We run a custom built e-commerce platform. We started in Canada and our main site was thus built to serve canadian buyers. When we expanded into the US, we added a /us
sub-folder as an identifier. We need to serve different websites because prices and products are different across the two countries. We also set up GeoIP redirection - so visitors are automatically redirected to the appropriate site - i.e www.our-site.example
for Canadians, and www.our-site.example/us/
for Americans.
This seemingly is having negative results on our SEO. We have the following setup: Two webmaster properties
www.our-site.example
for which the country selection in webmaster is Canadawww.our-site.example/us
for which the country selections is USA
We are serving them different sitemaps with the appropriate hreflang
attributes. We also had hreflang
set up on the site (but recently removed because you are not supposed to do both the sitemap and meta hreflang at the same time)
The issue we are seeing is that some of our major pages we are trying to rank for in Canada are showing the US version of the link on Google.
My questions are:
- What is the best practice for redirection and URL setup if default country is not US? This is specifically an issue because the Googlebot uses an US IP.
- How can I ensure US links do not show up on Canadian search results?