2

I have an international website with gTLD xyz.com and different subdirectories for countries: xyz.com/fr/ for France, xyz.com/de/ for Germany, xyz.com/us/ for US and xyz.com/uk/ for UK.

I need US users to see search results coming from xyz.com/us/ and UK users from xyz.com/uk/. However, I also have traffic on my English pages coming from all over the world.

Should I use Google Search Console to simply geo-target xyz.com/us/ in the US and xyz.com/uk/ in the UK?

Or should I geo-target only xyz.com/uk/ in the UK, so UK users see primarily results from xyz.com/uk/, but leaving xyz.com/us/ "un-targeted", so all English speaking users, including US users, will see primarily results from xyz.com/us/?

|improve this question
1

Good question.

Google considers several signals for above situation to return the appropriate result.

What you have indicated is looks good to me:

Google uses hreflang tags to match the user's language preference to the right variation of your pages.

https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/62399?hl=en

You may also plan to build authority for an individual country site from that country website etc.

|improve this answer
  • hreflang is used to indicate which versions of equivalent pages to serve. It's not a ranking factor. Also, not all pages have an equivalent page in the other language. – Jeremie May 5 '17 at 6:42
1

I concur with TopQnA's response- hreflang tags signal and try to honor the user's language preference. On a related note, have you considered different websites for different locations? eg xyz.fr, xyz.de? I am seeing more cc TLDs now show up for queries where language is local (just an observation- no data to support)

ccTLDs might make it easier to target and analyze traffic.

|improve this answer
  • hreflang and geo-targeting in GSC are two different tools. hreflang is used to indicate which versions of equivalent pages to serve. It's not a ranking factor. Geo-targeting in GSC indicates which country is targeted by a website with general TLD instead of cc TLDs. – Jeremie May 15 '17 at 6:48

Your Answer

By clicking “Post Your Answer”, you agree to our terms of service, privacy policy and cookie policy

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.