Comments on: International SEO: Creating a Great Web Experience Worldwide

By: Virginia Nussey

Virginia Nussey — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 16:44:10 +0000

Thanks for your comment, Natalie. Yes. we recommend hosting your .ca site within Canada. What kind of site is it? If you want to talk specifics of your site, I’d be happy to chat more. Feel free to message me on Twitter or LinkedIn. :)

Edit: After talking to Bruce, I wanted to clarify my response to you, Natalie. So, “yes” to hosting in Canada is the simple answer, but as with most things that Google judges, it’s rarely simple. A more nuanced analysis of the factors Google might use when ranking a site with a .ca domain also takes into account traffic load, cloud hosting vs. server hosting, and the readily available access to Google spiders that originate in the U.S. All that’s to say, if you are able to provide more context, we could provide you with a better answer for your unique situation.

By: Natalie

Natalie — Fri, 05 Apr 2013 15:12:22 +0000

Hi Jessica,

We are a US company with a .com site and want to launch our .ca Canadian version. We have been advised to host our .ca site with a separate Canadian host to avoid duplicate content issues and to increasing our rankings with the Canadian search engines. Would you recommend this too?

Thank you,

Natalie

By: Andre Alpar

Andre Alpar — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 19:14:50 +0000

Hi John,

when it comes to mobile SEO I am a little bit “torn” between using responsive design as one option and rel alternate in for the mobile version. On the topic I suggest these three reads

http://searchengineland.com/when-responsive-web-design-is-bad-for-seo-149109
http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/5-mobile-seo-tips-from-the-google-adwords-team
https://developers.google.com/webmasters/smartphone-sites/details

All the options are relatively new. Time and experiments will show which solution is good for which case. Too early to tell unfortunately.

Best regard from Berlin
Andre

By: Jessica Lee

Jessica Lee — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 16:53:29 +0000

Hey John, appreciate you reaching out! I’m going to get in touch with Andre on your question and see if he can’t get in on the discussion.

By: Jessica Lee

Jessica Lee — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 16:52:34 +0000

Hey Phil, thank you for the comment! I’ll pass this along to Andre, too.

By: Phil Richards

Phil Richards — Fri, 29 Mar 2013 16:12:50 +0000

Hi Jessica,

really enjoyed reading this post as it was bang on target with a clients request which OI was also currently investigating.

The annotations rel=”alternate” hreflang=”X” – i was a great tip that I will be sure to utilize.

Keep up the great work.

Regards

Phil

By: John McCarthy

John McCarthy — Thu, 28 Mar 2013 00:00:29 +0000

Jessica,

I really love the post about international SEO. This is a good overview of the three general approaches (e.g. TLD, sub domain and subdirectories).

However what I find absent in this discussion is mobile SEO. Internationally mobile SEO is more important than desktop SEO especially in in the countries that comprise APAC and EU.

What are the recommended architecture solutions for international mobile SEO when the mobile site is a subdomain vs a subdirectory?

John