Does a country specific TLD implicitly influence the full country name for keyword matching?
-
[Hypothetical situation - domain, country and industry changed]
Let's say I have registered http://mybrandname.hk (i.e. Hong Kong) and my goal is to reach people in all global locations searching for Hong Kong hotels. The target audience will almost always put "Hong Kong" into their query, e.g. they might search for "Marriott Hotel Hong Kong". Does the .hk TLD implicitly give me a match for "Hong Kong" or would I structure my URLs such that all hotel info pages fall under a top level subdirectory "hong-kong".
i.e. is it enough to have a structure like:
Or should I have it like:
It is safe to assume that other on- and off-page best practices will be followed, e.g. links from other Hong Kong sites, some backlinks anchor text including "hong kong", etc.
Of course Marriott is just one example, there would be hundreds of hotels in this example.
-
I'm going to leave this as status "Unanswered", as I don't think we are much closer to any substantial conclusions on to what extent a non-generic ccTLD influences keyword matching for the country name itself.
Based on my own non-scientific searches for various countries and terms like "hotels", "conference venues", "events" and so on, I've found > 50% of first page results from the relevant ccTLD without those sites keyword stuffing the country name into their URLs, so I am going to omit the country name from the website structure itself and stick with a structure of http://mybrandname.ccTLD/service/
-
And here's a Matt Cutt's video on ccTLDs from July of last year http://youtu.be/yJqZIH_0Ars
He also references how they handle those "cool" ones like .ly, .io, .it and so on.
-
Thanks, good point. I'm sure Google are struggling with this a little but begrudgingly treating the .co's, .io's, .ly's as global where applicable. In my particular case though it's a ccTLD which is essentially never appropriated for "cool" domain names and the only purpose for having the extension is to do business in or about the country itself.
-
Thanks, Mike. I've searched extensively on this before now and have been unable to find any definitive answer. I agree that a ccTLD increases visibility for searchers from within that country, as it should. It seems it's still unknown how much the ccTLD increases visibility for people outside the country but who include the full country name in their keyword query. There's no reason why having a ccTLD shouldn't achieve both ends, and I would expect that in a perfect world it should do so too, as that would most benefit searchers.
The challenge I have with my target and niche is that it's a relatively mature one but with little SEO optimization from the big players, so the results I see are fairly well correlated with the size and quality of the websites, regardless of .com or ccTLD. I suppose I should try to think up some more countries and niches to study to try to draw a conclusion.
FYI currently for a query of <country niche="">from an overseas location and not logged in, I see 6 of the 10 first page results use the country ccTLD. Out of those 6, only 1 has the country name embedded in the URL (all are branded, none have the country name in the domain itself).</country>
Right now I still feel the best is brandname.ccTLD instead of country-brand.com, as word of mouth will be as important as organic search, and the more brand-able the better.
-
Agree with Mike.
However, I'd like to add that in the last few years, as .com are almost impossible to get, people started to use ccTLDs for sites not targeted to a specific Country, and Google (and I am guessing other engines too), had to "learn" to recognize these sites in order to rank them for other Countries as well.
-
Typically a ccTLD is suited for that specific country/region. So having a .co.uk will make you more relevant to searchers in the UK but not for searches from say the US looking for something in the United Kingdom (unless they happen to be searching through Google.co.uk). This is not 100% always the case though but generally so. If you're attempting to globally reach people searching for that term, you'd probably be better off with a generic TLD.
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
-
301 Redirect to add juice from Keyword A to Keyword B
Here's our situation: Our company sells Employee HANDBOOKS (the book that explains to employees how the company itself is run, more or less). That's the technically correct term for them. However, many people use this term interchangeably with Employee MANUALS. Employee MANUALS are actually slightly different. (they're more specific, usually a list of common office policies and procedures and how to do them) When doing Keyword research, we learned that many, many people search for Employee MANUALS when they actually are interested in an employee HANDBOOK. We've got our page optimized for the Keyword Employee HANDBOOKS, because in our copy we always refer to it as such. Here's my question: Would it be "cloacking" or some other blackhat nonsense if we did this: #1. Take a copy of the current page, and make a second page for it with a slightly different URL, but optimize the SEO-relevant parts for the phrase Employee MANUAL. #2. That page will also include a 301-redirect towards the original page, which is identical except the SEO bits are optimized for Employee HANDBOOKS. My understanding here is that we'd get the SEO juice from the phrase Employee Manual, without actually having to do the upkeep on two different pages. We also avoid having to have a random page SEO optimized for an improper term just because of the general confusion about what the product is called. Are we on the right track here? Or is this going to annoy Google, or not have the result I'm predicting? Any insight is appreciated!
Technical SEO | | CEDRSolutions0 -
How to rank for several keywords
Hi there Mozers, So far I have been building my webshop ouibonjour.com over the course of several weeks while studying the awesome educational content here on Moz and other SEO-related sites. I think I have done an OK job so far, and I have managed to rank #1 on several long tail keywords after a couple of weeks. Problem is - there are more long tail keywords I want to rank #1 for as well! **What I have done so far: ** I have taken the strongest keywords that can generate conversion and added them in page titles, title heads, main anvigation titles, in my alt text in images and so forth. The page is not screaming "SEO!" and I am happy with that. Nevertheless, I think the SEO measures here are done in an effective way. If you bothered to click on my page, you can see that the home page has only 5 posts (posts, not pages). They redirect visitors to other important parts of my site, and I change the image and/or the title once every 3 weeks to not keep the page too static. In a /magazine subfolder, I have a blog that ranks pretty good for several keywords, but the content here is not directly related to my products, but rather articles that fits the interests of my potential buyers (lifestyle, culture, etc). **What I need - but not sure how - to do: ** I basically want to rank for way more long tail keywords that relate to my products, but I don't want to continue setting up posts that have these keywords, because the content on the main page will be too heavy on the SEO, and therefore lose value for my visitors. How can I rank for more keywords without having to pepper my site with posts full of these keywords? I do not want to write articles on my blog that focuses on different combinations of long tail keywords neither, because it will get too spammy and make my visitors not return. I need help! I hope I have managed to explain my problem clearly. If there are any Whiteboard Fridays or posts on this subject that I have missed, please link me directly. If not, I would be tremendously happy and appreciative for any tips and tricks 🙂
Technical SEO | | Fernando_0 -
Keyword Suggestions Tool & Different Subdomains
Hey all, Was reading Dan Shure's brilliant post on the Keyword Planner, and decided to plug a few of my own pages into the URL-suggester tool as well. What I got back was nothing short of strange. After plugging in our Features page, (which describes our Social Media Contesting Platform,) and getting back a bunch of suggestions related to Dr Seuss and Interior Design Scholarships, I realized that the Keyword Suggestion tool was being broken by our subdomains. I looked for precedent on my particular issue, but I think I might not be searching properly. Could anyone provide any insight into whether or not this might affect how spiders see the content on Strutta.com, whether or not this is just something that will affect the Keyword Suggestions Tool or actual SERP rankings, and if this content is already present elsewhere on MOZ, a link to said content? Much obliged 🙂
Technical SEO | | danny.wood0 -
Using meta keywords
Hello, I've read conflicting opinions regarding the use of meta keywords. I know Matt Cutts stated a few years ago that Google does not use them as a ranking signal but many still use them. This raises a few questions: 1. Is there any reason to still use meta keywords? 2. Isn't it just a way to let your competitors know what you're optimizing for? 3. How do other search engines treat meta keywords? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | mirel0 -
Does Google think My main keyword is my Company name due to over use in anchor text?
OK, i have recently noticed google is adding a keyword to my titles... I have attached an image which shows the results from a google site:mywebsite search... 8 out of the 10 results on the screen shot clearly have the keyword ( - CCTV Cameras) added to the end of the title. Now a lot of those pages are support pages i.e "Help & Support", "returns" etc etc.. nothing really to do with cctv cameras. The only thing i can think of, is the most common anchor text used on backlinks to my website (according to siteexplorer) is the keyword cctv cameras... (i am currently working on removing a load of the backlinks to my site due to what i think is some kind of google penalty as the anchor text is all keywords etc...) But it seems strange if google has started to discount these backlinks, that it then uses that keyword to add to my titles - unless of course, google thinks that it is my brand name... Any body have any thoughts on this? FqwooQY.gif
Technical SEO | | isntworkdull1 -
Importance of keyword in the content to rank well
Well, I am very beginner seo. our website is www.theprinterdepo.com and our main keyword for the moment is refurbished printers, but there might be hundreds of more keywords. I was analyzing the SERPs and found that for our keyword, the first 2 websites that come up have very different content 1.http://www.geeks.com/products.asp?cat=PRN They rank first, but I dont see a lot of text with the keyword in their text or links 2. http://www.valstarprinters.com/ They mention the keywords lots of times in the text, probably they are doing keyword stuffing? So this makes me thing, how the 1st one ranked there? just by link builiding?
Technical SEO | | levalencia10 -
Multiple pages - Similar keywords
I'm working on a site with a parent page and two minor pages all dealing with the primary/root keyword "log siding" - How do I optimize all three pages without bastardization of the primary keyword? Parent page - keyword: half-log-siding and log-siding Child Pages (linking from the parent) cedar-log-siding and Pine-log-siding. They all feature "log-siding" and grade well for that keyword (as well as their own long-tail keywords), yet I think based on my rank tracking that Google is unhappy with the multiple pages all (seemingly focused) on log-siding. Any ideas how I can effectively target all the long-tail keywords within their respective landing pages and not draw a penalty from Google towards my parent page and the root keyword? Thanks, Bill
Technical SEO | | Marvo0 -
Robot.txt pattern matching
Hola fellow SEO peoples! Site: http://www.sierratradingpost.com robot: http://www.sierratradingpost.com/robots.txt Please see the following line: Disallow: /keycodebypid~* We are trying to block URLs like this: http://www.sierratradingpost.com/keycodebypid~8855/for-the-home~d~3/kitchen~d~24/ but we still find them in the Google index. 1. we are not sure if we need to specify the robot to use pattern matching. 2. we are not sure if the format is correct. Should we use Disallow: /keycodebypid*/ or /*keycodebypid/ or even /*keycodebypid~/? What is even more confusing is that the meta robot command line says "noindex" - yet they still show up. <meta name="robots" content="noindex, follow, noarchive" /> Thank you!
Technical SEO | | STPseo0