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Hi there,

The best way to identify if it's already safe to eliminate the 301 redirects from a previous Web migration/redesign is to verify if the old pages (you need to have a list of those old URLs) that were redirected in the past:

1. Are still crawled and indexed? (You can check the indexation easily in Google with "site:" directly, and then if you identify these old URLs in Google Search Console Search Analytics, by filtering by pages). If so, which pages? Are they also ranking still well for relevant terms? Which ones? Identify why is still ranking instead of the new version of the page: Is the redirect correctly implemented? Going to a new version that is really relevant? The old pages being linked from internal or external sources that are passing high value? What's the historical and trend of crawling activity of those pages over time? Is it going down? (that you can analyze via logs).
2. Are still getting traffic? Identify which source: is it organic search traffic? referral from other sites? You can check this by verifying the URLs activity from the old site version in Google Analytics.
3. Are still being linked? A must if you're still ranking with these pages and traffic. Verify which sources are still linking to them and which are the one passing the highest value. Make the most to update these links to go to the new URL versions to stop passing value and traffic to the old URLs.

If you verify that these old URLs are not indexed, nor getting visibility or traffic anymore either from organic search or any other traffic source, then it's ok to eliminate the redirects.

Nonetheless, if they are still getting visibility & traffic you will need to keep the redirects, otherwise you will lose those visitors (and also give a bad user experience). The goal in this case would be to ask the previous questions among others to identify the reason why are they still being indexed, linked, etc. and update the relevant links, content, etc. to change this behavior and help Google to catch up with the URLs migrations.

I hope it helps

Hi Brandon,

About your questions:

• How you call the subdirectories shouldn't be a matter: /es/ or /es-es/ (it's meant to be descriptive and short for users but non-relevant at this point as a signal towards search engines). However, what's important is how you name the URLs of each language version later: they should be in the language of the content that they show.
• If your international versions are country targeted (meant to be focused on users in a specific country and not language targeted, meant to focus on any user speaking a language) then you should geolocate them through Google Webmaster Tools.
• You should also use hreflang annotation in your different pages, referring to each URL language (and country, if they're geotargeted) too, so you won't end-up facing any content duplication issues, since you might have for example a Spanish version targeting to Mexico with a very similar Spanish copy than your Spain version.  If you add the annotations then Google will know these different URLs are targeting to different countries or languages audience and shouldn't cause a content duplication problem.
• If you can't just translate/localize the whole site structure to other languages, then it's a must that you prioritize. Start with those language / countries that have the higher current audience for your site and have the higher potential to grow too. Enable just the most important landing pages / sections of your site if you can't do them all, the ones that you can really maintain, translate / localize well, to give also the best user experience to those visitors (besides of being able to rank with them well in search engines).

Take a look at this post where I wrote about how to set an International SEO strategy well from the start and avoid running into issues in the implementation later.

Thanks!

Aleyda

Hi Muhammed,

The text of your mobile version doesn't need to be exactly the same than the one from your desktop one, in fact, by dynamically serving different HTMLs you'll have much more flexibility to optimize your mobile HTMLs as much as possible from a content, design and SEO perspective to target your mobile audience.

Just to clarify, since I know is usually a concern in this type of situation: This is not cloaking. If you show the same content to both users and crawlers of the same device type then it's ok, you'll show the same mobile optimized HTMLs versions to both mobile users and crawlers, and the other desktop optimized HTMLs, to both desktop users and crawlers.

I would recommend you to check this post I wrote some time ago with some of the most common concerns when doing Mobile SEO, where this and other questions are clarified.

Thanks!

Hi Angelos,

Each one of your ccTLDs require their own unique SEO process, as they target different audiences that will search differently (language, seasonality, product/service preferences) and different competitors in each market, that will need a specific keyword research, optimization & link building actions, based on the characteristics and goals that you identify in each one of them.

So, my suggestions to start doing international SEO are:

1. Do a specific keyword & competition research for each one of them. Support yourself with a native speaker (even if it's in English and you also speak English, if it's a research for the UK, then have a British doing the research, as they might search with specific, different terms). Based on this research you will be able to identify your keywords target.

2. Do a technical, content & link audit of each ccTLD. Beyond the typical optimization related elements you will validate, it's important that you compare each of your ccTLDs link profile vs. the ones of your competitors for each country market: What's the gap? What are the link characteristics and volume? What type of links do you need to close the popularity gap? Where do these links to your competitors for each country come from? Based on these data you will be able to establish the necessity and strategy for a link building campaign.

3. Verify how you're ranking with each ccTLD in Google SERPs for each country and the organic search traffic from each country. You mention that you are redirecting the traffic although don't specify how. In general, I wouldn't recommend redirects only in very specific circumstances. To avoid country visibility and traffic misalignment issues what I would recommend is to use hreflang annotations instead.

4. Start tracking and monitoring your results independently in each country market. Most rank trackers support this. You should monitor each independently in Google Search Console, as well as they should have their own Google Analytics to monitor their traffic & conversion behavior per property and country.

So as you can see: Each property focused on a specific country market will require a specific SEO process, analysis and effort.

Check out this checklist: https://moz.com/blog/the-international-seo-checklist as well as post here: https://blog.kissmetrics.com/how-to-international-seo/ to start.

I hope this helps

Hi Jonathan, Thanks for your question!

The answer depends on:

• The demand: With the search behavior of your users: Do they search for your product using the type of wood in their queries? For example: "Product + Wood Type"? If your users use those terms and queries to search for your products then it would compensate to enable them specifically to be indexable instead of using just a filter that could be non-indexable in many ways (to avoid the crawling of pages that are not meant to be ranked anyway and control your crawl budget).
• The supply: The availability of products and content that you have to match those queries: Do you have enough unique products to feature for each type of wood (or whatever criteria or subcategory) that you have identified that your users search for? Would it be considered a "low quality content" page with little value and offer by the users? With no unique description? Would they end-up penalized by Panda if you decide to index them?

If you identify that there's a demand for those specific type of products that would compensate that you specifically enable these pages to be indexable and rank for them and at the same time you have enough supply, with products and descriptive content to feature in them and satisfy your users, then yes, the best would be to create a static structure for these sub-types or sub-categories, instead of just non-indexable filters. If it's not the case, then the best would be to allow your products to be browsed using them, but without indexing these pages specifically.

Would this answer your question? If you can give me more specific examples of the category levels or more specific scenario (without giving specific brand or company names if you don't want or can't) I would be able to give you a more specific answer.

Thanks!

Hi there,

Why are you looking to migrate the subdomains to subdirectories? In general, the most "natural" URL structure for a city organization would be: yourdomain.com/city/category/ since you will be able to consolidate all the popularity that you can attract to the different cities to your main domain structure and on the other hand, optimize (as you should be already doing with your subdomains) every landing page targeting each city.

Nonetheless, if you're already ranking with these subdomains for your keywords related to these cities the effort and substancial benefit that you might look to get might not compensate the effort -only if you see that you're not ranking with this structure and look to consolidate popularity-.

What is definitely fundamental that you do whether you decide to keep the subdomains or migrate to the subdirectories is that each city page (and its subpages) should feature unique, relevant content optimize for them. This shouldn't be necessarily difficult to achieve if you organize and optimize your structure to show:

• The name of each city in the titles, meta descriptions, headings.
• Add your specific office address in each city.
• Add your telephone number in each city.
• Enable and promote user generated content, like reviews, comments, ratings targeting each city.
• Create different offers or promotions for each city.

Like this, despite the fact that these city landing pages might feature similar offering (which is normal since they're the same business at the end) the content will be unique for each one of them.

I hope this helps. If you still have any doubts, please let me know.

Aleyda

Hi there,

The problem are the frames indeed. If you take a look at the cache version in Google of that page: http://kilgray.com/memoq/2015-100/help-en/index.html doesn't show where you are adding the hreflang annotations and none of the content of that page in fact: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:1jRFSsVC_MwJ:kilgray.com/memoq/2015-100/help-en/index.html%3Fproject_home&num=1&hl=en&gl=es&strip=0&vwsrc=0

The issue is that with the frames is not only the hreflang annotations that Google won't be able to identify, but the all the content you have in there is not visible and therefore won't be able to rank the pages that use it... which is much more critical than the hreflang annotations.

My recommendation would be to replace the usage of frames, make sure that all of the content is shown through one piece of HTML at a time... and if you include then the hreflang annotations in the head area of the HTML Google will be able to identify them... as well as your content.

Thanks,

Aleyda

Hi there,

Seems that is only a test at the moment in mobile organic search results: http://mockingbird.marketing/google-playing-with-click-to-call-mobile-organic-results/ and targeting to local type of businesses. I've checked some of the pages that were already showing these type of results and saw that not all of them were actually including schema but had their phone number prominently featured on the site as well as listed in third party local citation sources, so in this case it's likely Google identifying them with a variety of sources and definitely featuring a consistent telephone number on your site with schema as well as in citation sources won't hurt Unfortunately since it's only a test and Google hasn't really officially rolled it out it's difficult to tell at this point, but hope that this will help to get you prepared.

Thanks!

Hi there,

The hreflang annotation along the canonical tags are correctly implemented on the page, the issue you have is regarding the redirects... and it's a big issue since your UK page is not even indexed because of it.

So, to clarify, this is the logic that you should follow with hreflang annotations across canonicals, your configuration says:

When on www.americanholidays.com:

With rel="canonical" href="http://www.americanholidays.com/" /> that the original version is itself, which is ok. 
With rel="alternate" hreflang="en-ie" href="http://www.americanholidays.com/" /> that this page is targeted to English speakers in the Republic of Ireland. 
With rel="alternate" hreflang="en-gb" href="http://www.americanholidays.com/gb_en/" /> that this is the alternative version of the page targeted to English speakers in the UK.

This is all ok! It should be the other way around for the UK version... when on http://www.americanholidays.com/gb_en/ it should be:

With <link <span class="html-tag">rel</link <span>="canonical" href="http://www.americanholidays.com/gb_en/" /> that the original version is itself, which is ok. 
With <link < span="">rel="alternate" hreflang="en-ie" href="http://www.americanholidays.com/" /> that this page is the alternate targeted to English speakers in the Republic of Ireland. 
With <link <span class="html-tag">rel</link <span>="alternate" hreflang="en-gb" href="http://www.americanholidays.com/gb_en/" /> that this is the page targeted to English speakers in the UK. </link <>

Unfortunately I cannot check what you have in the UK version of the page because of the mix of 302s and 301s redirects that you have towards the Irish version, which are causing that it doesn't even get indexed on Google:

https://www.google.es/search?q=site%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.americanholidays.com%2Fgb_en%2F&oq=site%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.americanholidays.com%2Fgb_en%2F&aqs=chrome..69i57j69i58.1174j0j4&sourceid=chrome&es_sm=119&ie=UTF-8

Eliminate the redirects -each page should be accessible on its own... and if you want at some point refer Irish users that might end-up going to the UK version or viceversa, what you should do is IP detection and show a little banner recommending that there's a better option for that country but not automatically redirects anywhere-. If you do this and the proper hreflang annotation configuration in all of the pages along with a geotargeting of the /gb_en/ directory in the Google Search Console to the UK (https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/62399?hl=en) you should have an ok working international Web configuration.

Thanks!