I’m in need of some guidance regarding my Magento 2.x multi-store setup, particularly concerning my website structure and SEO. I’ve been facing some challenges, and I’d appreciate your insights and expertise.
A bit of background: Long before my current setup, we used dedicated domains like mystore.ca and mystore.com.au. Unfortunately, due to some paperwork fiascos, I lost the rights to these domains. In response, I switched to a multi-store setup using subfolders (mystore.tld/en-ca/, mystore.tld/en-au/, etc.), and I’ve been struggling ever since with the root domain (mystore.tld). It’s become evident that Google treated the unique domains differently compared to the subfolders.
My current setup includes several stores:
- mystore.tld – Default en-us store.
- mystore.tld/en-ca/ – Canadian store.
- mystore.tld/en-au/ – Australian store.
- mystore.tld/en/ – European store.
The issue I’m grappling with is that the Canadian, Australian, and European sites are performing well in terms of search engine rankings, but my main site (mystore.tld) is struggling.
I suspect that the structure of my main site may be causing issues with Google’s indexing. Most websites typically configure their en-us site as mystore.tld/en-us/ and then automatically redirect visitors who land on mystore.tld to the appropriate store based on their IP address. In this kind of setup, mystore.tld doesn’t serve as an operational store but rather functions as a redirect landing page.
Here are my main questions:
- Is there a way to optimize mystore.tld to work as a functioning store url, or is it best to eliminate it and launch mystore.tld/en-us/?
- I’m looking for a straightforward answer because creating a new store is a significant undertaking, and I want to ensure that there’s no viable solution within my existing setup.
I’ve noticed that Google seems to scan subfolders extensively. For instance, when Google scans /en-ca/, it also scans and collects data related to /en-ca/blog/, which appears correct. However, it’s worth noting that /en/ is scanned, including /en/blog/, but not /en-ca/blog/ or /en-au/blog/. Additionally, when the main store (mystore.tld) is crawled, it seems that all subfolders and their contents are scanned, including /en/, /en-ca/, and /en-au/*.
Fortunately, I do have access to robots.txt from the sub folder level. Can I address this by disallowing certain subfolders using mystore.tld/robots.txt, or would it be better to move the simply recreated the main shop’s destination as a subfolder store and get rid of mystore.tld as a working shop?
I’m eager to hear your thoughts and experiences with similar setups. Any assistance you can provide would be greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance for your help!