Help with setting up an international version of my store.

[AlokJ]

Hi,

I run koshayoga.co and have recently created worldwide.koshayoga.co to cater to my customers visiting from outside India.

The idea is that I would like to have international customers automatically redirected to worldwide.koshayoga.co where they see different prices & in a different currency than my current store.

What I would like to know is that

1. Do I need to connect the two stores? Should I be setting up worldwide.koshayoga.co as a subdomain of koshayoga.co? If so, how do I do that?

2. Will this affect my SEO in any way? Is there anyway to tell google that worldwide.koshayoga.co is the same as koshayoga.co only catering to a different geography?

3. Will I need to use an app to redirect people to the correct site based on their location, if so, any recommended app?

4. Do you recommend any other/better way to do this rather than having two separate stores.

I am on shopify's basic plan for both stores. The domain is purchased on godaddy.

I'd really appreciate any help. Thanks!

[demib]

First of all, I will NOT recommend that you automatically redirect users! The reason is that there will always be false positives and there is a huge risk that many will not be able to access the right version of your site. Instead, detect location and SUGGEST another version. Do not force users.

Also, GEO-targeted forced redirects is VERY bad for SEO. Because Google is a user too. If you redirect users Google will only be able to see one version and the other(s) will become invisible in Google. 

To answer your questions:

1. worldwide.koshayoga.co IS technically a subdomain of koshayoga.co. If you need to manage inventory across them then you should connect them. There are several Shopify Apps that can help you with this.
   
   
2. Yes, forced GEO redirects is VERY bad for SEO (see above). But having multiple versions of your site for different regions can be good. I highly recommend you implement Hreflang-data to tell Google which version(s) is what which regions (and optionally language). Thats the best SEO-solution.
   
   
3. See above. Do not redirect
   
   
4. It is, generally, recommended by most Shopify experts to establish a multi region/language structure as separate stores. I will recommend this too. 

I hope this helps 🙂

[AlokJ]

Hi!

Thank you so much for your suggestions.

Ok, so I will not forcefully redirect, but instead have a pop-up that
displays, asking which site a visitor would like to visit.

I don't really need to manage inventory across the two stores, I don't have
too many SKUs so I can manage inventory manually.

Is there any other advantage of linking the two stores? Will linking them
help my SEO?

Thank you so much for your advice, I'm super intimidated by the process of
setting up the new store correctly, so your advice really helps!

[demib]

Good 🙂

Yes, linking between the two sites generally makes it easier for Google to understand they are somewhat connected. And you will inherit some of the authority between them. 

[AlokJ]

Hi!

I'm a. bot lost trying to implement hreflang tags

I was following this article: https://www.semrush.com/blog/7-common-hreflang-mistakes-and-how-to-fix-them/

I see that these tags are used when there is a variation in the language between the two sites

The two of my sites are more or less identical. Also the language used in both the sites is the same.

In this case how do i successfully implement hreflang tags?

<link rel="alternate" hreflang="en-us" href="http://www.koshayoga.co" />
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="en-us" href="http://worldwide.koshayoga.co/us/" />
<link rel="Canonical" href="http://www.koshayoga.co/" />

Is this the correct way to use them in the theme.liquid section of both my stores?

Really appreciate the guidance

[demib]

Hi again,

No it's not quite right 🙂

Language is required - country is optional. So in your case one version would be en-us (for English speaking users in US) and just en for the other (English speaking users outside the US).

I would remove the CANONICAL-tag.

I would also add a X-default, to the default version (for users not matching language or region)

[AlokJ]

Thank you so much for the advice, 

I'm going to try setting this up and hopefully not make a huge mess of it all

Is there any way you recommend I could test this once done? So I know everything is working as needed?

[demib]

In Google Search Console under: Legacy tools and reports -> International targeting you can see a report and any possible errors

[demib]

Lucas, I can recommend contacting HreflangBuilder (I am not affiliated but know the people well) - they are experts in creating proper Hreflang data and they also know about Shopify