International SEO - Geotargeting, TLDs, Hosting Location, Languages

International SEO has its own unique challenges. One aspect is the issue of duplicate content, which is simply one aspect of ranking in local search SERPs and routing customers to the appropriate sites and pages. Turns out that this can be difficult.

First let's look at what Google does in an automated way and then go into more topical areas.

Google looks at ccTLDs, site hosting location, and language for automated Geotargeting in SERPs.

• Google WMT article on Geotargeting
• Takeaways include: don't use geotargeting for a language group.

The tool handles geographic data, not language data. If you're targeting users in different locations—for example, if you have a site in French that you want users in France, Canada, and Mali to read—we don't recommend that you use this tool to set France as a geographic target. A good example of where it would be useful is for a restaurant website: if the restaurant is in Canada, it's probably not of interest to folks in France. But if your content is in French and is of interest to people in multiple countries/regions, it's probably better not to restrict it.

Matt Cutts on Duplicate content in Ecommerce

• How are duplicate shopping pages with different currencies handled in Google? - Google policy on duplicate content with a good example

Articles on International SEO

• Do diacritics really matter? - Search Engine Watch
  • Note this is important for Vietnamese where many users drop diacritics from online communication, e.g,. chat and email
• Less common problems of International SEO - Search Engine Watch
  • No need to localize hosting
  • The interesting Regional vs. Local content issue
• Translating Keywords should never ever happen - Search Engine Watch
• International SEO 101, Part 1
  • Know your audience (use the useful Internet World Stats)
  • Include the web page code (language code) on each page
  • Domain extensions for local content (local search optimization)
  • Local hosting (though not necessary in various circumstances)
• International SEO 101, Part 2
  • Keywords, keywords, keywords... Did I mention keywords? Yeah, them.
• International SEO and Geolocation - top 10 factors - SEO Bloom
  • Content, title tag (unique, localized keywords), description meta tag, language meta tag, TLD for local market penetration, Geo selector (cached, crawlable link), hosting location, localized file names, local contact information, local incoming links from local ccTLD
• Archive of International SEM articles on Search Engine Watch

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