Hreflang made simple

[muzzmoz]

I have a client with a Shopify site. It is a clone of the 'main' website which is a .co.uk domain.

Client wants to use .com.au for Australia and New Zealand. All are English language.

How should we structure hreflang tags?

Or is there a better way to target the .com.au website at Australia/New Zealand?

[Joe_Stoffel]

This post is deleted!

[muzzmoz]

Thanks Joe.

Found this link - by far the best I have read on geo-targeting:

http://www.seochat.com/c/a/google-optimization-help/geo-targeting-techniques-in-google-for-seo/

[Joe_Stoffel]

Very nice, I've found Moz's International SEO guide to be helpful as well. How did you decide to proceed here? (if you don't mind me prying a bit)

[gfiorelli1]

Ehmm... sorry to say that you're totally wrong... having 3 sites using the same language and using the same exact content, even if you geo-target them, they still are the best example of exact match duplicate content... and only implementing the hreflang you can avoid to see them filtered or 1 appearing in the wrong SERPs.

[gfiorelli1]

That post on SEOChat, albeit correct in the basics, is frankly old (it still suggests to use Dmoz, which doesn't exist since at least 1 year).

I suggest you view this slide deck by Aleyda Solís: https://es.slideshare.net/aleydasolis/speaking-in-tongues-establishing-a-successful-international-web-presence-smxeast.

[muzzmoz]

Thank you Gianluca. I will certainly checkout that deck.

But (groan)... classic SEO experience here. One expert says 'black' then next says 'what'. Who are we to believe?

[gfiorelli1]

Believe none blindly :-), however, trust more people who do International SEO since ages like me or Aleyda or David Sottimano.

[muzzmoz]

OK, thanks Gianluca.

So how would you specify hreflang so that...?

• domain.co.uk is visible in UK SERPs
• domain.com is visible in all other SERPs

[muzzmoz]

In fact, what the client really wants is this...

... any user in the UK who:

1. clicks on a link from social media (which goes to domainname.com)
2. searches google for domainname.com
3. types in the URL domainname.com

... ALWAYS be redirected to "domainname.co.uk" so they only see what the client sells direct from the UK. This sounds to me way beyond just hreflang. This sounds like it might need some kind of redirection based on IP?