What is the "Homepage" for an International Website With Multiple Languages?

[mirabile]

BACKGROUND:

We are developing a new multi-language website that is going to have:

1. Multiple directories for various languages:
/en-us, /de, etc....
2. Hreflang tags
3. Universal footer links so user can select their preferred language.
and
4. Automatic JS detection of location on homepage only, so that when the user lands on /, it redirect them to the correct location.

Currently, the auto JS detection only happens on /, and no other pages of the website. The user can also always choose to override the auto-detection on the homepage anytime, by using the language-selector links on the bottom.

QUESTION: Should we try to place a 301 on / to point to en/us? Someone recommended this to us, but my thinking is "NO" - we do NOT want to 301 /.  Instead, I feel like we should allow Google Access to /, because that is also the most authoritative page on the website and where all incoming links are pointing.  In most cases, users / journalists / publications IMHO are just going to link to /, not dilly dally around with the language-directory.

My hunch is just to keep / as is, but also work to help Google understand the relationship between all of the different language-specific directories.  I know that Google officially doesn't advocate meta refresh redirects, but this only happens on homepage, and we likewise allow user to override this at any time (and again, universal footer links will point both search engines and users to all other locations.)

Thoughts?  Thanks for any tips/feedback!

[Dalerio-Consulting]

To put it plain and simple, in 2019 there is no reason to fear 301 redirects.

Back in 2013 and on, whenever you would do a 301 redirect you would lose some page rank along the way, estimated by some professionals at around 15% of the Page Rank. Nowadays, with the development and changes in the Google algorithm, you are assured by google that in doing a 301 redirect you will be able to transfer the rank and authority of the main homepage to the proper country-specific URL. You can support that by the fact that most of the multi-language site WordPress plugins will automatically do that for you as well.

You can consider the redirect to the other page the same as you would redirect Http traffic to Https or how you would redirect traffic from the direct name.com URL to the www sub-domain. My suggestion for you would be to go for the 301 redirect.

Alternatively, if you are still hesitant to use the 301 redirect, you have the option of using the site homepage as the English version of the website and using directories for the other languages, or to keep both the homepage and the en-us page with identical content, and inserting a canonical relationship tag to support one of the pages to grow in rankings without being marked as spam.

Daniel Rika - Dalerio Consulting
https://dalerioconsulting.com/
info@dalerioconsulting.com

[mirabile]

Hi Daniel,

Thanks for the response! While I totally agree that Google's cool with 301s as of 2019, I do have to respectfully disagree that 301s pass 100% of  all link equity.  See: https://www.searchenginejournal.com/301-redirect-pagerank/275503/#close

And in the middle of a big redesign, I'm especially hesitant to 301 the current homepage. My own personal, anecdotal experiences (including from as recently as this year) likewise indicate that changing URLs leads to fluctuation, even with 301s to help migrate and mitigate.

In the meantime, IMHO, we really also don't want to force all users who land on / to immediately go to the English directory.  Hopefully, geotargeting will take them to the best match - but even if it's not, then they can always override that by manually choosing their preferred language.

Personally, I was a bit thrown by the (external) recommendation to 301 / to /en-us. I needed to bounce ideas off other SEOs and  unpack all of the pros and cons of doing so.  Writing it all out here, and getting some feedback, has absolutely helped me to do that.  

[Dalerio-Consulting]

Hello Sarah,

I'm glad you replied. I would argue that the article proves my point more than rejects it. You might be coming from "A redirect from one page to an entirely different page will result in no PageRank being passed and will be considered a soft 404."

In this case "entirely different" refers to a page that has a different topic. Since in this case the page redirected to would be identical or nearly-identical to the original page, then the 301 redirect will transfer 100% of the rank of the original page.

Daniel Rika - Dalerio Consulting
https://dalerioconsulting.com/
info@dalerioconsulting.com

[mirabile]

Hi Daniel,

Yes, I have read the entire article. Instead continuing to debate how much link equity in particular would pass through a homepage 301, or how reliable Google's "official stance" is, my goal is rather to evaluate the how the homepage holistically relates to the overall international SEO and corporate branding strategy, in tandem with a complex redesign that is already going to require us to switch up a ton of pages.

Thanks!