Another SEO professional was wondering about their international SEO implementation.
Currently, they have their setup localized but they were wondering if there were any other ways to localize the same set of pages for different countries with English-speaking citizens.
They used several subdomains with a country code TLD, and they also set it properly on their backend, along with using hreflang in the page level.
They were curious if John had any ideas on how they could improve their implementation overall.
John said that he thinks they have already covered and implemented the main ones.
He explained that Geotargeting works on a subdirectory level or at a subdomain level. Basically, hreflang would apply to all pages within a subdirectory, and it would apply on a per-page basis.
John also said that he tries to recommend having a backup plan in case Google doesn’t index your pages or if the international SEO implementation doesn’t work for the user.
This is usually in the form of a JavaScript based banner that you can show when the site recognizes that a user is on the wrong version of a site.
For example: if a user from Australia lands on the page and they are from England, then you could show a JavaScript banner that says you have an Australian page on another location.
The advantage of using a JavaScript banner, John says, is that it’s possible to block it by utilizing robots.txt so that it doesn’t show up in indexing when Google crawls and indexes the website.
If you don’t automatically redirect, then Google will process both versions simultaneously.
It’s also possible that if these pages are all the same, that Google will treat each of these pages as the canonical version. This can lead to duplicate content issues.
The main problem that can be confusing is, that if you use the hreflang on all of these pages, then Google will still use the hreflang to actually show the right version of that URL within the search results.
Then, the indexed content will not be from the hreflang version but from the direct canonical version of the URL.
And thus, the reporting from Google Search Console will all be for the canonical version of said URL.
This happens at approximately the 17:45 mark in the video.
John Mueller Hangout Transcript
SEO Professional 5 17:45
Hey, John. Merry Christmas Eve! So I have one question about localization. Do you know any other ways to localize the same set of pages for different English-speaking countries? Like right now we have several subdomains with a .jo top level domain like maybe from Australia and New Zealand subdomains, and we have set the country in the JSA backend and also use half length and page level. But other than that, we couldn’t figure out some other ways to help us to localize these subdomains. Do you have any good methods? Or maybe some ways that we can improve?
John 18:39
Yeah, so I think you covered the main ones. So that’s geo targeting in Search Console and the hreflang settings. Geo targeting works on a subdirectory or subdomain level. So it’s all pages in there. The hreflang is on a per-page basis. So if you have a homepage for one country and different product pages for the same country, then each of those pages would need to be cross linked with hreflang.
So sometimes, that’s a little bit more work. But essentially, those are the two main methods. The other thing that I always try to recommend is to have some kind of a backup plan. Usually, that’s something like a JavaScript based banner, that you can show when you recognize that the user is on the wrong version of a site.
So for example, if a user from Australia ends up on the page from, I don’t know, England, then you could show a JavaScript banner saying like, hey, we have an Australian version of this page here. You can go there directly. The advantage of a JavaScript based banner is that you can block it with robots.txt so that from an indexing point of view, it doesn’t show up.
And if you don’t automatically redirect, then essentially, all of this search engine side of things, they will be able to process those two versions independently. So that’s kind of the other recommendation I have there. And I think finally, the other thing to keep in mind is if these pages are essentially the same, then it can happen that we treat one of these pages as the canonical version.
So for example, if you have a page for New Zealand, and Australia, and the whole content is the same, the only thing that’s slightly different is the currency on the page, then it can happen that we fold those pages together, and we pick one of them as a canonical. And we use that as the basis for search.
The confusing part here is that if you have hreflang on those pages too, then we will still use the hreflang to show the right version of the URL. But the index content will be just from the canonical version, and all of the reporting in Search Console will be for the canonical version.
So that makes it sometimes a bit tricky, especially if you have a larger website with essentially always the same content for different countries.
SEO Professional 5 21:20
Yeah. Yes. So our situation is more like the second one, you said, we all have the same content for different subdomains. We have a canonical tag, like, like you just said, then how can we like in this situation? How can we maybe make Google index our pages?
John 21:49
I don’t think you can. And you generally don’t need to because we will still process the hreflang across those versions. And we will show the right URL in the search results. It’s just the content that’s indexed is from that one canonical version. And if the content is the same, then we just need that content once. So the only really confusing part that is there in that situation is that Search Console reports on the canonical URL. And that makes it really hard to recognize when the Australian page is shown, and when the New Zealand page is shown. Because we just show, I don’t know, one of those two.
SEO Professional 5 22:34
Okay, I see. So, oh, do you think the same content is friendly, for like I just said the localization?
John 22:44
I think you can do it. I don’t think it’s optimal in all cases, and in particular, for things like the the homepage of the site or important pages that are site specific. I would try to make sure that you have different content there so that they’re really indexed independently, and that they can rank for the independent versions of their content. So kind of like those pages, I think, are really critical to be clearly separate, but for products and categories and things like that, I don’t really think it matters that much if we choose one as a canonical.
SEO Professional 5 23:29
Yeah, the product pages, almost the same product pages.
John 23:34
Yeah. Yeah.
