Welcome to the Q&A Forum

The example.com/widget-category/page-3 URL cannot have as href in its hreflang="en-CA" the example.ca/widget-category/page-1 because also this other URL - example.com/widget-category/page-1 - has that Canadian URL as href (moreover, that is the correct href for its hreflang="en-CA").

Hence, if you follow your first idea, you will be having a URL (the canadian first page of the paginated list) that will have two different hreflang annotations ( <rel="alternate" href="example.com/widget-category/page-1" hreflang="en-US">and <rel="alternate" href="example.com/widget-category/page-3" hreflang="en-US">, which is totally uncorrect, because you are telling Google to use two URLs for English speaking users in the USA, instead of one.</rel="alternate"></rel="alternate">

Sincerely I wouldn't worry that much. If you are using the rel="prev"/"next", Google will consider the third page of the US listing as a all with the first two pages, hence it should not start showing it in the index.

I don't know of any "guide" by Google about how better design an international seo architecture.

However, of the two options you presented, the most common, correct and logic is the second one (domain.com/pt-br/), because the first is substantially burying the Brazilian Portuguese version of your site in the architecture.

Secondly, using the ISO schema "language-country" is also a good way to maintain the consistency in the site, also because those same pairs you will be using when implementing the hreflang annotations (and it is also a way to make understand what iso pairs your developers must use).

Thirdly, internet users recognize very well already what pt-br stands for

Finally, a note. If the brazilian portuguese is the main version of your site, why don't you create it directly in the root of your domain (domain.com directly in brazilian portuguese), when all the other versions will be in their dedicated subdirectories? This is the most common thing to do.

Hola!

The hreflang is not something based on authority or popularity: it is a “swapper”.

i use that term consciously because “swapping URLs“ is how John Mueller define what the hreflang does.

When Google sees that we are indicating that a URL is the correct one for a given geography, and in that geography is already ranking another URL, then Google will swap the two URLs and start showing the new one.

This means that Google should start showing the .co.uk URLs instead of the .com mes.

However, I suggest you to test this on a limited set of URLs and see the results. If the swap happens, then you can proceed extending the hreflang to all both websites.

Finally, surely it is fundamental to optimize the .co.uk websites, at least starting with basic on page and tech seo action and then, hopefully, with improving their link profiles.

in fact, even if the swapping works, you then must maintain the rankings.

Equivalent means two or more pages that even if are targeting different languages and/or countries serve the same purpose.

The easiest example is the homepage of the same brand that is targeting 3 different countries. One may be in Spanish, one in English and one in Italian; plus they can be in 3 different domain names. Despite of all the differences, they are equivalent.

The same is for services pages or product pages. If product A is sold in the englis website, and Spanish and Italian one, even if their URLs structure is different and their content is different (for instance for the same different language), however they still equivalent.

However, if your site are targeting different countries each one with a different language from the others, you can also consider the idea of not implementing the hreflang, but in those pages where brand name search is prevalent (how me page, contact page).

but, yes, the hreflang is a must if two or more sites are in the same language even if each one of them targets a different country (eg: USA, Canada and UK).

Finally, the fact that the different website you have are not Morris sites, its a plus and ideally what all websites doing international must behave.

Great timeline!!!

I add 1 big Google update you've miss: Vince update in 2009 (February/March 2009), aka the Nig Brand Rank Update...

I believe it is important as, imho, we must see in it the 1st step of the actual updates.

Hi Tyler...

I do not remember the exact definition of this, but to preserve all the juice on your site is not suggested by Google.

To answer to your doubt, I suggest you to find the answer reading this old but still very valid post by Randfish: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/5-reasons-you-should-link-out-to-others-from-your-website

In my Google Reader list I've:

• http://www.seomoz.org/blog
• http://www.seomoz.org/ugc
• http://analytics.blogspot.com
• http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com
• the Bing Search blog
• http://www.seobythesea.com
• http://www.seobook.com
• http://www.seroundtable.com/
• http://www.blogstorm.co.uk/
• http://searchengineland.com
• http://www.searchenginejournal.com
• http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/
• http://www.davidnaylor.co.uk/blog
• http://www.conversationmarketing.com/
• http://www.distilled.net/blog/
• http://seogadget.co.uk/
• http://www.stateofsearch.com/
• http://www.blueglass.com/blog/
• http://www.seerinteractive.com/blog/

Long list, eh?

Obviously I cannot read daily all this blogs... but around 5/6 yes, and the others if the title of their post catch my attention instantly.

The ones I daily read while having a long second breakfast are:

1. SEOmoz main blog;
2. Search Engine Land
3. SEO Book (if it publishes something new, as it not so regular)
4. SEO by SEA
5. Conversation Marketing
6. Blueglass Blog

Guest blogging is a great way to make link building.

The rules in how using an editorial link to your site are almost the same, apart - somehow - a sort of "netiquette" that says that maybe it is not so polite to link to your site in the first guest post you write for a blog. But, then, all depends by the specific situation (negotiation with the blog owner, real importance of the page linked).

What is sure, is the link in author signature or about/description that usually follows the post. There you are legitimated to put a link to your site. My suggestion is to make that "author description" consistent for every place you do guest blogging.

Hola,

first of all I would consider how strong it is my .ie site. If it is not that strong (i.e.: general rankings, link profile, social presence...), then I would migrate it to the .com domain name.

Then, during the migration, I would 301 all the existing URLs of .ie site to their correspondent in .com one,

When the .com is set with the country targeted sub carpets, I would specify in Google Webmaster Tools that the subcarpets /ie/, /uk/ and /fr/ are geotargeting Ireland, UK and France (the geolocalization of the .com/ must not be set, if you mean to use it for the global market.

Then, I would implement the rel="alternate" hreflang="x" in order to specify that the /ie/ content is meant to be the one to show to user from Ireland, the /uk/ for user from UK and /fr/ to users from France.

Finally, in the case the English contents in .com, .com/ie/ and .com/uk/ are identical or substantially identical, I would also set for the /ie/ and /uk/ URLs the .com's URLs as being canonical ones.

More infos in these official Google posts here (and maybe more understandable than my answer):

Multiregional and multilingual sites > http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=182192

New markup for multilingual content > http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com.es/2011/12/new-markup-for-multilingual-content.html

Webmaster Help - rel="alternate" hreflang="x" > http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=189077

Hola Guide, did the Yannick answers helped you solving the issue, especially the 2nd one? I say so, because I still see Google choosing to show a description other than yours in the SERPs. A description which is taken directly from the home page content (surely because it thinks it better respond to the queries done by the users).

I hear you, but if Barry writes that Google told me that no update is running, I trust him. I don't think he was referring to the bath cleaners of the Google office when saying "Google".

Mine is just a reminder that before looking at  major algo changes is always better to (re)control all the other potential reasons of a ranking change.

Hi Eric,

first of all authorship should not be shown for pages like the home page of your site. Remember, authorship should be used just for articles, posts, guides, white papers... editorial content that has a proper author.

Pages like home page, product listing, product pages, institutional pages... not.

If you want to show an image, maybe your logo, you could use the schema.org/organization, as explained by Google here.

Then... if you do a search like "angelsmith.net", then you will see sitelinks (10). It does't show them when the search is "angelsmith".

Why this difference? First of all remember that we cannot decide if a search snippet will show sitelinks or not (we can only tell Google what URL to not show as such), but in your specific case I think it is because of the supposed intention Google gives to that branded query.

It's probable that users' intention is to see the local search information of Angelsmith. That's also reinforced by you presence in Google Plus as a physical business.

p.s.: about sitelinks. Usually Google choose the sitelinks over its knowledge base, meaning with that URLs that usually are clicked on by the users in its SERPs. Apart that, schema like breadcrumbs, but also a clear site's navigation architecture helps Google in this facet of of SERPs rewriting.

p.s.2: your case remind me to correct the use of authorship also on my site

Is that page ranking or is that page indexed? Because sometimes can happen you have a link in a page that Google has not indexed (that happens in case of directories, sometimes).

Then, with the Mozbar, check the metrics of that page and of its domain. mozRank value corresponds almost to the real PR of the page and DomainRank and DomainTrust metrics can tell you if it is an authoritative site.

If the metrics are good at least on a domain level, then be happy, because you have obtained naturally a link from a new unique domain name which has good/excellent domain metrics that helps yours domain metrics as well (especially the domainTrust one).

This is the case of being linked in an internal article of the New York Times, for instance.

Ah...

dear Anthony, thanks for the recommendation, but actually I'm already involved with Jorge in this search

The correct answer to your kind of issue, which is related to psgination, is this one: Use the rel="prev" rel="next" tags. These are the tags Google suggest to use in order to specify that a set of pages are paginated, hence it will just consider the first one. Check these links: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com.es/2011/09/pagination-with-relnext-and-relprev.html http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com.es/2012/03/video-about-pagination-with-relnext-and.html http://www.seomoz.org/q/need-help-with-some-duplicate-content There are several plugins for Wordpress about this solution.

I would use no índex for the https version of the site, or block it from robots.txt, if i don't want it to be indexed.

Mmmm... when I enter in KFC.com, I'm not automatically redirected to Spanish (my language accordingly to IP... as if it was a user agent on browser detection, being my browser set up to English, I would have not seen the option hover selector).

I think that that's a good use of IP detection, because it doesn't involve an automatic redirection to the most "presumed" suitable version of the site. That, in fact, would be a problem because googlebot, having an American IP, would be endlessy redirected to the US version of KFC.

Then, if you want to use subdomains (as KFC does), or country code level domains or subfolders, that's something that only you must decide over the base of business questions more than SEO ones:

1. do you have enough presence and visits from the targeted country so to justify a ccTLD? Yes? Go for it. No? Consider subfolder or subdomain;
2. do you have an Ecommerce and, therefore, you have a very complex dbase of products, must deal with very specific country laws about whatever thing (i.e.: products you can't sell, products that may have a special legislation in a given country, VAT issue...). If it is so, then consider the ccTLD or the subdomain option
3. note that 2. is also valid for any huge website. Subfolders, in fact, can be the less optimal solution from a technological point of view when it comes to multicountry
4. You site is not so big and you want to "test" the success it may have when targeting other countries/languages or, maybe, it is still not so strong in terms of visits and conversions from other countries than your mother one, than subfolders possibly are the way to go.

For everything else, then, look at the Aleyda checklist Matt linked in his answer.

This is just my opinion, but you cannot really compare Ontolo and Raventools as they are very differently target oriented. Ontolo is a great tool for link building only, while Raventools is an online marketing campaign tool, as it has also on site Seo, content and social features. Said that, if you are looking for something general, which has also a quite good link prospecting tool, than Raventools is for you; if you are looking for a link building tool on steroids, then you should go for Ontolo (which just added some new features just today free for subscribers). Other very good tool is the Link Prospector Tool by Citation Labs.

Actually what Russ said is correct. European countries languages, although largely stemming from three different roots (german, latin and slavic), are quite similar in how they work semantically.

In fact, the problems Google may have are related to not European languages, like chinese, japanes or arabic, which are completely different in how they are conceived (just think to chinese or japanes, which are ideograms based). That's also one of the reasons why it took a long time in its history to present a Google version in those languages.

Another thing is if the quality of the regional Googles is high or not, but that could start a long thread

Hi Ozil,

did the answer by Matt and Jimmy offered you hints so to help you better in the strategic decision you were looking to solve?

Said that, as Matt told, your question is too big to be answered in a simple Q&A, apart that all the possible recommendations would have the defect of being "generalistic", because this kind of strategic decision can be taken only knowing the detail of your business plan and not only of your website itself.

Ciao

Gianluca