Welcome to the Q&A Forum

I've been thinking about this one too. And my inital reaction is that it doesn't count. Another thread at Google backs me up, http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=7778313784ba6db5&hl=en

I'd go with that it doesn't, not unless the href is present.

Hi!

This is where I think the misunderstanding of hreflang shows itself. There are others that disagree with me, but the following is my opinion.

You have one page in one general language. hreflang markup is for identifying language changes on multiple pages not for geo-targeting. What you have here is content in two general languages and attempting to mark it up for 5 regional dialects.

If this is all the content you are going to make and you are keeping it on .co.nl, you will be telling the search engines that you are targeting the Netherlands with the content in English and Dutch.

If you want your English and Dutch content without any geo-targeting, you will need to have it on some kind of general TLD like .net, .com or something like that. Then you can use hreflang between the languages for English and Dutch.

If you want to target those countries as well, that gets a little more complicated. You'll need to determine the best structure, how you are targeting the content to those regions (this means changing the content somehow), and then implement something with multiple ccTLDs or on a gTLD with regional subfolders. Then we can talk about translations of that regional content.

I'm assuming that your best route is going to be transitioning to a more general TLD and offering the two translated content sites as you have that right now, but I can't promise that is what is best for your audience. Take a look at this tool and see what works best for your business and go from there: http://outspokenmedia.com/international-seo-strategy/

The server's location can help but it's not the end all, be all of location targeting. There are so many hosting companies in the US. There are many sites hosted in the US that rank fine internationally. With that said, hosting in or near that country is a signal that your site is targeted to that country so it can help, if just a little. As to where, get as close as you can naturally, but I don't think it'll create a giant difference. Like I said, it's not that big of an indicator, so specificity is just another part of it. Worry more about keeping the content real and written by natives than where the site is hosted.

My guess is no. It might correlate someday, the number of messages and how generally popular you become, but messages are not public data. Google and Bing can't crawl that data, so they can't use it. Social signals like likes, replies, reviews, etc are available metrics, so they can at least be taken into account. However, it was and still remains not a direct signal, more of a correlation.

Keith and Bryan are dead on. If your homepage is better for users looking for insurance, then why is there an insurance page? My guess is because your site offers more than insurance.

Yes, getting links to the homepage will be easier, but that should not be the reason for killing a well ranking page that seems to be the better page.  I'd recommend updating the insurance page to make it convert like the homepage and let it remain the focus of insurance traffic. Then make sure that your homepage links to the insurance page with good anchor text, and that it doesn't link to another page with any insurance related text.

You shouldn't need to duplicate the content to get into Google News across countries. In fact, you should only have to submit once. Google News uses their algorithm to present articles on a topic based on a number of factors. For example, you can see BBC articles in the US if that's the most reputable resource for that topic. But if there are US based publishers writing on the same topic and the user is closer or prefers that publication, that one will show.

The location in your submission is your physical location of your publishing company, not that of who you are targeting. This is what I've seen in checking the forums and with clients. News is more specific to the language of the article, not the location. Relevance, popularity, and language are the strongest factors.

Other similar questions on Google News Forum: https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topicsearchin/news/category$3Agoogle-news-publishers$20country

Hi!

With a .co.uk, you cannot geotarget to other countries, but that's not needed in this case. Since you are not actually geo-targeting, you are actually just translating, all you need is to add a few lines of code and you're set.

Visit my guide here and it has instructions on what to do. http://bit.ly/14GdPoh

Kate

Perfect.

Note the #2 item on this list. The key to having international content is treating each country subsite as it's own site. Make sure you have someone from that country consulting you on each country focused site. So if UK, have someone native to the UK review the site. Same for Germany, France, etc.

As for structure, my personal favorite is subfolders. So your UK site would be www.domain.com/uk. www.domain.com if you get to the point that you have so many and really need a US one as well, make www.domain.com the "universal" version, and www.domain.com/us as targeted to the US, but it might not be necessary at this point.

The content is the big part, if you want to do well internationally, really focus on getting the content right. There will be some overlap, don't worry about that. Focus more on the user experience for people in each area.

The only technical thing that needs to be done is for you to geo-target in the respective WMT areas.

Does that help?

While this is not the best use of their time and something that as a consultant I'd recommend against, the content on that page is not duplicated from what I can tell. The page is about aspartame and links to other articles on the subject. It looks like the content is on other sites, but I can't determine who scraped whom. Can you tell me what page you have that is competing against this one? I'd be happy to give some advice. But for right now, I can't see an issue here.

And no, generally putting things on subdomains is not effective but done right it can be. I don't want to say it isn't overall but we traditionally recommend against it.

With canonicals, I would not worry about the incoming pages. If the new content is useful and relevant, plus linked to internally, they should do fine in terms of indexation. Use the canonical for now, and once you launch the new pages, well a month after launch, if there are key pages not getting indexed, then you can reassess. The canonical is the right thing to do in this case.

As for link equity, you are right, that is a simplistic view of it. It is actually much more intricate than that, but that's a good basic understanding. However, the canonical is not going to hurt your internal link equity. Those links to the different sorting are navigational in nature and the structure will be repeated throughout the site. Google's algo is good at determining internal, editorial links versus those that are navigational in nature. The navigational links don't impact the strength nearly as much as an editorial link.

My personal belief is that you are worrying about something that isn't going to make an impact on your organic traffic. Ensure the correct canonicals are in place and launch the new content. If that new content has the same issue with sorting, use canonicals there as well and let Google figure it out. "They" have gotten pretty good at identifying what to keep and what not.

If you don't want the sorting pages in there at all, you'll need to do one of the following:

• Noindex, disallow in robots.txt - Rhea Drysdale showed me a few years back that you can do a disallow and noindex in robots. If you do both, Google gets the command to not only noindex the URLs, but also cannot crawl the content.
• Noindex, nofollow using meta robots - This would stop all link equity flow from these pages. If you want to attempt to stop flow to these pages, you'll need to nofollow any links to them. The pages can still be crawled however.
• Noindex, follow - Same as above but internal link equity would still flow. Again, if you want to attempt to cut off link equity to these sorting pages, any links to them would need to be nofollowed.
• Disallow in robots - This would stop them from crawling the content, but the URLs could technically still be indexed.

Personally, I believe trying to manage link equity using nofollow is a waste of time. You more than likely have other things that could be making larger impacts. The choice is yours however and I always recommend testing anything to see if it makes an impact.

I would not recommend IP based redirects. You can detect and do an initial redirect (with a javascript overlay telling people that you think they are in a specific area), but you'd have to give all users (including Googlebot) the ability to go to the other URLs as well.

HREFLANG is not meant for geo-targeting and IP addresses only tell you location. You only need HREFLANG if there are language changes within a country targeted site or universal (not geotargeted) site.

Even ignoring that, the HREFLANG would not help if people were always redirected based on IP, so I don't suggest that.

Hope this helps, let me know if you have any more questions.

So you want to know if you should use country targeted top level domains (ccTLDs).

I can't say for certain if that is the right answer for you. It depends on your market, your products, and your resources. Check out the tool I built here: http://outspokenmedia.com/international-seo-strategy/ and report back with what result you get.

And never redirect based on IP address. Promise me you won't do that.

The one piece of feedback I can give is that your pages have way too much advertising. If Panda didn't affect you before I can see it doing it in the future. This competitor has tons of resources on the topic and seems to be a better result for broad terms like aspartame. If you want to rank for broad terms like that, I'd work at developing a resource center for searchers of that term. They could be looking up that broad of a word for many reasons, answer those and don't focus on the ads. Focus on being the best answer for the query.

Hi Sarah,

I can only see three pages in the index now.

Google tries to find any and all content people might want to find using their index. They have a number of ways to identify anything that might be of use.

Now you said that you put a noindex in the sitemap. That is new to me, sitemaps are used to index files, not to command a noindex. Typically, a noindex is placed within the page's code.

Can you clarify what you have already attempted? A noindex is best (https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/93710?hl=en), teh page will still be crawled but cannot be put into the index.

Whether a subdomain carries all the weight of the main domain has yet to be proven, but I think in this case it does. But link equity flows from the page not the domain.

A better test is: does the site look spammy? Do I want my brand on there? If yes, awesome. Then: Did I pay for this placement? (If yes, please rethink that unless it's advertising and nofollowed)

If it's natural and good for your brand, no matter what site, just keep it there.

Thanks.

IP base redirection is many times inaccurate. The IP address is perfect, especially in regions like Europe. IN addition to that, immediate IP based redirection does not allow Google to crawl other country content as Google bot only crawls with a US IP address.

As for hreflang, given your answers, it's not of use to you because either you are targeting countries without multiple languages or don't have the means to translate everything. OR your business is best for geo-targeting only (different product offerings, etc) and are not focusing on countries with more than one official language.

hreflang is only intended for use between pages of the exact same content that have been translated. If your products change or there is something else different and that depends on the country, geo-targeting is needed. Since that content changes and there are not multiple languages needed for each country, you do not need hreflang.

Based on your business, or your answers in that tool, you should either launch ccTLDs or use the main domain and use country based subfolders.

• domain.com/es (Spain)
• domain.com/mx (Mexico)

A ccTLD (.com.mx) is a strong signal for targeting to that country, but it is a brand new domain, and totally separate from other domains. This means you have to work harder to build up both domains, but given the right amount of work and dedication, these will be a stronger signal of targeting that country. That's why top companies pick those.

However, if you want to utilize the strength of your current gTLD (which I assume is generic ie .com, .net - not country focused), a folder structure that is based on country will allow you to use the strength of the main domain. You will need to ensure each subfolder is claimed in Google and Bing Webmaster Tools and geo-targeted. The ccTLDs do this automatically but subfolders have to be set up manually if they are targeting a country.

I hope this helps!

No, they did all of their research just about that. Trust me, they can tell. Try to limit the number of ads, don't remove them, just limit to no more than 2 per page.

It sounds like you intend on using this scheme for link development purposes, but I'd warn not to rely on any links created this way. They would not be editorial in nature and therefore you can't count on them in the long term.

That being said, there are two ways to look at this: from your perspective and your client's perspective. The best route in each case in my opinion is:

Yours: #3 by far

Theirs: #1 to keep things on their domain. If I were them, I'd want people staying on my domain.

If you are looking at this from just an SEO perspective, do #3, but if it were me, I'd ask your first set of clients what they prefer and work with them from there.

These are geo-targeted sections and not translations right?

If so, the HREFLANG tags are not needed. Those are for translations. If you have the subfolders marked in Google WMT as geo-targeted to those countries, you should be okay.

How long have you had this setup?

Cody has some good resources. I'll follow that up with asking for specific instances of pages that are autocreated. It sounds like the way they are made doesn't add anything to the site, so rather than using a canonical, I'd go the noindex route first, but I'd need to see these pages to be sure.

I don't think they mean removing the duplicates, but make them unique instead. What CMS are you on? Who makes these pages? And again (sorry), can we have some examples?