Questions
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Canonical URL Multidomain Geolocation Based
Hey It depends on a few factors here: 1. What is the desired geographic target for each of these? I am assuming the .au and .co.uk are for Oz and UK so geo target them (auto) in webmaster tools and sign those off 2. The .com is a generic so could be competing - ensure you geo target this to the US if that is the desired geography. This ensures they are not competing with each other and there will be no duplication issues but is based on the US, Australia and UK assumption. Hope that helps Marcus
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Marcus_Miller0 -
What to use instead of a 404
Hi, It's not about 'using 404 pages'. It's about removing the occurence of a 404 page when a product isn't available... So the answer is yes. It's fine to redirect what was a product page to the main relevant category page if that product is no longer available and you don't plan on restocking in the future. In fact it's recommended if you want to preserve a large percentage of the link equity the original page has built up, and hopefully provide a good user experience by allowing customers to find alternative products. The only issue is if you have thousands of products being discontinued, then the amount of 301s can affect the speed of your website. But I've managed redirects for websites with 100s of thousands of products, and 10s of thousands of error pages without any issue. I'd echo Yossi in saying that it may be worth creating a custom 404 Error Page which helps your users if they encounter it, and also improves your branding - with most eCommerce sites with large inventories, it's inevitable error pages will crop up despite your best efforts. And I'd echo Nitin in saying that if you might get the product back again, you're better leaving the pages on the site and allowing customers to register their interest when it reappears...
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | badgergravling0 -
URL Parameters for Product Variation
Google ignores anything after the ? when it comes to indexing so you should be fine with your testing.
Technical SEO Issues | | EricaMcGillivray0 -
International SEO and Website Redirection
Hi Angelo, Those location-specific domains are what we refer to as a ccTLD (Country Code Top Level Domain) and while they are a minor signal to both search engines and users, if they're being 301'd to the .com they won't be offering any signals at all. The only way they'd be passing strength is if they have backlinks pointing to them. If this is the case, you can expect ~80-90% of this strength to be passed via the redirect, the same as a standard link according to Matt Cutts in 2013. If you really wanted to put those ccTLDs to good use you could create a geo-specific site on each one and have them rank individually for their respective country however I generally recommend against doing this simply because you're tripling the amount of time and budget that's required since each domain has to stand on its own merit.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ChrisAshton0 -
Global SEO
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
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Aleyda0 -
Googles tells com.au but the site redirects to com
This can definitely be a problem, and it needs to be fixed. It sounds as if there may be two websites with the same content showing up on the .com URL and the .COM.AU URL. What we typically recommend is that you verify your site in Google Search Console and tell Google which version you prefer--you'll need to verify both versions of your site. Also, you can use the hreflang tags on your site to tell Google that the .COM.AU site is meant for Australia, and the .COM site is meant for the USA.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GlobeRunner0