SEO Best Practice for a multi-language and multi-country website

[RiaMT]

Hello Moz Community,

I hope someone could help me identify the best action to take on an on-page optimization confusion I am currently having.

The website I am currently trying to optimize is http://www.riafinancial.com/locations/us/home.aspx. There is an option to view a country specific version of the page, or language version (there are 2 drop down menus on the top, for country or for language).

When viewing a country specific version of the page, the URL changes depending on country selected. Some country versions also updates the content to the language of that country, but some remain English. Example, when viewing the France version of the page (http://www.riafinancial.com/locations/FR/home.aspx), the content is updated to french version, but when viewing the China version (http://www.riafinancial.com/locations/CN/home.aspx), the content is in English. This is because we have not yet translated for all countries (this will eventually be all translated).

Now, when viewing by language, the URL does NOT change. Example, in http://www.riafinancial.com/locations/us/home.aspx, you can choose French, German, Italian, Polish, etc. The content of the page will change based on language chosen, but the URL (including page titles, meta-descriptions) will not change.

My question is, how should I approach this for on-page optimization? Canonical? Hreflang? Any input, feedback, recommendation, suggestion will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

Sharon

[JarnoNijzing]

Sharon,

if i'm not mistaken this is what you are trying to do:

http://www.riafinancial.com/locations/us/home.aspx is normally in English (or American to some ;-)) and with the language selection the us part of the url changes to FR for France and CH for Chinese .. etc.

I think you will find your answer in Danny Dovers cheat sheet:
http://moz.com/blog/the-web-developers-seo-cheat-sheet-2013-edition

you can indeed target selected languages and countries with the href lang and using the double parameter (hreflang="fr-FR"). Hope this helps  you and solves your problem.

Regards

Jarno