Country Specific Domain
-
Guyz, we are new startups and have one very simple question regarding domain name.
Should we use example.com or example.com.au ?
Our Goal initially would be to target customer from Australia and gradually go global. So if we opt for .com.au we may have an edge in terms of local SEO in the beginning but lose out in the long run. What is the best way to tackle this?
Thanks
-
Google has recently made this super easy: check out the rel="alternative" or "href lang" tag, as it is often called. You can provide the "same" content for UK, US, Aus and not run into duplicate content problems.
The same goes for Spanish in lots of countries, French, German for Germany and Austria, etc. Very handy.
-
He can certainly buy both domains and that would be a good option (301 one to the other), but he will likely need to serve different stores or dynamically change pricing etc. due to the different currencies and possible shipping / returns differences. It's also worth noting that if he's targeting North America, some of their spelling is different to Australia (US vs. British English).
He can use the href lang tag to show Google that even though both stores are in English, one is English for the US and one is English for Australia, one is Spanish for Spain and one is Spanish for Mexico, etc.
-
Hey +Edmond Hong,
Since both countries "speak english" i would not build different stores unless you have different pricing (even then there are better solution).
As to the domain, i would buy both of them to keep you authority intact and avoid copycats but i would
invest time marketing the .com one which is global.Google or to be exact matt cutts did say that Google is geo associating site according to their domain so
its best to buy something that would serve you in the long run. -
Hi jane
Say we have an ecommerce store selling shoes. Should we create different stores for each country and geotarget it for best results? Since those items are similar, wouldn't it create duplicate content?
For example:
www.example.com/us/sling-bag-white
www.example.com/uk/sling-bag-white
Aren't those the same? How to tackle this duplicate content? Any Moz article that i should read to get an idea of the whole thing and best practices for this situation?
-
Hi Edmond,
Sure thing - it's actually very easy. I'll show you here. Log into Webmaster Tools and go to the account you want to geo-target. Click on the "settings" button where the arrow is in this screenshot:
<a>http://i.imgur.com/ziFanER.png</a>
Click "site settings": <a>http://i.imgur.com/j65txrk.png</a>
Choose "Australia" (or wherever) from the drop-down: http://i.imgur.com/6KNNOVb.png
You can only do this with non-country specific domains, so you can't geo-target a .com.au domain to the UK, etc.
You can then add site.com/nz/ as a new project in Webmaster Tools so it shows up in the initial list with all your domains. That subfolder, you target to New Zealand and so forth.
Cheers,
Jane
-
Hi Jane
Can you show me a tutorial on how to do this in webmaster tools?
Thanks
-
Hi there,
If you are definitely planning to go global or multi-national, go with the .com. You can rank well in Australia with just a .com - go into Webmaster Tools and geo-target the domain for Australia, changing this if and when you need to. If you want to target Australia, New Zealand and the US (for example) one day, you can have sections of the website targeting each, and you can target a specific subfolder to each nation. For example, site.com/nz/ can be added as a separate project in Webmaster Tools and set to New Zealand.
I hope this helps!
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
-
Changed domains, saw significant drop in domain authority
Hello, A little over a month ago we switched our domain from A to B. The original was .com and the new one is at a .tech for good measure. We have meticulously done 301 redirects page by page but there has been a massive drop in traffic and I checked here to see that we've gone from a 30 domain authority to a 9. The company is a few months over 1 year old, but we're really looking at traffic accumulated in just about 8 months for the old domain. Is there any way to recover some of the old juice in this one other than the re-directs? Our number of backlinks have also severely dropped despite re-directs.
Technical SEO | | SteveSaf0 -
Cross domain canonical issue
Hello fella SEOs! I have a very intriguing question concerning different TLDs across the same domain. For eg: www.mainwebsite.com, www.mainwebsite.eu, www.mainwebsite.au, www.mainwebsite.co.uk etc... Now, assuming that all these websites are similar in terms of content, will our lovely friend Google consider all these TLDs as only one and unique domain or will this cause a duplicate content problem? If yes, then how should I fix it? Thnx for your precious help guys!
Technical SEO | | SEObandits1 -
How many serp results for a domain.
I thought this one was carved into stone, max number of results from the same domain in SERP is... two. Or... three?! I was searching for some familiar keywords and found three results from the same domain, isn't that... unusual?
Technical SEO | | max.favilli1 -
301'ing domain to an addon domain
My googlefu failed me in finding this... How to 301 a domain to an addon domain? Domain structure is as follows: http://addondomain.maindomain.com/ http://www.maindomain.com/addondomain/ http://www.addondomain.com/ <--(addon domain has its own domain as well) I want main domain to all point to the addon domain like so: http://www.maindomain.com/ --> http://www.addondomain.com/
Technical SEO | | JasonJackson0 -
Delete old site but redirect domain to a new domain and site
I just have a quick query and I have a feeling about what the answer is so just wanted to see what you guys thought... Basically I am working on a client site. This client has a few other websites that are divisions of their company. However these divisions/websites are no longer used. They are wanting to delete the websites but redirect the domains to their name main website. They believe this will pass on SEO benefits as these old division sites are old and have a good PR and history. I'm unsure for DEFINITE, which way is correct?
Technical SEO | | Weerdboil0 -
301 redirects and old domain names
Thanks to the great advice i've received on this forum, I'm combining 50 different truck sites into a single, ultimate truck website. So my question is how long should I make a website 301 redirect to the appropriate page on my new website? My thought is that if it works well to have a single website, it might be nice to eventually sell off some of the old domain names that I won't be using anymore. Thanks! Andy
Technical SEO | | daenterpri0 -
What should I set my domain setting to?
In Google Wemnaster tools, I have the option to set it to either have as default the "www" or without it. What are the pros and cons of one way or the other . . . or is this a way more complicated question/can of worms I have opened?
Technical SEO | | damon12120 -
Top Level Domains
Howdy Everyone, I have a website that will span multiple countries. The content served will be different for each country. As such, I've acquired the top level domains for different countries. I want to map the cop level domains (e.g. domain.co.uk) to uk.domain.com for development purposes (LinkedIn does this). I'm curious to know whether this is adviseable and if mapping a country-specific TLD to a subdomain will maintain local SEO value. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | RADMKT-SEO0