[tarmstrong]

Hi.

I have a website in Portuguese and English.
- 200,000 indexed pages under 'pt.foo.com' (5 years old)
- 200,000 indexed pages under 'en.foo.com' (6 months old)

If I search at 'www.google.pt/search?q=english+keywords', the wepage of 'en.foo.com' appears in the top-10 ranking of SERPs. The same in 'www.google.com.br'.

However, If I search the same English keywords in 'www.google.com/ncr' (Google USA), the wepbage of 'en.foo.com' does not appear.

Within the 'International targeting' section of the 'Google Search Console' for webmasters, I did set 'United States' as the country target of 'en.foo.com'. Am I doing something wrong?

Thank you.

[KnowOneSpecial]

Originally Posted by tarmstrong

Within the 'International targeting' section of the 'Google Search Console' for webmasters, I did set 'United States' as the country target of 'en.foo.com'. Am I doing something wrong?

Quoting Google....
"Google uses hreflang tags to match the user's language preference to the right variation of your pages."

Did you implement them, and did you do it correctly? With out seeing the page and checking the source code, I suspect you didn't do it correctly, just from your description of the problem.

[tarmstrong]

Yes, I did implement hreflang tags

On 'pt.foo.com' pages:
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="en" href="http://en.foo.com/whatever" />

On 'en.foo.com' pages:
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="pt" href="http://pt.foo.com/whatever" />

In fact, there are thousands of pages with 'hreflang' tags indexed:

However, I do not understand why the total number of indexed pages (200,000) are within this collection, and I do not understand the reason of this drop startin in mid-January.

[KnowOneSpecial]

Are you mobile ready and do you have https installed on your site?

[tarmstrong]

I use a web design responsive framework, and my pages are "mobile-friendly", according to 'https://search.google.com/search-console/mobile-friendly' ("This page is easy to use on a mobile device").


I do not have https installed on your site. I always thought it was irrelevant, but I've been looking for information and found:
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/6073543
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/6033049
Shoud I implement https to improve my rankings in USA?


Thank you very much.

[KnowOneSpecial]

Yes, you should..

It's free to get a certificate now. Also you get a little boost from Google for having it.