Welcome to the Q&A Forum

I agree, run a new XML sitemap, get it installed into GWMT (Google WebMaster Tools), and verifying you aren't seeing any issue with regards to the site, crawl errors, increased 404's will also help your efforts! Cheers.

I'm assuming you are moving from an old static HTML site to something along the lines of a CMS with Drupal or Joomla based on your new URL structure example above.

Absolutely. If you don't 301 the old page URL's to the new locations and URL names - you will eventually lose all the back-link development you have been working on. Those old URL's will eventually return a 404 error in Google WebMaster Tools, and the link value and 'juice' will be lost..

Plan out an Excel spreadsheet and then work to map all the pages from your site to their counterpart NEW URL names. This way you will make sure to get all your pages mapped out.

You would probably also want to crawl your old domain (before the new site goes live) with a tool like 'Screaming Frog' or 'Xenu' which you can download online and is free (best part and great tools to have). This will help you find and extract all the pages in your site into Excel - ensuring you don't miss any in the mapping process.

I would schedule some time after launch, to double check each URL individually (with the old URL's from the Excel DOC from the crawl) when the site goes live, to verify that the proper page level 301's is in place and correctly working.

Hope this helps you out. You should be in good shape, if you follow these steps pre and post launch.

Rob

Does this mean you have to install all new GA code on the site? With a whole new profile being created? (I'm thinking yes).. you won't lose the data, but they won't migrate together if I get what you are saying correctly.

Your best bet is to build an Excel report using a crawl tool (like Xenu, Frog, Moz, etc), and export that data. Then look to map out the pages you want to log and mark as 'not changing'.

Make sure to built (or have a functioning XML sitemap file) for the site, and as John said, state which URL's NEVER change. Over time, this will tell googlebot that it isn't neccessary yo crawl those page URL's as they never change.

You could also place a META REFRESH tag on those individual pages, and set that to never as well.

Hope some of this helps! Cheers

We also shifted focus away from other CMS systems in Wordpress (unless the goal of the site and traffic is built around a Blog marketing strategy), and moved to using mainly Drupal 7 at this time, but I also am a big fan of Joomla.

If I were you, take some time to look into sites build on these platforms and explore the options. They offer incredible flexibility.

Nice additions Robert! Cheers.

Great response. I would have given you exactly the same steps. You should follow John's advise:)

Link building to these individual ccTLD's will be the biggest obstacle to overcome, especially in short amounts of time (if that matters), but, if you have time and resources, this will help the geographic level of your brand on a global level. It's just too bad when you have to break up one master domain (pooled together), and go with individual domains for each country you are targeting.

Cheers, Rob

Hi Greg,

This might currently be affected by any back-links you have either established (been building to the domain) or one's that have freely linked to you.

My advise, would be to continue just working to improve your site. Metrics for performance will increase over time, if you keep your 'visitors, and clients' in mind. Improve the user experience, take care of the proper technical steps to ensure proper use of 301's, on and off page optimizations, great content and user experience and over time, your metrics will show themselves off which is always nice..

Just remember, all this work isn't something that will happen overnight. It takes time to improve these rankings. As Moz's index is usually updated 1 time per month (if they are running on time), you will be able to track this metric month over month. If you see steady drops, then you might want to start digging.

Again, my guess is that you are on the right track. Don't overthink the metrics behind the site. Look at the analytics data and think, how can I better my site for improved user experience

Cheers, Rob

If you do want to see a run a back-link report on a domain - use the SEOmoz (pro) OSE. Use the filters to break down where and how the links are coming into the site.

Linkscape - OpenSiteExplorer

Yep, I got my confirmation as a pro tested via email from them today. The premier launch will be announced soon, and then I'll be able to login and test it out - as I wanted too

My advice, even with 13 years in the industry now is to get a personal reference from someone you might know who is currently working with someone who is good at what they do. Plain and simple

Personal references for work like this are always #1 in my book. I also find it easier to talk with the client, becuase they already have a sense of who you are having gotten the reference from someone they know and trust.

Just my 2 cents Cheers,

Yep, I would go with a 301 also. Keep that juice (or as much as you can muster).. you'll lose a little value in the transfer.. (5-15%), but it would be worth keeping it. Cheers!

My pleasure !! Cheers.

My testing has not shown any improvements with regards to this effort - BUT you could try it, and share the results with the rest of us!

Best practice for SEO TITLES is something like:

Optimal Format

Primary Keyword - Secondary Keyword | Brand Name 
or 
Brand Name | Primary Keyword and Secondary Keyword

See this article on from the Moz team and a pretty good read too!

http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/title-tag or

http://www.seomoz.org/beginners-guide-to-seo

Cheers! Rob

As I stated, make sure to use a proper translation service in your efforts, and not any automated translation. They never really get tone, punctuality, etc etc right in native languages  (in my book/rant above)

As well - make sure to ADD the Meta feature on each of your pages in the sub-folder (or subdomains) you use like -

And you can use this link resource to find the language code for this feature.

[http://www.seoconsultants.com/meta-tags/language](Meta Language Tags "http://www.seoconsultants.com/meta-tags/language")

Note: You should make sure all the canonical versions of this render properly as well. This way - all links and 'juice' or value are passed the the domain name you specify.

www.mysite.com

mysite.com

mysite.com/default.aspx

www.mysite.com/defaults.aspx

Checking Google webmaster tools will also help see any errors when handling duplicate content issues (for homepage or entire site). as this was also a new feature in recent months added by Google.

Cheers!

Glad we all could help Lane!  Cheers!

I'm not a big fan of breaking language sites into sub-domains because you break the value of the link structure and link juice in the domain. So for every single language you break out into a sub-domain - you then end up having to build more links to the sub-domains.

Each SEO is different and has difference experience, tactics and strategy from testing and previous work on sites. Sub-folders have been more successful for me in work than sub-domains in terms of rankings and language (MSEO) techniques.

Cheers! Rob

Hi Brant,

What you are talking about is Multilingual SEO processes. There are a few ways you can go about doing this.

You can either go with:

A) go with the following setups for the domain with regards to the site URL/sub-folder structure.

www.mysite.com (english)

www.mysite.com/sp/ (spanish)

www.mysite.com/fr/ (french)

www.mysite.com/de/ (german)

etc, etc, etc..

Or:

B) Or, you can also go the route of picking up the same domains name with needed country level extensions that are part of that country (like .ca for canada, .de for germany, .com for USA) etc, etc.

I prefer option A for many reasons, but everyone has their preferences

---

If you go with A. Keep the domain setup the same and build /folders/ with duplicates of the site pages that are target focused in the target language.

If you go the route of using sub-folders - you will need to inquire about setting up geo-location services at the domain/hosting level (through IP detection)

If going with the sub-folders - don't forget (from a user and experience perspective) on the site to make sure to allow users to 'choose' which element/language manually from the sites' homepage, if offering more than 1-2 languages (expansion) if you go to 3-4 or 5 versions.

This process is very intensive, and needs to be done carefully. You want to use professional services for translation, as Google Translate, or other online services aren't always accurate in sentence structure.Google does not recommend automatic translations.

If you go this route, you will also need to redo a complete KW audit from a search engine optimization perspective, so you have the RIGHT keywords that people use for that market (products), in their own languages. English isn't always a market parallel when languages are involved. Keyword translation is very important here to be successul with customers and target search.

** Using sub-domains can also be done - but sub-domains are considered to be independent domains by Google and therefore don't pass link juice' and value for inbound links across the whole site. Sub folder structures are best for allowing link 'juice' from link building effort' to be passed to the entire site.

If you go with A) - because you are using /folders/ for each of the domains you want to target for each users language. This type of setup is less expensive as well (cost of purchasing more domains, hosting etc)

Try to avoid using geo-location at the hosting level (from an IP address perspective) as it isn't always the best option for your user experience. Giving users the option to choose the language they want to use/see. Allowing users to choose the language they want to view the site in, will help them. Just becuase someone visits a site from the U.S - doesn't mean they are English (they could be Spanish, Chinese, Russian etc) and want the option to choose the language of the site you are promoting.

Remember to use UTF8 for non english language character encoding (on pages, URL's etc)

Presenting sites in multiple languages isn't 'duplicate content' when breaking it out into various /folders and then languages.

*** This is also great user experience and if done properly can help you retain the visitor and convert them into a customer/client as you have taken the time to build out information in their native tongue.

A couple of good articles on MSEO (Multilingual SEO) to help you along. With this, you could probably dig for more information too.

http://searchengineland.com/globalizing-localizing-e-business-five-steps-to-multilingual-seo-success-47127

http://www.searchenginejournal.com/multilingual-seo/19903/

Sorry for the long book of information and links! Ideas just kept coming to me while I was writing!

Cheers, Rob

The 301 redirect also tell the search engine where the NEW location address of this page is (the final page you want to have ranked) while passing all other page value from the links built to the page exist.