Ranking Internationally
-
Whats the best URL strategy to rank for one term in different countries? We currently rank well in Australia, but are tackling many countries over the next few months.
The page I am ranking is http://www.spendbitcoins.com/buy for the term 'buy bitcoins' or 'buy bitcoins in Australia' (replace Australia with each specific country, i.e. New Zealand, Japan, etc.)
These are the strategies I have come up with, is one of these good or is there a different better way?
- Use country specific TLDs, pulling the content from the same site w/ translations
- Use country specific TLDs and create separate sites and create completely original content
- Use country specific TLDs, forwarding to the primary domain
- use a subdomain from the same site
- modify the page link to be something like spendbitcoins.com/buy/new-zealand
- Don't worry about any of this and just get links from sites with the proper TLD
-
I'm afraid there's no one "right" answer. Country-specific TLDs do have some extra power, but the problem is that then you're splitting everything - content, links, social mentions, etc. If you have the budget to really build up a site and market it in each country, then ccTLDs are great. If you aren't ready to go all-in, though, I'd probably recommend against it.
I generally would not rely on machine translations. They tend to be a poor user experience and Google can often spot them and may consider them to be thin content. A good translation done by a native speaker is perfectly fine. In this case, I'd also use the hreflang tags to let Google know that it's a language/region-specific piece of content:
http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=189077
Finally, in most cases I'd recommend sub-folders or sub-domains. Sub-domains may split authority and can act more like separate domains (but without the power of the ccTLD). There are standard practices for sub-folders, like "http://www.sepndbitcoins.com/au" and "/nz" - and this can help Google more easily understand the site structure. If the pages are all in English then I'd definitely recommend hreflang tags - they'll help Google sort out the region-specific content. You can target sub-folders in GWT. See this page for more information:
http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=182192#2
-
I'd recommend option 4, using a sub domain and specifying the geo target in webmaster tools . I should add that you might have a tough time using this strategy in some countries like Austria and France where country specific TLD's tend to rank better.
Rand covered this topic in one of his whiteboard sessions. Link
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Why Google de-rank a website.
Hi, I was inspecting a website which is covering the topic of best wheelbarrow of 2021, it is a new website and and starts ranking on google. But, after few days it got de-rank automatically and Moz is also not showing any result to that. I was wandering why this just happened and what should I do if I made my website and will not face this kind of situation?
Technical SEO | | Moeen22330 -
New site luanched- rankings plummeted
Hi all, we just launched a new version of our site and have seen huge drops in traffic to the homepage. Url structures were changed and now include /us at the end and a lot of the content was consolidated to make the homepage a little cleaner. We kept title tags and meta data the same. Rankings have declined significantly. Does anyone have any suggestions or advice?
Technical SEO | | perfectsearch711 -
Website dropping in ranking
Hello My website is www.invitationsforless.ie and on google Ireland it was ranking no 6 for the keyword "wedding invitations" and I was doing quite well from this but it has now has moved down along the rankings to no 10 and I have gone from the first page on google to the second page which is very disappointing. I did recently change the blurb on my homepage - would this have effected it. Please help I don't know what to do Thanks Linda
Technical SEO | | invitationsforless0 -
Spam links - which link is most damaging to my rankings.
I have just started using Open Site Explorer and discovered a lot of spam links to my website.
Technical SEO | | A.Ronny
(I have mostly ranked on page for many years one but in the last two weeks ranking have dropped to page two)
The links have Anchor Text such as Scam - Dishonest - Drugs. Most of the of the links are "nofollow".
Will links with "nofollow" affect my ranking and if so which of the links should i priorities to remove?
Do I look at Link Equity - Domain Authority - Page Authority or other criteria? Many thanks
Ronny0 -
Changing images on site without losing ranking
A number of images on my site rank very well under google image search but need to be replaced with updated versions. If I keep the file name and pixel dimensions identical will switching the image effect my rankings? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | Justin450 -
Does location of Server matter for ranking in country
Hi everyone, I'm looking for business in other countries and launching some sites over there, but i was wondering does the location of the server / IP matter? For example:
Technical SEO | | iwebdevnl
I want to launch a website in Denmark, do i have to have webhosting in Denmark to rank better over there so Google sees i'm from there? Or isn't this neccesary? Thanks, regards0 -
Internal links of my website is taken as inbound link ?
Hi, I was checking my links in Open Site Explorer (http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/links?site=www.bons-plans-vacances.fr) this morning and i came up with this: My main domain is taken as outbound links ...! This link : www.bons-plans-vacances.fr/ Anchor Text : (img alt)100% Bons Plans Voyages From this URL : www.bons-plans-vacances.fr/ I have the same problem with my subdomains : voyage.bons-plans-vacances.fr/sejour/Toutes-Destinations I have that HTML code on the link : Any help ? This is very strange .. i have the same result in google webmaster tools. Thanks 🙂 eDE9b.jpg
Technical SEO | | BonsPlansvacances0 -
.COM vs .CA rankings - .CA ranks on Google.com
Hi SEOMOZers, We have a fairly large retail client with both .COM and .CA domains. Each of the sites are almost identical in design and, in most cases, content (these would be product pages). The .US site has been live for nearly 2.5 years while the Canadian probably over a year younger or so. Both sites are hosted in the US. What we're starting to see as of the last few months are searches that used to rank .COM product pages now rank the Canadian page above the US page on Google.com. We've checked Webmaster Tools for each site and they target the appropriate country. With nearly all examples we've seen, we haven't noticed any more links pointing to the Canadian page, and where this is becoming a widespread occurence we're not convinced it's a linking issue. My question is why Google might see both versions but rank the Canadian page above the US page on Google.com for a search being performed in the US? Does anyone have any ideas on why this may be happening?
Technical SEO | | HarborOneBank0