International Sites

[Cocoonfxmedia]

Hi Guys

Just wanting to get some feedback on best practices for international website.

The main website is a .co.uk there looking to target France & Belgium. The web hosting is UK based.

Do we replicate the UK site and translate to local language but use a .fr domain and have 3 versions of the websites on 3 separate domains? or do just use the co.uk with french & Belgium translation have pages related to those countries?

Any assistance will be appreciated

[wearehappymedia]

Hi,

That would primarily depend on the goals of the sites / sub-domains.

[Vijay-Gaur]

International targeting, How you wish to go about this is going to be a strategic decision, because there are a couple of ways that lead to almost similar results. The decision is going to be strategic, as you will have to maintain the future SEO of the website(s) based on this decision.

This is from my personal experience, although Google asks you to choose a target country, yet you can still rank higher in other countries using off-page strategies. This means first preference is given to what you defined as a target but if Google finds your website appropriate for other country audience, it won’t shy away from showing you on those country SERPs. As for the getting sub-domain or an entirely new website, the decision is up to you, whether you will be able to maintain the SEO for the different websites in sync with each other. You can also have sub-folder for each target country, choice is yours.

As per Google Webmaster documentation for International Targeting

1. On the International Targeting report, click the Country tab.
2. Check the Geographic target checkbox and choose your country target. If you want to ensure that your site is not associated with any country or region, selectUnlisted in the drop-down list.

Google Search returns the most relevant and useful sites for a user. Because of this, search results can differ between a user in Ireland and a user in France. If your site has a generic top-level domain, such as .com or .org, you can help us determine which countries are most important to you. If your site has a country-coded top-level domain (such as .ie or .fr) it is already associated with a geographic region (in this example, Ireland or France). If you use a country-coded domain, you won't be able to specify a geographic location. You can specify a target country in the International Targeting report.

How do we determine location without Search Console?

If no information is entered in Search Console, Google relies largely on the site's country domain (such as .ca, .de). If you use an international domain (.com, .org, .eu), we'll rely on several signals, including IP address, location information on the page, links to the page, and any relevant information from Google My Business. If you change hosting provider for a country domain, there should be no impact. If you change the hosting provider of an international domain to a provider in another country, we recommend using Search Console to tell us which country your site should be associated with.

Source : https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/62399?hl=en

[LoganRay]

Hi,

According to Moz, ccTLDs are the single strongest way to show search engines and users where the site originates. So I would recommend purchasing a .fr and .be version of the domain and replicating the site on each with translated content. You can and should also specify geography in Search Console.

Additionally, you'll also want to apply hreflang tags on each page. The goal of hreflang is to serve the right content to the right users. It'll help each country-specific version of Google index the right content, i.e. your www.site.fr content will stay in google.fr and so on.

[Vijay-Gaur]

Hi Logan,

Thanks for your response. Yes, I also agree however it's important that websites are maintained separately, that's why I suggested checking whether the person who asked the question has the resources to maintain them strategically.

https://moz.com/learn/seo/international-seo

Regards,

Vijay