Index problems

[Happy-SEO]

“The website http://www.vaneyckshutters.com/nl/ does not show in the index of Google (site:vaneyckshutters.com/nl/). This must be the homepage in the Netherlands. Previously, the page www.vaneyckshutters.com was redirected to /nl/. This page is accessible now with a canonical tag to http://www.vaneyckshutters.com/nl/ in the hope to let /nl/ be indexed. When we look at the SERPS for keyword ‘shutters’, the page http://www.vaneyckshutters.com/ is shown in Google.nl on #32 and in Belgium #3.

Problem & question: Why is it that /nl/ has not been indexed properly and why is it that we rank with http://www.vaneyckshutters.com on ‘shutters’ instead the/nl/ page?”

[PatrickDelehanty]

Hi there

First, I would make sure that you review international SEO resources and that you have everything tagged properly. Your /fr/ site is being indexed, and your .com has a hreflang tag pointing to the /fr/ page.

I would review your hreflang tags, canonical tags, and your geo-targeting in Search Console for all of your sites. Make sure that all of that is spot on and resubmit your sitemaps to Google.

Hope this helps - good luck!

[gfiorelli1]

Mmm... Patrick, albeit you're sharing good resources and giving good general advices, you are not giving a proper answer... and as a moderator about International SEO Q&A I saw you tend to do this frequently.

For instance, you are talking about the hreflang annotation toward the /fr/ homepage, but you are not advising that it is missing the hreflang annotation to the /nl/ version of the site and URL. Using the hreflang would be probably more effective that using the rel="canonical" in a case like this one.

So, you are not really answering to the problem "Happy SEO" has, which is why Google is indexing the root domain despite of the canonicalization toward the /nl/ subfolder.

Please, don't take it personally, but it is something I had to point it out.

[gfiorelli1]

Hi "Happy SEO",

first of all, my question is:

Why do you really need to have the /nl/ subfolder shown in the index, if the root itself is in Dutch by default. Experience tells me that it is much easier to receive links to a domain than a subfolder, so pretending to have this one indexed is somehow adding a difficulty in term of link building.

Said that, if you really want the /nl/ subfolder to be indexed instead of the root domain, why don't simply redirect 301 the domain name to the /nl/ subfolder?

From the little I know about your site, that would be the most logic thing to do

[PatrickDelehanty]

Hi Gianluca

My apologies here. I can see where my answer lacked when failing to bring up there not being a hreflang tag for the /nl/. My suggestion was to review the hreflang tag resources given, but I failed to mention that putting that hreflang tag in place would be a help to the site.

I understand my error, I appreciate you bringing it up and calling me on it. It won't happen again. Not taken personally at all - I appreciate you doing so, it helps me be more clear moving forward.

Patrick

[Happy-SEO]

Hi Gianluca,
Thanks for your response and thoughts. We have had a 301 redirect from the domain to the /nl/ but that is where the problem began. We had multiple situations.

Original situation: .com redirecting (301) to /nl/ => no indexation for /nl/

Solution 1: Delete 301 redirect and add canonical tag to /nl/ and add href lang tags

The ranking has been better when implementing solution 1, but /nl/ has still not been indexed. But the pages after /nl/ are indexed. Strange isn’t it? We see the same trend at store.apple.com redirecting to store.apple.com/us/ but /us/ has not been indexed. Our possible solution #2 was to setup NL content on .com and FR content on /fr/. But I’am afraid that I will lose positions in Belgium (now ranking #3).

[Happy-SEO]

Anyone?

[gfiorelli1]

Mmm... I wonder if Google decided to do so because of some external factor as, for instance, being the backlinks your website has pointing to www.domain.com and not www.domain.com/nl/, especially if the backlink can be defined as coming from netherland's site or targeting nl audience.

Said that, I still think that maybe your best solution would have been putting all the NL version under the main root and not in a /nl/ subfolder.

Example:

• www.domain.com <<< NL version
• www.domain.com/fr/ <<<< French version
• http://www.vaneyckshutters.com/kwaliteit-shutters/
• http://www.vaneyckshutters.com/fr/applications-de-nos-shutters/

and so on.

Obviously, right now this is not an easy solution, because it implies a sort of migration (tiny and internal, but migration anyway with everything related like 301 from old to new URLs), but possibly is the really valid one.

[Happy-SEO]

New update at:

https://moz.com/community/q/index-problems-part-2