Multi-Regional Site URLs

[ederdesign]

This post is deleted!

[JonoAlderson]

Hello!

Well, this is a bit of a tricky one.

From what you'd said, it feels like this is one business with one proposition, where some of the mechanics and minor details are different depending on country (as opposed to, say, a business with different products and marketing for different territories). This is an important distinction, and it affects the best approach.

If I've misread this - if the business is significantly different by territory - then let me know, and we can explore alternative approaches.

Before we get to your options, it's worth clarifying a couple of points:

1. When you correctly implement _hreflang, _canonical tagging and Google Search Console geographic targeting, you shouldn't be 'losing' value between the equivalent pages (e.g., having the same product in two different markets, when tagged up correctly, is fine).

2. There's no getting around the fact that you'll want to be growing coverage, attention and authority in individual markets, but given #1, it's less important where people link to / share on a general basis.

3. Opinions vary, but most conventional wisdom says that you're stronger when all of your content and authority resides on a single domain - therefore you're better off merging onto a single 'dot com' site, with geographic subfolders. This also typically makes it much easier to implement (and maintain) the kinds of tagging outlined in #1.

Therefore, I'd recommend something like this:

• Make example.com the main site. Have a generic, geo-agnostic 'master' version which is the fall-back for markets which don't have a specific experience.

• For each other country, build out a /xx-yy/ folder structure for targeting other regions, where xx is the language, and yy is the territory (including the language at this stage means that you don't have to retrofit for it later if you want to translate some content sections).

• Implement hreflang tags which connect equivalent pages across the language/territory splits, and use canonical tags to reference the correct URL for the page the user is on.

Obviously, this represents a significant shift to your current architecture, which may be a chunky piece of work - you'd also want to be careful with things like 301 redirects and making sure that content is all migrated cleanly.

Now, if you want to get a bit more advanced:

• Use something like Cloudflare or Maxmind to look up a user's IP, and convert that to a country code.

• If they're requesting a geo-agnostic page from the default dot com site which has an equivalent localised to them (e.g., the product page, in their own language/territory), perform a 302 redirect.

• If they're requesting a geo-agnostic page from the default dot com site which does not have an equivalent localised to them (e.g., a product which is not available in their region), trigger a lightbox / modal overlay which lets them know that a localised version of the site is available (but the product they're looking at is not), and ask them if they'd like to view that site instead. You can then cookie their preference, and hide the prompt for future requests.

That way you're serving the best possible experience to users and search engines at all times, without diluting your content or performance. All pages 'link' to each other (through hreflang tagging), and each folder/site should perform well in its own territory.

I appreciate that this is quite chunky; let me know if you've any more questions or thoughts (or a lower impact solution which relies less on re-architecting your platform) - I'm happy to explore and to tailor some advice more specifically to your situation!

[ederdesign]

• Make example.com the main site. Have a generic, geo-agnostic 'master' version which is the fall-back for markets which don't have a specific experience.

What I had in mind was to make .com the default website. Therefore it would also become the fallback if a country doesn't have a specific website. USA is our main market, but it would have the URL .com/us/en/. Do you think that would be a problem?

• For each other country, build out a /xx-yy/ folder structure for targeting other regions, where xx is the language, and yy is the territory (including the language at this stage means that you don't have to retrofit for it later if you want to translate some content sections).

We're using /yy/xx/ (country/language), divided in folders. Does it impact SEO? Would you recommend use hyphen instead? Agree about the language note.

• Implement hreflang tags which connect equivalent pages across the language/territory splits, and use canonical tags to reference the correct URL for the page the user is on.

In this case, if I'm browsing the home page in the USA (.com/us/en/) the canonical would reference the default home (.com)?

• Use something like Cloudflare or Maxmind to look up a user's IP, and convert that to a country code.

Right now we use this to redirect users on all stores. However, I'm considering keeping the redirect only on the default. If I visit .com form USA I go to the .com/us/en/. If I visit .com/us/en/ from Australia I stay in the USA version, and get a notification asking me if I want to go to the Australian version. Does it make sense?

• If they're requesting a geo-agnostic page from the default dot com site which has an equivalent localised to them (e.g., the product page, in their own language/territory), perform a 302 redirect.

Yes, that's what I'm suggesting: to use a 302 and hreflang to indicate that's the right page for that territory.

• If they're requesting a geo-agnostic page from the default dot com site which does not have an equivalent localised to them (e.g., a product which is not available in their region), trigger a lightbox / modal overlay which lets them know that a localised version of the site is available (but the product they're looking at is not), and ask them if they'd like to view that site instead. You can then cookie their preference, and hide the prompt for future requests.

Excellent idea. I was just discussing with my workmate about the best way to proceed on those cases. We're gonna show all the pages on the geo-agnostic/default site. Users won't be able to purchase from that page though. They can only buy from the countries where we have a presence (and a store), which supports your suggestion.

I have one last question. If I use hreflang properly will Google know that a page is the alternative version for that market. Right now, if I search for a product in Australia it shows me the same page from different stores. E.g. 
www.example.com.au/product/name
www.example.com/us/en/product/name
www.example.com/xl/en/product/name (current the global store)

Not sure if we have done anything wrong on the hreflang implementation but it sounds odd.

Thank you very much for your help.

[JonoAlderson]

Ooh, getting complex!

• "USA is our main market, but it would have the URL .com/us/en/. Do you think that would be a problem" - that should be fine.

• "We're using /yy/xx/ (country/language), divided in folders. Does it impact SEO? Would you recommend use hyphen instead?" - it's fine the way it is; as long as country is first (so that you can use geo-targeting for each country level folder in Google Search Console)

• "In this case, if I'm browsing the home page in the USA (.com/us/en/) the canonical would reference the default home (.com)?" - Nope, and be careful here; the canonical tag should reference the correct URL for the current country/language version (in this case, .com/us/en/). You want each country to have/manage its own value.

• You could attempt to try and do some clever stuff by artificially canonising certain pages to specific countries; however, that'll impact the indexation of those pages in their respective countries, and you'll end up sending people to the wrong versions.

• "[...] If I visit .com/us/en/ from Australia I stay in the USA version, and get a notification asking me if I want to go to the Australian version. Does it make sense?" - Yup, perfect

Your last point on hreflang; it may be that you have some configuration errors, but it may also be that Google believes that for a given query, for a given user, that it's better to serve them the incorrect geographic result (perhaps they're exhibiting strong purchasing behaviour, and the product is unavailable in their territory; or that an unavailable product page is resulting in poor user signals and harming that page's performance)?

I'd definitely do some digging into your hreflang configuration to rule that out first, though!