Targetting multiple countries

[Guest]

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[RyanKent]

Hi Seoug.

When you use country-based folders, just think of the entire URL, including the country folder, as your base URL. You would have no problem thinking of http://uk.xyz.com/ as your base URL, correct? Think of http://www.xyz.com/uk/ in exactly the same way. Every page of your UK site will begin with that URL.

Should the pages in folders, say UK folders, be interlinked, just like we do in normal websites ?

Yes, you would use normal links within each country's site.

You want to duplicate your site information for each "site". If your website was about sweaters, you want to write your UK page in reference to the UK. You would talk about how the sweater can keep you warm on a cold London morning, the prices, sizes, etc. would all use UK measurements. For the US pages, you might talk about how the sweater can keep you warm on a cold New York winter day, and use US measurements. Customize the pages for each country's target audience.

I can't think of any reason a British reader would want to see the US page, nor vice versa. With that said, you could offer your language selector in a prominent location throughout your site. This would allow users to select their country and be taken to the equivalent page on another country's site.

**Can we use 10-12 pages in each folder. **

You can offer thousands of pages in each folder. However many pages you offer in your main site could be offered in every site. It's up to you.

Some additional details can be found in a similar thread I replied to early today:  http://www.seomoz.org/q/what-is-the-best-seo-site-structure-for-multi-country-targeting

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[RyanKent]

I didn't mean to interlink uk and au sites. What i meant was interlinking of internal pages of each site. like interlinking of all the pages of  uk site.

Yes, I probably offered too much information. I'll abbreviate the reply to it's first sentence: Yes, you would use normal links within each country's site.

if one of the pages of http://www.xyz.com/uk   is about sweaters, what should be the URL of that page ?

The URL could be http://www.xyz.com/uk/sweaters. Or it could be http://www.xyz.com/uk/clothing/sweaters. It really depends on how you desire to structure your site.

For a nice international URL structure, I had to search a LOT of sites to find a good one to use as an example. I like http://www.ibm.com/

[NFI]

Hi SEOUG, I am currently marketing a multilingual website, We use the /(county) extension. Sign up to google Webmaster tools as you can select the countries to be preffered in. You can use the same pages in each folder however i would keep the template the same but the text will have to differ, you will get stung if the content is pretty much the same. Hope this helps.

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[RyanKent]

Hi Martin.

It is my understanding content can be understand identical content can be offered in sections of your site targeted to a specific country. For example, if you have a general short article in English, you may have that article duplicated on your US - English, Canada - English, Australia - English, UK - English, etc. pages.

It is important to vary the content with respect to local patterns. For example, in the US we use "center" whereas the UK uses "centre". The same localization should be applied to units of measurements and currencies. There is no need to otherwise try to alter an article to avoid duplicate content issues.

A Matt Cutts video on this topic: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ets7nHOV1Yo

[RyanKent]

Correct.

Treat the /uk/ folder's contents exactly as you would if it was contained on a .co.uk website. You will cross-link to your content throughout the /uk/ site. You will work to earn links for your content from sites based in England, and so forth.

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[RyanKent]

Well it depends on your meaning of "necessary".

It is never a requirement. If your site consistently uses folders and the proper meta tags then Google should get things right ever time. Specifying the tools in Google WMT is mainly helpful to assist Google in making a determination when there is any confusion.

For example, if you have a page marked with the "EN" tag located in your /uk/ folder, then Google may not be sure whether the page should be considered for US or England. If you have your location properly specified in Google WMT, then that would be taken as a very strong indicator the web page should be associated with England.

Short answer....just do it. It takes moments to take this action and helps ensures your pages are correctly associated with the right SERPs.