I have a multi-language / multi-country website which uses a single domain name. The url structure is as follows: country-name.example.com/language/
Ex:
ca.example.com/en/
ca.example.com/fr/
uk.example.com/en/
Whenever a user enters example.com
, I am identifying their country and redirecting them to their corresponding country. However, if a user came from an un-supported country, I am redirecting to a default country that I set, for example uk.example.com
. I am using 301 redirects. Googlebot comes from an un-supported country and as a result, Google is associating example.com with uk.example.com
because this is the default country that I'm redirecting to using 301 redirects.
That's why, I decided to have a landing/splash page where all the countries and languages are displayed. Instead of redirecting a user with an unsupported country to a default country, I would show them the landing page instead.
However, I read on http://blog.woorank.com/2014/08/top-10-pitfalls-of-international-seo/ that splash pages are detrimental for SEO.
Should splash pages be avoided at any cost? In this case, what would be the best way to proceed without affecting the ranking?