International SEO

[hawkrob]

Hey guys,

I was hoping somebody might be able to help me?
If I create a French sub directory of a website example "brandname.eu/fr" and submit this in webmaster tools to target France will the French version of the website appear in the search results? The home page of the website will be in English and have a county selector in the drop down but I'm hoping that won't be necessary in most cases when the user arrives from a specific country they will land on there country page.
What other factors are necessary for this to work?

Note: The website ideally will not be hosted in France as we will be setting up a subdirectory for multiple countries. We are considering buying country level IPs so it looks to the search engines that they are hosted in that specified country.

Your thoughts and experiences would be appreciated.

Cheers
Rob

 

[mneylon]

You can target sub-directories and subdomains to specific countries

Getting country specific IPs would be a waste of time, and you wouldn't be able to use them for a sub-directory anyway

 

[hawkrob]

Thanks for your feedback.

I got the answer I think I needed from google support forums.

Only generic TLD domains (and subdomains or subfolders on them) can be explicitly geo-targeted in Webmaster Tools.

Otherwise the ccTLD establishes the country that's geo-targeted. So your domain is already targeted to Europe.


The language references on your pages will determine to which linguistic group pages are appropriate, when the visitor has a language preference in search, etc. At least that's what I think.


I believe that when the content is in French it is equally relevant to searchers from France, Belgium, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Monaco with French as main language in their search preferences and/or their browser.


Any geo information supposed to mean /fr/ is targeted to France will need to be enforced through content - i.e. addresses in France for instance


Where the site is hosted doesn't matter.

 

[brianmartinseo]

Hi Hawkrob,


It doesn't matter where your site is hosted if you're on a .fr domain and targeting France. If you're on a gTLD then you should host that site in the country you're targeting where possible.

To answer your question about being found by French people with your correct page appearing I'd recommend:

1. Having a manually/professionally translated site by a native French speaker (also picking the best keywords)
2. Optimised meta tags in French
3. Local outreach to build links from .fr and other French sites
4. Also don't forget your HREFLANG tag - best to do this via XML

Best of luck,
Brian

 

[mneylon]

If you're on a gTLD then you should host that site in the country you're targeting where possible.

That's not really true

Google have said more than once over the last year or two that the physical location of the hosting isn't an important factor - that's why they introduced the entire geo-targetting.

 

[lingkon]

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[tashalb]

Thanks for information. Actually i need some answer about SEO.

 

[Juice]

I got the answer I think I needed from google support forums.

Only generic TLD domains (and subdomains or subfolders on them) can be explicitly geo-targeted in Webmaster Tools.

Otherwise the ccTLD establishes the country that's geo-targeted. So your domain is already targeted to Europe.

Not quite true.

.eu is a regional TLD, and Google treats these the same as generic TLDs. From the help centre:


Although these domains are associated with a geographical region, they are generally treated as generic top-level domains (much like .com or .org).

.eu
.asia


How did you get on?




Talk to me about international seo.

 

[maz007]

Two things matter. If you have a .fr domain website then Google already considering your site in french search engines first. Secondly your hosting ip also does effect on where you target the website. If you want to target only in france then its better to have local hosting company, but if you can't find it its okay to have your website host anywhere else.