Google’s Official Advice On Home Page Handling For International Users
Google’s Zineb Ait Bahajji posted on the Google Webmaster Central blog, Google’s official advice on how to handle home pages for sites with internationalized content.
In short…
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Google Logo For Dorothy Hodgkin, British Scientist
Today on most of the Google home pages is a logo for a female biochemist named Dorothy Mary Hodgkin. It would be here 104th birthday today, born on May 12, 1910 in Egypt and passing at the age of 84 on July 29, 1994 in England…
Bing: Unnatural Links = Advanced Knowledge Of Links
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Google’s Update From Last Week Reversing Itself?
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Well, as of this morning, it seems some are saying their rankings are back to where they were…
How To Get A Medical Marijuana Dispensary Into Google Places
I was stoked when Chris Silver Smith turned us all on to the potential issues with marijuana and local search last month. As an early dabbler in helping marijuana dispensaries figure out local SEO, I, too, think it’s high time to help marketers recognize the challenges and opportunities in…
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
6 Ways to Get the Most Out of Your Search Marketing Agency
You’ve hired experts to handle your search marketing. Good for you! Now how do you make sure they have what they need to succeed, are earning their keep, and not just phoning it in? Let’s look at a few ways to get the most from your search agency.
The Marketer Identity Crisis. Where Are The SEOs?
Online marketing is dazed and confused. Not in the “dry herbs” style, but in the deer-in-the-headlights style. Or maybe both… to each his own. To begin with, I must state that I am an old curmudgeon by online marketing standards, having been in the field for over 14 years. I identify myself…
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
Dorothy Hodgkin Google Logo Marks The Nobel Prize Winning Biochemist’s 104th Birthday
Adding another woman to the list Google logo honorees, today’s Google homepage recognizes the accomplishments of British biochemist Dorothy Hodgkin. The logo depicts an illustration of penicillin’s molecular structure, a discovery made by Hodgkin in 1945. While it had already been…
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
5 New & Improved Twitter Features Marketers Should Use
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Creating the Right Homepage for your International Users
If you are doing business in more than one country or targeting different languages, we recommend having separate sites or sections with specific content on each URLs targeted for individual countries or languages. For instance one page for US and english-speaking visitors, and a different page for France and french-speaking users. While we have information on handling multi-regional and multilingual sites, the homepage can be a bit special. This post will help you create the right homepage on your website to serve the appropriate content to users depending on their language and location.
There are three ways to configure your homepage / landing page when your users access it:
- Show everyone the same content.
- Let users choose.
- Serve content depending on users’ localization and language.
Let’s have a look at each in detail.
Show users worldwide the same content
In this scenario, you decide to serve specific content for one given country and language on your homepage / generic URL (http://www.example.com). This content will be available to anyone who accesses that URL directly in their browser or those who search for that URL specifically. As mentioned above, all country & language versions should also be accessible on their own unique URLs.
Note: You can show a banner on your page to suggest a more appropriate version to users from other locations or with different language settings.
Let users choose which local version and which language they want
In this configuration, you decide to serve a country selector page on your homepage / generic URL and to let users choose which content they want to see depending on country and language. All users who type in that URL can access the same page.
If you implement this scenario on your international site, remember to use the x-default rel-alternate-hreflang annotation for the country selector page, which was specifically created for these kinds of pages. The x-default value helps us recognize pages that are not specific to one language or region.
Automatically redirect users or dynamically serve the appropriate HTML content depending on users’ location and language settings
A third scenario would be to automatically serve the appropriate HTML content to your users depending on their location and language settings. You will either do that by using server-side 302 redirects or by dynamically serving the right HTML content.
Remember to use x-default rel-alternate-hreflang annotation on the homepage / generic page even if the latter is a redirect page that is not accessible directly for users.
Note: Think about redirecting users for whom you do not have a specific version. For instance, French-speaking users on a website that has English, Spanish and Chinese versions. Show them the content that you consider the most appropriate.
Whatever configuration you decide to go with, you should make sure all the pages – including country and language selector pages:
- Have rel-alternate-hreflang annotations.
- Are accessible for Googlebot’s crawling and indexing: do not block the crawling or indexing of your localized pages.
- Always allow users to switch local version or language: you can do that using a drop down menu for instance.
Reminder: As mentioned in the beginning, remember that you must have separate URLs for each country and language version.
About rel-alternate-hreflang annotations
Remember to annotate all your pages – whatever method you choose. This will greatly help search engines to show the right results to your users.
Country selector pages and redirecting or dynamically serving homepages should all use the x-default hreflang, which was specifically designed for auto-redirecting homepages and country selectors.
Finally, here are a few useful reminders about rel-alternate-hreflang annotations in general:
- Your annotations must be confirmed from the other pages. If page A links to page B, page B must link back to page A, otherwise, your annotations may not be interpreted correctly.
- Your annotations should be self-referential. Page A should use rel-alternate-hreflang annotation linking to itself.
- You can specify the rel-alternate-hreflang annotations in the HTTP header, in the head section of the HTML, or in a sitemap file. We strongly recommend that you choose only one way to implement the annotations, in order to avoid inconsistent signals and errors.
- The value of the hreflang attribute must be in ISO 639-1 format for the language, and in ISO 3166-1 Alpha 2 format for the region. Specifying only the region is not supported. If you wish to configure your site only for a country, use the geotargeting feature in Webmaster Tools.
Following these recommendations will help us better understand your localized content and serve more relevant results to your users in our search results. As always, if you have any questions or feedback, please tell us in the internationalization Webmaster Help Forum.
Posted by Zineb Ait Bahajji and Gary Illyes, Webmaster Trends Analysts.
How to Audit Your SEO & PPC Agency or Consultant
If you employ an SEO or PPC consultant/agency, assess these points to determine whether they’re doing their job. If you’re looking to hire a new agency or consultant, address each point with them and ask for examples before initiating an engagement.
Super Mom On Bike As Google Doodle For Mother’s Day & More
Today on Google’s home page is a special Google logo, aka Google Doodle for Mother’s Day. In fact…
Mother’s Day Google Logo Celebrates The Superhero In Every Mom
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Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
SearchCap: Bing On Links, Google PLA Tests & Brand Bias
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Bing On Links: You Should Never Know In Advance Where A Link Is Coming From Duane Forrester from Microsoft’s Bing team wrote a blog post today on the…
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
Bing On Links: You Should Never Know In Advance Where A Link Is Coming From
Duane Forrester from Microsoft’s Bing team wrote a blog post today on the official Bing Search blog named 10 SEO myths reviewed. There are many good and obvious points Duane makes in the post but one point he makes about links is very revealing. Duane wrote: You should never know in advance a…
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
New PLA Test Spotted: Google Ranking Products By Reviews And Ratings
The team at CPC Strategy spotted a new test in the Google Product Listing Ads (PLAs) last night. In a search for coffee grinders that was qualified with “best”, the PLAs were shown in order of a numerical rankings system that appears to be factoring in the quality and quantity of each…
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
ProFlowers, 1800Flowers Killing It in Paid Search Ahead of Mother’s Day
With Mother’s Day right around the corner, AdGooroo wanted to examine the paid search landscape to see who the leaders were in mobile, desktop, and tablet paid search for the flowers and gifts category. ProFlowers and 1800Flowers claimed the top spots.
Video Recap of Weekly Search Buzz :: May 9, 2014
This week in search, I posted the monthly Google webmaster report. Google may be preparing for a large update, we saw shifts on May 2nd and 7th. Bing also may have done an update…
4 Statistics About Pinterest Users You Need to Know [Study]
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