Improving Search Rankings in other Countries for an existing site
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Hello SEOmoz,
I have a very well respected international client who ranks high in the US and for English language Google search results worldwide. However, the client's foreign language pages for specific countries do not show up on the first page of SERPs in those specific countries.
The foreign nation/language pages are served on the same root domain as the main English language site it this fashion:
Here are my questions:
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What can we do from an SEO standpoint to improve SERPs in Google.fr or other countries
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What is the best way to prevent duplicate content errors or prevent the wrong page from being indexed abroad.
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What are some best practices when using Google Webmaster tools in this regard?
Thanks
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If those directories are the multilingual versions of the same English pages, be sure to use the rel="alternative" hreflang tags.
In addition, obtaining links from more local websites would help you rank better in their respective google.tlds
Can't really comment on GWT but I don't think you need to do anything fancy. Just make sure you don't have a specific region targeted (i.e. if you target just USA, it would worsen your international rankings).