International Hub site: .uk vs domain vs subdomain
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Financial company with 2 sites:
1- Mybrand.com for the US market.
2- global.mybrand.com is the hub for international with selection for 10 languages: drop-down allows selecting between mybrand.jp, mybrand.fr, etcNow we have the opportunity to redesign the site from zero and I am exploring to get rid of the subdomain for the global site
What would be your preference to use as the international hub?
a) mybrand.co.uk: I have to use lawyers to get the URL from squatter
b) mybrandGlobal.com : URL easy to get, and can be geo targeted using google webmaster tools. Cons: It might not rank as well as .co.uk in the UK, which is our biggest market
c) global.mybrand.com-- pros: keep using it because it is aged and has some authority. Google might now see subdomains as part of TLD, thus making it a valid way to separate international from US .. Cons: SEO best practices advice to avoid subdomains because it might not pass full link value across domains. There is not really different content the subdomain, it is just the hub for international
Thanks in advance for the help
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The good think about using TLD's likee .com.uk or .com.au is that you dont need to worry about duplicate content, Matt Cutts has said as much.
But if you cant do that . i would look at this page
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/12/new-markup-for-multilingual-content.html
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