If your company is going across a large scale and want to cross the world, then you must operate a multinational website. The first thing you should consider is the structure of the website, and then the operation of multinational SEO. How do you start? Let's see what the engineers say...
What is the difference between multilingualism and multiregional?
Multilingual-There are content in different languages on the website, which is available to users in different languages.
Multi-regional-for users in different countries and regions, provide content in different languages and terms.
Multilingual countries are usually sufficient for multinational operations, but if you want to be more detailed and precise, you can cooperate with multiple regions.
For the operation of multilingual (or multi-regional) multinational websites, the following key points must be considered first:
Differences between mainstream search engines in various countries (e.g. Japan, China, Google is not a mainstream search engine)
Duplicate content (one of the biggest risks of SEO for multilingual websites)
Do you need an international host?
Should it be presented in subdomains or subdirectories?
It is recommended that if it is a simple multilingual website, you can choose to maintain it in the form of subdirectories; and if you choose a multi-regional website that distinguishes users by region, it is recommended to set up as a subdomain.
The following provides a comparison of URL settings in Google's official documents ( managing multi-regional and multi-language websites ):
URL structure | Example URL | benefit | harm |
Country/Region Exclusive Domain | example.de | The server location is not linked | Expensive (available functions may be limited) |
Generic top-level domain with gTLD | de.example.com | Easy | Users may not be able to identify geographic locations from the URL alone ("de" represents a language or country/region?) |
There are subdirectories of gTLD | example.com/de/ | Easy | The user may not be able to identify geolocation from the URL |
URL parameters | site.com?loc=de | Not recommended for use | Difficult to distinguish |
After the structure is completed, 7 SEO elements are confirmed
1. Language and country configuration verification
Due to differences in the characteristics of companies, technologies, and content, regions, and goals, current multinational websites can be distinguished by language (Spanish, French, German, etc.) or country (UK, Spain, Mexico, etc.).
Confirm whether the international website is consistent with the purpose of classification by country/language: Confirm from the structure of the website URL, confirm that the country-classified website has ccTLDs (national top-level domains), subdirectories or subdomains, and the language-classified website has subdomains Directory or subdomain, avoid URL parameters and scripts or cookies (Internet language) to transmit website content through pages or URLs that cannot be effectively indexed.
In addition to the URL structure, optimizing the content of the website to make it consistent with the purpose of classification by country or language is also a basic action. For example, if you use the language to classify, it is not recommended to use the national flag as an option to classify users' languages , because you are not classifying users by region, such as the United Kingdom, Spain, Germany, France, Brazil, etc., but English and Spain. Classify the user’s language such as English, German, French, Portuguese, etc. English speakers may be from the United States or Australia, and Spanish speakers may be from Chile or Mexico. When they do not see their country’s flag on the website, they may not feel welcome by this website.
Such inconsistencies may also occur on other elements, such as hreflang and website language coding. As shown in the figure below, the website is based on country coding instead of language coding for web pages in different languages. This should not be the case, because the website is not The country is the classification, but the language is the classification.
Therefore, it is important to ensure that the content of each website version can be displayed in the target country or language.
2. URL structure optimization
The structure of each international version of the website should be analyzed independently to make sure that not only the name of the website is in the correct language and description, but also that there is no unnecessary or unnecessary guidance. As shown in the figure, the non-essential redirection occurs in the main domain 301 redirections:
Remember that the important point is to have a unique subdirectory, subdomain, or specific ccTLD to display each website version, and the link between them is unnecessary in most cases, if necessary, like within a country There are different languages, so remember that the website is as simple and consistent as possible.
3. Search for international website versions and import related topics
The next step is how to make sure that each version is effectively searched and ranked on the relevant language query. Check if there are versions in certain languages or countries that are blocked because of robots.txt or displaying scripts or cookies that cannot be indexed. In addition to using Web crawlers (web crawlers), such as Screaming Frog, DeepCrawl, Structure or Google Webmaster Tools for basic confirmation, it is also important to confirm whether there are related topics search, ranking, and attract organic search traffic from unrelated countries or languages. of.
For example, in the following case, it is very important to confirm that the Argentina version is really from Argentina and not from Mexico to bring relevant search visibility and traffic.
If you find that your website is displayed on irrelevant search results, attracting visitors who should have gone to another version of the website, then you have to confirm which search result from your website ranks on, and check the content of the page through ranking queries. Detect the cause of the problem and solve the problem.
4. Correct the use of Hreflang annotations
One of the potential reasons for the ranking results to be displayed on irrelevant rankings is the misuse of the hreflang annotations. Use this hreflang tool to generate Hreflang annotations to use Hreflang correctly.
5. Adjust the geographic location of the webmaster tool
Some simple things must be done. Determine the geographic target in Google Webmaster Tools, so that your subdirectories and subdomains are not on the ccTLDS URL of the country you are targeting:
6. Whether the content of the webpage is fully localized
When your website is found to be displayed on irrelevant results, please confirm whether the content of the page is displayed in the relevant language. As shown in the example below, when the menu automatically displays Spanish but the rest of the content is still in English. This confuses users and search engines, and in this example, English is the default language, so this page will have no extra points in the Spanish ranking.
7. Pay attention to the number and pros and cons of links to multinational websites
Although we hope that users and search robots can correctly find all of our websites and make cross-site links, and even add links to every page of each website, if there are too many links, it may be considered unnatural Status.
In addition, if some websites suffer from legal problems, and your website has links to them, this may also harm the website you operate, so you should also monitor and avoid redundant cross-site links to reduce such risks, just Make sure that the search robot has found a different version of your international webpage, but it hasn't ignored the content of your webpage.
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