Different Currencies Or Languages Across My Online Stores
Friday, August 18, 2017Lindsay Hampson
Being an integration Platform as a Service vendor (iPaaS), eBridge Connections gets a lot of questions that hover around the complexity of multi-store performance
We received a great question from one of our partners this week, and we decided to share it with you. It’s very relatable to those who are asking how multiple online stores will impact organic search results.
“Hey eBridge,
Does your customer with 8 online stores use multiple currencies?
An issue that came up with our customer was SEO. They wondered about having 3 stores with effectively the same content the only difference being 3 currencies. Do you guys have any insight on that?
Thanks appreciate the help here!”
Here’s our answer:
“Your question was a great one!
I spent some time looking for an answer for you re: dupes of one store interfering with SEO.
Hreflangs seem to be the key here. These annotations are meant to cross-reference pages that are similar in content, but target different audiences. (ie: multiple Shopify stores with the same content, different currency)
• After migration, to avoid being penalized by Google, be sure to implement hreflang, as outlined by Google here. Hreflang is a tag you can add to each page on your respective websites (add it to theme.liquid in the <head> section to make sure it's on every page), which tells Google that your websites are connected. In other words, hreflang is required to make sure that Google understands that your Canadian website is for Canadian customers, and your US website is for US customers—without penalizing you for having two sites that are alike. Do not skip this step. Here’s a great article explaining the implementation.
Thanks for asking the question! Our experience + this new research made us all the wiser.”
And their reply back:
“Exactly what I was looking for. We are indeed all the wiser now, and hopefully this will satisfy my customer, it's one of their biggest questions at the moment.”
How to plan effectively for currency or geo-specific online stores:
• Do your research – fully understand the capabilities around currency and store duplication that each eCommerce platform offers
• Research SEO tips and best practices so you can take control of your own organic search destiny
• Make sure you play by Google’s rules – don’t create duplicate content without a plan
When you are doing your eCommerce platform vendor compare, consider their unique technique for dealing with geographically unique, language specific audiences. An online store for American shoppers wont fly in front of French-Canadians, or Germans.
I am wiser now!