Things must know while working for Multi Regional Website
I got very interesting post while read google webmaster blog,
have a look of few points here…
Did you know that a majority of users surveyed feel that having information in their own language was more important than a low price? Living in a non-English-speaking country, I’ve seen friends and family members explicitly look for and use local and localized websites—properly localized sites definitely have an advantage with users. Google works hard to show users the best possible search results. Many times those are going to be pages that are localized, for the user’s location and/or in the user’s language.
If you’re planning to take the time to create and maintain a localized version of your website, making it easy to recognize and find is a logical part of that process. In this blog post series, we’ll take a look at what is involved with multi-regional and multi-lingual websites from a search engine point of view. A multi-regional website is one that explicitly targets users in various regions (generally different countries); we call it multilingual when it is available in multiple languages, and sometimes, the website targets both multiple regions and is in multiple languages. Let’s start with some general preparations and then look at websites that target multiple regions.
Preparing for global websites
Expanding a website to cover multiple regions and/or languages can be challenging. By creating multiple versions of your website, any issues with the base version will be multiplied; make sure that you have everything working properly before you start. Given that this generally means you’ll suddenly be working with a multiplied number of URLs, don’t forget that you’ll need appropriate infrastructure to support the website.
Planning multi-regional websites
When planning sites for multiple regions (usually countries), don’t forget to research legal or administrative requirements that might come into play first. These requirements may determine how you proceed, for instance whether or not you would be eligible to use a country-specific domain name.
All websites start with domain names; when it comes to domain names, Google differentiates between two types of domain names:
- ccTLDs (country-code top level domain names): These are tied to a specific country (for example .de for Germany, .cn for China). Users and search engines use this as a strong sign that your website is explicitly for a certain country.
gTLDs (generic top level domain names): These are not tied to a specific country. Examples of gTLds are .com, .net, .org, .museum. Google sees regional top level domain names such as .eu and .asia as gTLDs, since they cannot be tied to a specific country. We also treat some vanity ccTLDs (such as .tv, .me, etc.) as gTLDs as we’ve found that users and webmasters frequently see these as being more generic than country-targeted (we don’t have a complete list of such vanity ccTLDs that we treat as gTLDs as it may change over time). You can set geotargeting for websites with gTLDs using the Webmaster Tools Geographic Target setting.
URL structures
The first three elements used for geotargeting are strongly tied to the server and to the URLs used. It’s difficult to determine geotargeting on a page by page basis, so it makes sense to consider using a URL structure that makes it easy to segment parts of the website for geotargeting. Here are some of the possible URL structures with pros and cons with regards to geotargeting:
| ccTLDs eg: example.de, example.fr |
Subdomains with gTLDs eg: de.site.com, fr.site.com, etc. |
Subdirectories with gTLDs eg: site.com/de/, site.com/fr/, etc. |
URL parameters eg: site.com?loc=de, ?country=france, etc. |
| pros (+) - clear geotargeting - server location is irrelevant - easy separation of sites - legal requirements (sometimes) |
pros (+) - easy to set up - can use Webmaster Tools geotargeting - allows different server locations - easy separation of sites |
pros (+) - easy to set up - can use Webmaster Tools geotargeting - low maintenance (same host) |
pros (+) (not recommended) |
| cons (-) - expensive (+ availability) - more infrastructure - ccTLD requirements (sometimes) |
cons (-) - users might not recognize geotargeting from the URL alone (is “de” the language or country?) |
cons (-) - users might not recognize geotargeting from the URL alone - single server location - separation of sites harder |
cons (-) - segmentation based on the URL is difficult - users might not recognize geotargeting from the URL alone - geotargeting in Webmaster Tools is not possible |
Tags: Google, multi refional website
Posted in Google