RANE Digital’s Role in the #nightlenses Revolution
RANE Digital played a pivotal role in the success of the global launch of nightlenses.com, a platform site that is the central cog of what is being dubbed the “#nightlenses revolution”. Night lenses, a non-surgical alternative to laser eye surgery, are a game changing eyecare innovation that is literally raising eyebrows around the world. It’s an exciting and challenging project. Our team spearheaded the creation of five targeted websites for multiple geographical locations, employing advanced SEO strategies, including hreflang attributes and custom local geographic store locator maps.
“Yet again the team at RANE delivered well beyond expectations. I just wanted to take a moment to say ‘Thank you’ to you all for playing your part to help us make the global launch of nightlenses.com, as part of the #nightlenses revolution, a success. Technically we are now the largest public Ortho-K night lens platform in the world. “Technically” as the hard work now begins filling the site and delivering value to opticians in our first 6 countries: UK, US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. But with the platform in place, and the extended team of which RANE are a part firing on all cylinders, we are on schedule and heading in the right direction. Tom Griffiths, Co-Founder, nightlenses.com“
What RANE Digital Did
RANE Digital created five geographically targeted websites based on the main UK site. While digital nomad Benjamin Griffiths was busy ‘surfing 😊 and coding’ in Australia, rewriting content to make it relevant for each country, RANE set up the complex hreflang and geographically unique attributes for each site. Given that each website used dynamic custom fields, this task required writing code that existed in one instance but dynamically changed depending on the geographical site being used.
We first tested the New Zealand site and found that Google quickly picked up the /nz/ version and indexed it accordingly. This was crucial since the site was already a .com domain and thus was already indexed globally. We then pursued the South African, Australian, Canadian & USA sites.
With Benjamin’s help with the databases, we were able to use the same map but automatically pull locations depending on the geographical site being used.
Thanks to all this hard work, we were able to maintain and improve NightLenses’ worldwide rankings, ensuring relevant and localised content for users in different regions.
Why Hreflang Matters
Hreflang attributes are crucial for ensuring that search engines display the most appropriate version of your content to users based on their language and geographical location. This is especially important when you’ve invested time in translating your content into multiple languages.
- Google and Yandex: Both look at hreflang tags to help serve the correct version of a page.
- Bing: Uses hreflang as a weak signal, relying more on the content-language HTML attribute, links, and user location data.
- Baidu: Does not use hreflang tags, instead relying on the content-language HTML attribute.
Using hreflang attributes improves user experience by catering to the native tongue of search engine users, often resulting in higher dwell time, lower bounce rates, and longer time on page. Additionally, hreflang tags can directly affect rankings, as pages in a hreflang cluster share each other’s ranking signals.
Addressing Duplicate Content
Without hreflang tags, similar pages targeting different regions might be seen as duplicate content by Google. For example, a page in British English for UK readers and a page in American English for US readers are almost identical. Hreflang helps Google understand their relationship, aiming to show the correct version in search results. While hreflang is a signal rather than a directive, it’s best practice to localise content within an hreflang cluster by adjusting pricing, language variants, and other local specifics.
Conclusion
RANE Digital’s expertise in implementing hreflang attributes and local SEO strategies has significantly contributed to the #nightlenses revolution. As we move forward, our focus will continue to be on localising content and engaging in strategic SEO in countries across the globe to expand the reach of NightLenses.
“Thank you for your hard work and dedication. Together, we are making the #nightlenses revolution a global success.
Let’s keep climbing!” – Tom Griffiths – Co-Founder, nightlenses.com
Feel free to reach out if you have any questions or need further information on our SEO strategies and the role of hreflang in our global initiatives.
Neil Davey from RANE says:
“Tom is a prolific entrepreneur and a proven disruptor. There’s a difference between innovating (launching the first taxi app) and disrupting (launching Uber). Tom disrupts, changes the landscape. Globally he changed the gap year industry, his digital campaigns have achieved tens of millions of social impressions over the years and, here in NI, his home for 10 years, the place is littered with his creations from Finn McCool’s giant knitted underpants on the Giants Causeway to arguably the most eye-catching guard vessels in European waters. After his son’s life was transformed by an unknown ‘Orthokeratology lens’ (hard to understand / remember), he decided to disrupt the space by making them easy to understand / remember, re-naming them globally as “night lenses” – perfect sight: no specs, no day lenses, no laser. His objective is to grow $1bn of new sales across the 6 anglosphere countries of the UK, US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand & S.Africa. As his tech team, it was up to us to figure out how to build a platform to do that, and to successfully deliver that part of the #nightlenses revolution (yes, he launched a revolution!). In truth it has challenged us more than most of our projects, but it has been incredible to work on. Phase 1 is under way. Phase 2 is now beginning. This is an exciting, high impact global project that we love being a part of”.
Additional International SEO Tasks
To ensure the success of international SEO efforts, several important tasks must be addressed:
- Multiple Websites: Create multiple websites with content targeted for different countries, ensuring that each site meets the local language and cultural preferences of the target audience.
- Hreflang Implementation: Implement hreflang tags to signal to search engines the relationship between different language versions of your content, improving the user experience and reducing the risk of duplicate content issues.
- Localised Content: Localise content beyond translation by adapting pricing, currency, and local language variants to ensure the content is relevant and engaging for the target audience.
- Technical SEO: Ensure proper technical SEO practices are followed, including the use of self-referential hreflang tags, reciprocal hreflang tags, and x-default tags to guide search engines in serving the correct version of your content.
- Consistent Updates: Regularly audit and update hreflang tags and other SEO elements to keep up with changes in content and search engine algorithms.
- Monitoring and Analysis: Use tools like Google Search Console and third-party SEO tools to monitor the performance of international SEO efforts, identify issues, and make data-driven adjustments.
By following these best practices, businesses can effectively reach and engage with their international audiences, ensuring that the right content is delivered to the right users in the right locations.
Slowly but surely as Google re crawls these sites the local version will be served and not seen as a duplicate of the main .com site – but we have to bear in mind the Google AI in that it will always serve what it thinks best to the user behaviour.