Is an international redirect hurting my ranking

[_entreprenerd]

We're a small international company that redirects users based on their language identifier.
I've now taken a big interest in and also how it affects ranking.

When I look at my MOZ dashboard the fundedbyme.com domain has a higher ranking than fundedbyme.com/en/ for example.

Our company wants to target other markets such as Spain and Germany, I am imposing penalties on myself by not having rel="canonical" in place and redirecting to the TLD?

[Silkstream]

Hiya, I dont know if this is any help? https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/189077?hl=en I think the hreflang will be preferred over using canonical.

[SilverDoor]

Hi,

I've just answered a very similar issue in this Q&A.

While it is referring to GEO-location redirects I've heard of very similar issues with language redirects.

Take a look and let me know what you think.

Thanks

SilverDoor

[GPainter]

Have you thought about rel=alternative instead?

[jeff-rackaid.com]

If you use gLTDs as your sub-directories, you can then use WMT to set preferences.

See a further discussion here:

https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/182192?hl=en#2

From my understanding (as a hosting provider not a SEO), is that increasingly signals coming from on-page or WMT are far more important that server location, IP or other hosting related information.  This makes sense with more and more CDNs.

You may also want to see:

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2013/04/x-default-hreflang-for-international-pages.html

In terms of what to optimize that is up to you, but the important part is to give Google clues as to what pages you want ranked where/how.