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Huh. Okay, we are going to figure this out.

Did you change the domain recently? Within the last year? When was that footer link removed?

You only need the HREFLANG for the pages that you have translations for.

I do not recommend redirecting people to different content based on IP. Googlebot may change IP addresses but it's always from the US. This makes it impossible for Googlebot to see any of your international content. You can use the IP address to ask the user if they want to set their settings to a different country and be placed there every time, but do not assume.

Hi Katarina!

Your theories are right but let me explain a little more.

• US page versions have to be completely unique with content related to US search intent and be indexed separately - therefore no longer canonicalised to UK version.
  If you are going to create a US and UK version of your page, there needs to be a reason why. If there is no reason why other than "someone told us we should," then only do one page. If there is a reason like differing product information then the pages need to be distinct from each other.

• Ensure hreflang is enabled to point Google to correct local page versions
  This is blended with what you said above. If you use a canonical and hreflang, the engines will get confused. You are telling them with the canonical that they are the same page. Then the hreflang tells them that the pages are different because of localization. You can't have both. Remove the canonical and make sure the hreflang is right.

• Ensure local backlinks point to localised pages.
  Yes!

That only goes back to 2017, any data before then? Is there any information before the 2017 changes? I doubt they tracked it, but here is to hoping.

I truthfully don't like the average position metric site-wide, at least for my business. It doesn't tell a complete story. What does the average rank look like over time for 1) the homepage and 2) a product page like https://www.castleford.com.au/amplify/social-media/

Also, I tried to find blog/article content and came across a 404. Resources >> Content Marketing Library >> Under Ads "Read 25 tips for better Google Ads campaigns."

https://www.castleford.com.au/whitepaper-adwords-campaign-download - broken

Are there articles still?

Is there some reason they only want to target the US and UK and not Australia or Canada for instance?

If it is alright with them, I would just have one site. Targeted at western-type English speaking travelers. If you can't produce a different site for the US AND the UK separately, then just create one.

Unless there is another reason it is just the US and UK. Please share if so!

Did your company explore doing a responsive site rather than an m.domain.com mobile specific site? That would take care of any issues.

For the mobile site you have now, you should have all content on the main site optimized for mobile. That means all pages should have a corresponding mobile page and a rel=canonical from the mobile page to the desktop page.

You also need to fix the redirects and ensure the mobile experience is always top notch.

This is a good resource for you: http://blog.hubspot.com/insiders/how-to-follow-googles-mobile-rules-for-awesome-seo

Yeah, that is actually what hreflang was intended to be. Just to differentiate content pages that had the same content just translated, even if in just dialect. Alas it is also used to show geo-targeting, but I try to not be mad about it

Change as much as needed to make the target market user comfortable. There is no hard and fast rule.

Wow you are easy. You've got it right, there is no reason to make different landing pages for each of these terms. Your plan is correct.

DA is Moz's estimate of the importance of domains in relation to each other. Google does this themselves, so it's not that they "see" DA, but they have something similar.

As long as you don't expect the content from the vendor to bring you organic traffic, you should be okay. You said you have the canonical in place to them, so as long as that is there, there should be no impact from algorithm updates. You wouldn't be penalized for this.

Check the ones you want to delete to see if there are any backlinks to any of them. If there are, don't delete them yet.

For those with no external links, first check the traffic for the last year. None? Then make sure there are no references (links) to them on your site. Once there are no links to the post, then delete.

If there are external links to the post, either update it and republish (301 redirect to the new URL from the old one), just keep it, or contact the site linking and ask them to change the link to an updated post. Don't waste that link equity!

Hope that helps!

Both answers so far get to one of the points that I was going to make, always update redirects so that there is not a chain, but I wanted to add something else. You only need redirects as long as someone is linking to those pages. You should be taking time to fix any internal references to changed URLs and contacting websites that link to the old URLs and asking them to change the URLs. That should be a part of any site URL change.

If you have only revised your URLs once, you only need redirects for 3-6 months while the search engines reindex everything. In that time, you should have changed all links to the old URLs.

In your case, I'd drop all old redirects except for the last one and see what 404s you get. Find the referring site, and contact them to change the link to your site. Once that is all done, then you can work on this latest revision to change those links.

Hope that helps!

I actually wouldn't change the domain unless you are doing it for another reason. It's been around since 2007 and I am reluctant to tell you to dump it in favor of a new one. Changing your domain sets everything fresh and you'll most likely seen a bigger loss in organic traffic.

When was the reconsideration request accepted? Can you give us a timeline of everything that happened?

That is most likely the issue then. If the site is 2 months old, then there isn't enough trust in the site yet. Google, because the site is so new, is showing the user the most relevant and most trusted pages for the phrase "Series Digital". If the site was older, or had ranked for that term for some time and then dropped, I would be worried, but this is all very natural.

You are going to need to do some basic SEO to the site to help this process out. The homepage doesn't have a meta description. The homepage page title is a little over optimized. Try approaching the titles from a user standpoint and having a unique meta description for every page.

Have you submitted an XML sitemap to Google as well? If the company just launched, are there any plans for press coverage?

This is an interesting problem to have! I think the issue they are running into is that your auth file for http is redirecting to https. They want you to remove the http site from your account and then add the https site. Once you have done that, you can use the Site Move tool.

Is that a little more clear? I would love to hear if that works for you. it would be a great YouMoz post!

You have the instance that is the reason I took a liking to international SEO. In your instance, because of the annoyances of commonly used languages that are also countries ... I suggest ccTLDs or subdomains.

• Subdomains - You will have to claim each subdomain in Search Console and target them to their specific countries and then use hreflang between the languages within the country subsites.

• www.domain.com (main)

• www.domain.com/fr (french)

• www.domain.com/es (spanish)

• ca.domain.com/en (Canadian, english)

• ca.domain.com/fr (Canadian, french)

• fr.domain.com (France)

• ccTLDs - This does the geo-targeting for you. You will need to put the hreflang between the languages within the country sites.

• www.domain.com (main)

• www.domain.com/fr (french)

• www.domain.com/es (spanish)

• www.domain.ca/en (Canadian, english)

• www.domain.ca/fr  (Canadian, french)

• www.domain.fr (France)

It does not matter which you use. But if you wanted to use the same root domain, the subdomains are a good way to go about that!

I think you asked a similar question a few months ago, but the only update I know about is the one mentioned in that question from the other responder. Sorry to not be of more help, but it could be an iteration of that update.

Hey!

So international can be pretty confusing, so welcome to the world of international expansion. I'd suggest first checking out this tool I built to determine how to approach your situation. It seems like you have needs for translation (German language, not Germany focused) and geo-targeting (Canada focus, same language), and you will have reasons for people to access different content.

http://outspokenmedia.com/international-seo-strategy/

Let me know what result you get and we can go from there. If it is blended, I can give you some pointers from there. It won't be easy, it's not just about hreflang, but we'll get you set up right.

That tool is meant for the business as a whole.

Are you willing to (or are they, the client/company) put the work into differentiating the content per country? Is that needed? If it is just the form that changes, you can just change the form depending on what country they input into the form. Would that work? Then there is only one site to maintain and all you have to deal with is translations (german, spanish, japanese, french, etc. The languages, not the countries).

All that said you have two choices:

1. One site, different translations (using hreflang in between) with some changes to what happens with the form.

2. Multiple country sites that are operated differently to target each region. These can be ccTLDs or on the same domain but need to be treated as separate sites. No need for hreflang, but major need for different content.

Hi!

First, it sounds like you are targeting countries, not languages. Can you confirm that? Meaning, someday you might want to target Canada, which will need French language content that is in the Canadian dialect of French.

If you are targeting countries, this is the right setup. The key is to treat each site like it's own site. Don't just make a copy and translate to general French. If you want to go about targeting languages, not countries, then I suggest using one domain and having a subfolder per language. In that case, you would use hreflang tags to show the SEs that the content is the same just translated.

It all depends on what you want to do in the future. It sounds more like you want to do language translation, not geo-targeting. But again, I'll need you to confirm that to give the right answer.