’s almost impossible for you to rank in local searches...

I think in that case Matt’s suggestions are helpful in that case and that is to make country specific pages with keyword and make it rank accordingly (not not over optimized to make it look spammy... do it the natural way...)

Hope this helps...

[retsimister]

Hi,

Sorry for not answering before but I was expecting some more thoughts from Seomoz or the community..

Although your thoughts are good, I don't think you answered my question. I think the problem was the question itself, after some thought I can rephrase it:

The real question may be: What is the best international/multilingual website structure to target google local, where you only have 1 location and compete in many countries and different languages?

Any thoughts?