Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Using geolocation for dynamic content - what's the best practice for SEO?
-
Hello
We sell a product globally but I want to use different keywords to describe the product based on location.
For this example let’s say in USA the product is a "bathrobe" and in Canada it’s a "housecoat" (same product, just different name).
What this means… I want to show "bathrobe" content in USA (lots of global searches) and "housecoat" in Canada (less searches).
I know I can show the content using a geolocation plugin (also found a caching plugin which will get around the issue of people seeing cached versions), using JavaScript or html5.
I want a solution which enables someone in Canada searching for "bathrobe" to be able to find our site through Google search though too. I want to rank for "bathrobe" in BOTH USA and Canada.
I have read articles which say Google can read the dynamic content in JavaScript, as well as the geolocation plugin. However the plugins suggest Google crawls the content based on location too. I don’t know about JavaScript.
Another option is having two separate pages (one for “bathrobe” and one for “housecoat”) and using geolocation for the main menu (if they find the other page i.e. bathrobe page through a Canadian search, they will still see it though). This may have an SEO impact splitting the traffic though.
Any suggestions or recommendations on what to do?? What do other websites do? I’m a bit stuck.
Thank you so much!
Laura
Ps. I don’t think we have enough traffic to add subdomains or subdirectories.
-
Hello Benjamin,
This is an interesting problem. I'm going to provide my opinion, but I highly recommend studying up on International SEO, which you can do at the links below:
https://a-moz.groupbuyseo.org/learn/seo/international-seo
http://www.aleydasolis.com/en/I don't know what the plugin does, but if it generates a new URL (e.g. adds ?loc=ca or something like that) for the location change you'll want to use rel="alternate" hreflang="*" tags, which would look something like this:
Google recommends putting one language per page, so that would be a different URL for each version, as highlighted in red here.
**However, it sounds to me like all of this is done client-side using JavaScript, and that the URL doesn't change, only the content.** If this is the case - as long as you are serving the same content to Googlebot crawling in Canada as you are to a visitor in Canada you probably won't have any issues, as described here: https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2008/06/how-google-defines-ip-delivery.html .For the situation you described, it seems like you could put both keyword variations in the content and that would be good enough. But then you don't want to spell specialising with an S in one line and specializing with a z in the next.
Another thing to look into is whether both versions of the content appear in the code, or just one or the other. You definitely don't want to have multiple versions of the content in the source code. But you also don't want to hide both versions via JavaScript, only to load one or the other client-side. That creates even more problems.One would think there would be a Vary: Location response header, similar to how responses are provided when content varies by user-agent or cookie: https://www.fastly.com/blog/best-practices-for-using-the-vary-header . Alas, I can't find any use cases of this and it's not a "thing". I'm not sure why this is, but maybe an International SEO Expert like Alayda Solis would know. I'll ping her into the thread if she has time.
-
Thank you. That link was helpful.
-
This is a great opportunity to test some of your ideas. It may be a good idea to create unique landing pages based on the most highly search keyword per region and target them on the corresponding geo-page. Read more about great ways to rank geo-targeted pages--and make them convert: https://a-moz.groupbuyseo.org/blog/scaling-geo-targeted-local-landing-pages-that-really-rank-and-convert-whiteboard-friday
However, it may be agood idea to optimize the homepage, about page, and service description pages for the products rather than the locations.And, since you're a national brand, it may be smart to try so PPC ads to geo-target your advertising and use those keywords accordingly.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Best practices around translating quotes for international sites?
I'm working on a site that has different versions of the same page in multiple languages (e.g., English, Spanish, French). Currently, they feature customer testimonial quotes on some pages and the quotes are in English, even if the rest of the page is in another language. I'm curious to know what are best practices around how to treat client quotes on localized languages pages. A few approaches that we're contemplating: 1. Leave the quote in English and don't translate (because the customer quoted doesn't speak the localized language). 2. Leave the on-page quote in English, but provide a "translate" option for the user to click to see the translated version. The translated text would be hidden until the "translate" button is selected. 3. Go ahead and translate the quote into the local language. Appreciate your thoughts, thank you!
Local Website Optimization | | Allie_Williams0 -
Subdomain vs. Separate Domain for SEO & Google AdWords
We have a client who carries 4 product lines from different manufacturers under a singular domain name (www.companyname.com), and last fall, one of their manufacturers indicated that they needed to move to separate out one of those product lines from the rest, so we redesigned and relaunched as two separate sites - www.companyname.com and www.companynameseparateproduct.com (a newly-purchased domain). Since that time, their manufacturer has reneged their requirement to separate the product lines, but the client has been running both sites separately since they launched at the beginning of December 2016. Since that time, they have cannibalized their content strategy (effective February 2017) and hacked apart their PPC budget from both sites (effective April 2017), and are upset that their organic and paid traffic has correspondingly dropped from the original domain, and that the new domain hasn't continued to grow at the rate they would like it to (we did warn them, and they made the decision to move forward with the changes anyway). This past week, they decided to hire an in-house marketing manager, who is insisting that we move the newer domain (www.companynameseparateproduct.com) to become a subdomain on their original site (separateproduct.companyname.com). Our team has argued that making this change back 6 months into the life of the new site will hurt their SEO (especially if we have to 301 redirect all of the old content back again, without any new content regularly being added), which was corroborated with this article. We'd also have to kill the separate AdWords account and quality score associated with the ads in that account to move them back. We're currently looking for any extra insight or literature that we might be able to find that helps explain this to the client better - even if it is a little technical. (We're also open to finding out if this method of thinking is incorrect if things have changed!)
Local Website Optimization | | mkbeesto0 -
Impact of .us vs .com on SEO rankings?
Our website is hosted on www.discovered.us. I have 2 questions: 1: we have had regular feedback a .us domain is negative in SEO and in conversion (customers don't like it). We are thinking of changing domain to: www.dscvrd.com.
Local Website Optimization | | Discovered
Any insights on the impact on our rankings (if any) if we do this? 2: we are focusing our SEO global / USA first but conversions in UK are better. We currently do not have multi-language SEO setup. What would the impact be of implementing www.discovered.co.uk on SEO in UK? Thanks! Gijsbert0 -
How does duplicate content work when creating location specific pages?
In a bid to improve the visibility of my site on the Google SERP's, I am creating landing pages that were initially going to be used in some online advertising. I then thought it might be a good idea to improve the content on the pages so that they would perform better in localised searches. So I have a landing page designed specifically to promote what my business can do, and funnel the user in to requesting a quote from us. The main keyword phrase I am using is "website design london", and I will be creating a few more such as "website design birmingham", "website design leeds". The only thing that I've changed at the moment across all these pages is the location name, I haven't touched any of the USP's or the testimonial that I use. However, in both cases "website design XXX" doesn't show up in any of the USP's or testimonial. So my question is that when I have these pages built, and they're indexed, will I be penalised for this tactic?
Local Website Optimization | | mickburkesnr0 -
Can you, somehow, use dynamic number insertion on a click to call button (image)
Hello Moz! I have been beating my head against the wall for a few hours, and I am starting to get a headache. My question is simple: I am doing some work for a local salon, and we started a PPC campaign recently. It's very important that I get accurate ROI metrics from both our PPC efforts and Yelp advertising program, and the best way to do this is by using custom phone numbers and dynamic number insertion w/ CallRail to track phone calls being made to the salon. I can then cross reference the numbers used to call with the salon POS software to see what they spent, how many appts. they booked, etc. A VERY large portion, the majority in fact, of traffic comes from mobile, and in the past I had a big, fat, beautiful CTA click-to-call button that showed the salon phone number. However, I have found that with dynamic number insertion, and my near non-existent programming skills, it is impossible to have the number dynamically insert into an href image. Sooooo...any ideas on how to do this, or is it just not possible????
Local Website Optimization | | Sean_Gutermuth0 -
Local SEO for National Brands
Hi all, When it comes to local SEO in 2015, I appreciate that having a physical location in the town/city you wish to rank is a major factor. However, if you're a national brand is it still possible to rank for local searches when you're based in one location? The reason I ask is that, although our service is national, the nature of what we offer means that it is not inconceivable that people would search for a local variation of our top keywords. Other than the standard things - location in the content, the H1/H2s, title tag, meta description, url etc. - is there anything national businesses can do to help? Thanks in advance. John
Local Website Optimization | | NAHL-14300 -
How Google's Doorway Pages Update Affects Local SEO
Hey Awesome Local Folks! I thought I'd take a proactive stance and start a thread on the new doorway pages update from Google, as I feel there will be questions coming up about this here in the forum: Here's the update announcement: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2015/03/an-update-on-doorway-pages.html And here's the part that will make local business owners and Local SEOs take a second glance at this: Here are questions to ask of pages that could be seen as doorway pages: Do the pages duplicate useful aggregations of items (locations, products, etc.) that already exist on the site for the purpose of capturing more search traffic? I think this will naturally lead to questions about the practice of creating local/city landing pages. At this point, my prediction is that this will come down to high quality vs. crummy quality pages of this type. In fact, after chatting briefly with Andrew Shotland, I'm leaning a bit toward seeing the above language as being strongly geared toward directory type sites and large franchises. I recommend reading Andrew's post about his take on this, as I think he's on the right track: http://www.localseoguide.com/googles-about-to-close-your-local-doorway-pages/ So, I'm feeling at this point that if you've made the right efforts to develop unique, high quality local landing pages, you should be good unless you are an accidental casualty of an over-zealous update. We'll see! If anyone has thoughts to contribute on this thread, I hope they will, and if lots of questions start coming up about this here in the community, feel free to link back to this thread in helping your fellow community members 🙂 Thanks, all!
Local Website Optimization | | MiriamEllis9 -
How Best to do implement a Branch Locator for a Website with invididual location category pages
Hi All, We have an ecommerce Website with multiple locations for our stores and we currently display separate location specific pages for the different categories and sub categories. This has helped us previously to rank well for local search in each of the areas we have a store but over the last few months since humingbird, our local rankings on some things have dip a little . We want to implement a branch locator of some description to improve the user experience. From looking at other websites with branch locators, they tend to a separate button/page with which you can search for a branch etc. However, they don't have location specific pages. My query is should I do it so if a user comes in on a specific category location page and follows it through to product page , then to have a tab on the product page displaying the local branch from which he can come in. My thinking here is that , is that it would help confirm my local citations and help improve local rankings. Or Should the local branch be displayed on the local category pages instead or as well ?. If a user comes in from the homepage or not on a specific location page, then the branch locator will allow them to search for a specific branch. Should I also put in a branch locator as a separate page or can It be in more places. I don't want to damage anything which may have an effect on rankings due to citations and NAP on the location specific pages. Any advice or good examples to look at would be greatly appreciated thanks Sarah.
Local Website Optimization | | SarahCollins1