User scenarios for International sites
For international sites, follow this table in order to define proper values for Urls, 301s, Cookies, Flags, GEO-IP and Browser language depending on the User scenario.
meta data user scenario seo
Highlights for User Scenarios
· Values on url dominates; than comes cookie values; last is geo-ip and browser lookup values.
· For the homepage only (www.example.com or www.example.com/fr), if no country value is set, this value should be set to the user’s country based on a Geo-IP lookup.
· Browser language detection should only available strictly for homepage url www.example.com.
· If cookie country value is set, there’s no redirection based on a GEO-Ip lookup.
· The country value should change if the user selects a different flag in the country selector or by acceding a country specific url. (i.e. /uk-en/ sets cookie country value to UK)
· Selecting a country filter on medals or athletes pages should direct the user to the country specific URL (I.e. selecting CANADA from www.example.com/olympic-medals/ should go to www.example.com/ca-en/olympic-medals
· If a country value is set and a user tries to access another country by changing the url or the country in the switcher, the country value is changed.
· The language value should change if the user selects to change their language on the website between English and French or from acceding a specific url (i.e. /ca-fr/ sets cookie language value to FR (French)
· For browser languages other than French (i.e. Chinese), redirect to EN.
· We can influence but we do not have total control on which pages Google will show in the SERPs.
· From the site’s navigation, the site must allow the possibility to go on the main site www.example.com or www.example.com/fr/ (French version) without being redirected again. In other words, the site must allow the option of setting the country cookie value to <nocountry>.
Meta data scenarios for International sites
For international sites, follow this table in order to define proper values for Canonical tag, Meta Noindex/Nofollow, Meta Country/Meta Language and GWT Geotarget depending on the Url.
meta data user scenario
Highlights for Meta data scenarios
· Country specific pages with no unique content (i.e. /ca-fr/terms-and-conditions/) should have a <meta name=”robots” content=”noindex,nofollow”> and a <link rel=”canonical” href=”http://www.example.com/terms-and-conditions/” />
· Static links pointing to country-specific pages with unique content should be integrated somewhere on the site (i.e. html and xml sitemap)
· Country specific pages with unique content must have specific values for META Titles, META Keywords and META Description.
· We can influence but we do not have total control on which pages Google will show in the SERPs.