{"id":52532,"date":"2016-06-04T14:23:12","date_gmt":"2016-06-04T08:53:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tothenew.com\/blog\/?p=52532"},"modified":"2020-01-08T16:57:38","modified_gmt":"2020-01-08T11:27:38","slug":"seo-internationalisation-faqs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tothenew.com\/blog\/seo-internationalisation-faqs\/","title":{"rendered":"SEO Internationalisation FAQs"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Here are the FAQs for International SEO which were available on Gooogle earlier this year.<\/p>\n

Multilingual sites<\/h2>\n

Q:\u00a0What\u2019s the best URL structure for a multilingual site?
\nA:\u00a0<\/b>We detect the language on a per-URL basis; you don\u2019t need to use any special structure. However, it\u2019s important that each language version is on a separate URL, and that Googlebot is able to crawl all versions.<\/p>\n

Q: What can I do if a user reaches the \u201cwrong language\u201d version of my pages?
\nA:\u00a0<\/b>We recommend letting users access all language versions (without automatic redirection), regardless of their location or browser settings. For example, it\u2019s possible that a user in France may wish to see English-language content, and may even have explicitly searched in English to find that content.\u00a0Also, keep in mind that Googlebot must be able to crawl all versions<\/a> in order to index them properly and remember to make it easy for users to switch to their preferred language using links or a drop-down menu for the different language versions of a page.<\/p>\n

Q: Google shows the \u201ctranslate\u201d link for my page\u00a0in the search results, even though my page is already in the language\u00a0used when searching. How can I prevent this?
\nA:\u00a0<\/b>We recommend making sure that the language of the page is obvious and clearly recognizable. For example, if the main content is in one language, it may help\u00a0to have other text on that page (menus, sidebars, footers, etc.) in that same language. In some situations, Google is able to recognize multiple languages on a page (for example, if a page in English includes individual Spanish translations or names). Displaying a \u201ctranslate\u201d link does not necessarily imply any problems. To suppress translations all the time, use the \u201cnotranslate\u201d\u00a0robots meta tag<\/a>. To block translation of individual elements on a page, use the\u00a0\u201cnotranslate\u201d HTML class<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Q: Should I use character encodings or\u00a0HTML entities<\/a>\u00a0for non-ASCII characters?
\nA:\u00a0<\/b>Either using a specific character encoding (like\u00a0UTF-8<\/a>, ISO-8859-1, GB 2312, etc.) or using HTML entities is fine. We generally recommend using UTF-8, but you can use other encodings if they are\u00a0clearly specified<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Q: Can I use automated translations?
\nA:\u00a0<\/b>Yes, but they must be blocked from indexing with the\u00a0\u201cnoindex\u201d robots meta tag<\/a>. We consider automated translations to be auto-generated content, so allowing them to be indexed would be a violation of our\u00a0Webmaster Guidelines<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Q: Do you support multilingual content in rich media files like Flash?
\nA:\u00a0<\/b>Yes. Since rich media content is frequently indexed as a single page, it helps to separate the content into separate files per language.\u00a0Also, see our\u00a0guidelines for using Flash and rich media<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Q: Can I use meta tags to specify the language\u00a0of a page?
\nA:\u00a0<\/b>We don\u2019t use meta tags or HTML attributes in determining the language of a piece of content. Keep in mind that other products and services, such as\u00a0screen-readers<\/a>, may use meta tags or HTML attributes, so it\u2019s not pointless for you to consider using them.<\/p>\n

Geotargeting<\/h2>\n

Q:\u00a0<\/b>What\u2019s the best URL structure for a multi-national\u00a0(geotargeted) site?<\/b>
\nA:\u00a0<\/b>It helps to have the country-specific sections of the site clearly separated on a per-country basis. You can do that either by using\u00a0ccTLDs<\/a>\u00a0or by correctly\u00a0configuring\u00a0gTLDs in Search Console<\/a>.\u00a0With\u00a0gTLDs\u00a0you can use subdomains (country.example.com\/) or subdirectories (example.com\/country\/); either way is fine. Google also allows\u00a0geotargeting for some\u00a0ccTLDs.<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Q: Is the server location important for geotargeting?
\nA:\u00a0<\/b>If you can use one of the other means to set geotargeting (ccTLD<\/a>\u00a0or Search Console\u2019 geotargeting tool), you don\u2019t\u00a0need to worry about the server\u2019s location. We do, however, recommend making sure that your website is hosted in a way that will give your users fast access to it\u00a0(which is often done by choosing\u00a0to host\u00a0near your users).<\/p>\n

Q: Is it possible to geotarget with a\u00a0CDN<\/a>?
\nA:\u00a0<\/b>Yes, provided you use a means other than server location to indicate your site\u2019s geographic target (ccTLD\u00a0or\u00a0Search Console<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Q: Apart from ccTLDs,\u00a0<\/b>Search Console<\/b>, and server location, what can play a role in geotargeting?<\/b><\/p>\n

A:\u00a0<\/b>Anything that makes it clear what your pages are trying to target: for example, physical addresses, a local phone number, a\u00a0Google+ Local<\/a>\u00a0listing, the use of the appropriate currency, etc.<\/p>\n

Q: What can I do if a user reaches the \u201cwrong country\u201d version of my pages?
\nA:\u00a0<\/b>We recommend letting users access all country versions, regardless of their location. Avoid automatically redirecting users based on their perceived location. To guide users to the appropriate version of your site, you may wish to show the user a banner or otherwise encourage them to visit a local version of your site.<\/p>\n

Q: I want to target the whole world; what should I do?
\nA:\u00a0<\/b>Geotargeting helps when users want to find locally-relevant content. If you want to target the whole world, then you generally don\u2019t have to do anything special with regard to geotargeting.<\/p>\n

Q: Can I use meta tags to specify geotargeting?
\nA:\u00a0<\/b>Google does not use meta tags when determining geotargeting.<\/p>\n

Q: Can I target different English-speaking countries separately with the same content?
\nA:\u00a0<\/b>We recommend using unique and locally-relevant content whenever possible, but we understand that this is not always possible. The \u201crel-alternate-hreflang<\/a>\u201d\u00a0annotation can let us know about alternate versions of the same content, which we use\u00a0to show the optimal URL for the user in search results where your site is shown.<\/p>\n

Rel Alternate Hreflang<\/h2>\n

See also our\u00a0Help Center article on rel-alternate-hreflang<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Q: Can I use \u201crel alternate\u00a0hreflang\u201d across domains \/ across TLDs?
\nA:\u00a0<\/b>Yes! Keep in mind that this markup is on a per-URL basis, so if there are alternate URLs across those domains, you would need to add the\u00a0markup for\u00a0each individual URL.<\/p>\n

Q: Does \u201crel alternate\u00a0hreflang\u201d replace geotargeting?
\nA:\u00a0<\/b>No. This link-element provides a connection between individual URLs, and only allows Google to \u201cswap out\u201d the URLs from your site currently shown in the search results with ones that are more relevant to the user. It does not affect ranking, as geotargeting would.<\/p>\n

Q: Since this markup\u00a0can be specified in an XML Sitemap file<\/a>, should I use separate\u00a0Sitemap<\/a>\u00a0files for each language and location?
\nA:\u00a0<\/b>The location of a URL within your Sitemap files does not matter. You can structure the Sitemap files in any way that makes sense for you, and that helps you to maintain them.<\/p>\n

Q: I use \u201crel-alternate-hreflang\u201d on my pages, why does it sometimes not work?
\nA:\u00a0<\/b>It can sometimes take a bit of time for this markup to be discovered, extracted, and processed on all of the URLs that are involved. Additionally, keep in mind that this markup is seen as one of the signals, not as a directive.\u00a0See the previous questions for information on how to handle users who arrive on the \u201cwrong\u201d version of the page.<\/p>\n

Q: Can I use \u201crel=canonical\u201d together with \u201crel-alternate-hreflang\u201d?
\nA:\u00a0<\/b>We recommend not using\u00a0rel=canonical<\/a>\u00a0across different language or country versions. Using\u00a0it in\u00a0the same language\/country version is fine and one of the recommended ways of handling\u00a0canonicalization<\/a>.<\/p>\n

General questions<\/h2>\n

Q: How can I check the indexing of my multilingual or multiregional content?
\nA:\u00a0<\/b>A simple way to get a very rough check is to use the\u00a0advanced search options<\/a>\u00a0on\u00a0http:\/\/www.google.com\/advanced_search<\/a>\u00a0:
\n1. Enter your site or domain in the appropriate field
\n2. Select the desired language or region
\n3. Click \u201cAdvanced search\u201d
\nKeep in mind that the numbers shown here are very rough approximations and not meant to be used as actionable metrics. Remember that some URLs may be recognized as having content in multiple languages. For a more actionable metric, consider using separate Sitemaps files for each language or country and referring to the\u00a0Sitemap indexing numbers<\/a>\u00a0shown in Search Console, or depending on the site structure, the data shown under\u00a0Index Status<\/a>\u00a0in Search Console.<\/p>\n

Q: Can I use non-English \/ non-ASCII URLs?
\nA:\u00a0<\/b>Yes. Past the domain name, which can be an\u00a0IDN<\/a>, we recommend using UTF-8 for path, filename, and query parameters. Google supports UTF-8 path, filename, and query parameters in the\u00a0robots.txt<\/a>\u00a0file. Tip: Make it easy for users to link to your content by providing copyable links with escaped URLs so that these URLs remain valid regardless of where they are linked from.<\/p>\n

Q: Can I block individual countries from accessing my content?
\nA:\u00a0<\/b>Yes,\u00a0however, you must treat Googlebot the same as a normal user from that region. If you are blocking users in the country where Googlebot is crawling from, you must block Googlebot as well; treating Googlebot differently would be considered\u00a0cloaking<\/a>, a violation of our\u00a0Webmaster Guidelines<\/a>. If you need to block Googlebot but would still like to have some content indexed, it may be possible to create separate pages with content that\u2019s globally accessible. It\u2019s not possible to selectively block the cached page or\u00a0Instant Preview\u00a0on a per-country basis, but you can use the\u00a0\u201cnosnippet\u201d and \u201cnoarchive\u201d robots meta tags<\/a>\u00a0to block these features in general.<\/p>\n

Q: Can I use interstitials in some countries?
\nA:\u00a0<\/b>Yes,\u00a0however, you must treat Googlebot the same as a normal user from that region. In some\u00a0situations, it may be possible to use external JavaScript to display an interstitial or to use banners instead of interstitials, which may make it easier to crawl and index that content.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here are the FAQs for International SEO which were available on Gooogle earlier this year. Multilingual sites Q:\u00a0What\u2019s the best URL structure for a multilingual site? A:\u00a0We detect the language on a per-URL basis; you don\u2019t need to use any special structure. However, it\u2019s important that each language version is on a separate URL, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":193,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":1},"categories":[1964],"tags":[398,404,2214,2060,2521],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tothenew.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52532"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tothenew.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tothenew.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tothenew.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/193"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tothenew.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52532"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.tothenew.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52532\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53409,"href":"https:\/\/www.tothenew.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52532\/revisions\/53409"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tothenew.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52532"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tothenew.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52532"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tothenew.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52532"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}