Help: Newbie trying to optimize for several international domains
-
We have three domain names co.nz, com.au and com. We are very new and have been told to optimize for co.nz first before going into com.au and com. Having said that, we have outsourced an seo company to optimize our co.nz site, however I would like to optimize the com.au and the com based on the information we currently receive for co.nz.
Any suggestions on how to go about doing this? I looked at our competition and it seems they have the same content across all 3 domains, but they have changed the meta tags for each domain and that's about it.
Any tips or ideas on how we could possibly do better? I know its early stages.... but as a newbie some advice around this would be great!
Thanks
-
I appreciate it if people tell me when I am on the wrong path.
-
I'm sorry gobro, but I had to thumb down your answer because, even if not completely wrong, it was too much generic.
Suggesting the beginners guide to SEOs to someone asking for International SEO, is like offering the Encyclopedia Britannica for consultin about a very specific topic :-).
Moreover, what Matt Cutts told and that you cites was proved incorrect by hundreds of professional specialized in International SEO.
-
I strongly suggest you to check the section dedicated to International SEO, which you can find in this part of the Learn SEO part of the Moz.com site.
Remember that if you published the same content, or even clone sites in different territorial domain names, risks are high of having very poor organic visibility for all of them.
Even if they are in the same language, remember that culture is different in those countries, as well that their English is not the same (New Zealand English has expressions that are not used elsewhere).
As gobro wrote, small things as currencies, addresses and any other "localization" elements are essential too for helping Google understanding what country a website is really targeting.
At the same time, then - as you can see more deeply in that section I linked above - you should implement the international seo mark up rel="alternate" hreflang="x-X".
Finally, remember to earn local links for each web site. Not only them are needed for making each website more authoritative, but also for reinforcing the geo-targeting of the websites themselves to Google eyes.
i.e.: if a website has more links from australian sites then american ones, that probably means that it is more relevant for australian people than american one, hence it should be shown more in google.co.au than google.com
-
You can do a lot better if that's really everything they did. This is a great resource to get started: http://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo
Side Note:
Matt Cutts told in a video in 2011, that it's not a problem to have the same content on like 3 or 4 top level domains, if they are for different countries but in the same language. But you should make sure that country specific words and for example currency signs are correct.
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
-
CcTLD vs subfolder for international SEO
In what situations is subfolder better than ccTLD, and vice versa.
International SEO | | MedicalSEOMarketing1 -
Using a top level domain name and directing it to a subfolder
Hi, we have a large international network. Our main website sits on .com domain and is used by the UK market. We have an international site in a subdirectory .com/dk/ for Denmark for example. We have also purchased the domain name www.ourcompany.dk/. Should we be forwarding the domain name (www.ourcompany.dk/) to point to the subdirectory www.ourcomany.com.dk/ so in the browser it shows up as www.ourcompany.dk or should we be displaying it as www.ourcompany.com/dk/? Are there any pros and cons to this method? Which one is best and are there any benefits in SEO. Ideally we want the .com domain name to have the best domain authority so would this impact it in any way? Any tips would be great.
International SEO | | Easigrass0 -
Best International Rank Checker?
Anyone have a recommendation for the best international ranking tool. I'm looking to gather accurate ranking trends and am looking for a service that will return rankings in as many localized countries as possible.
International SEO | | marcbn0 -
Duplicate content international homepage
Hi, We have a website which is in english and dutch language. Our website has the following structure www.eurocottage.com:
International SEO | | Bram76
Dutch or English language ones the user has set his language in a cookie. www.eurocottage.com/nl/ :
Dutch language www.eurocottage.com/en/:
English language The .com and the eurocottage.com/nl/ and eurocottage.com have according to Google duplicate content because they are initial both in Dutch. What would be the best strategy to fix this problem? Thanks, Bram0 -
Subdomains vs ccTLD in International SEO
I'm interested to see if anyone has any additional thoughts or recent experience on subdomains vs ccTLD for International SEO. An article I found on this site is from March 2011, so just wanted to check if this is still relevant? http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/folders-vs-subdomains-vs-cctld-in-international-seo-an-overview
International SEO | | edwardlewis0 -
Best Practice for International Website with Two Versions
I have a client in the medical industry, and the company's product has been approved in various countries in Europe yet is awaiting approval in the US. That means we can share certain information in some countries that we cannot share in the US. Therefore, we plan to use an initial landing page that will ask what country the user is in (using a drop-down list to choose from if not located in the US) and then push him or her to the appropriate version of the site. Here is my question: What is the best way to ensure search engines can crawl the site beyond this landing page? Thanks for your time.
International SEO | | mollykathariner_ms0 -
Will duplicate content across international domains have a negative affect on our SERP
Our corporate website www.tryten.com showcases/sells our products to all of our customers. We have Canadian and UK based customers and would like to duplicate our website onto .ca and .co.uk domains respectively to better service them. These sites will showcase the same products, only the price and ship from locations will change. Also, the phone numbers and contact info will be altered. The sites will all be on one server. On each of the sites there will be a country selector which will take you to the appropriate domain for the country selected. Will doing this negatively affect our rankings in the US, UK and Canada?
International SEO | | tryten0 -
International SEO - auto geo-targetting
I read with interest the recent post on international SEO and the top level domain architecture approaches to local content: http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/folders-vs-subdomains-vs-cctld-in-international-seo-an-overview#jtc135670 The issue I have is a little more complex: The business sells a wide variety of products (37) but one is by far and away the biggest and most popular. This means that due to the link profile of the various country sites and HQ site, search engines categorise the site according to this product (this is easily seen with the Google Adplanner) and the other product lines suffer as a result. The current architecture is to have a .com site and then individual ccTLD country sites, again with all products on each site. This creates an issue as in most countries the brand is not strong (compared to the keyword names and search volumes of the products) and so it is not that effective in generating organic traffic. The .com hogs much of the inbound links and the country sites themselves are not that well optimised for a number of reasons. A proposed solution has been to leverage the strength of the .com and the search volume for the product names, and to produce thematic sites based on each product: productA.brand.com
International SEO | | StevieCC
productB.brand.com
productC.brand.com In this way, the sites, content and link profiles are aligned around the more desirable products and we can expect improved organic search performance as a result (or at least ensure relevant traffic finds the relevant content fast). In terms of providing localised content, the plan was to use content mirroring and to then assign each content mirror to a specific geo-location using the webmaster tools console (and other SE equivilents). This is shown I think in one of Rand's videos. ProductA.brand.com/de/de Germany site for product A with unique German content
ProductA.brand.com/fr/fr French site for product A with unique French content This makes economic sense to me as to utilise the ccTLDs would result in hundreds of separate sites with all the licence and server considerations that entails. For example, for product A alone we would have to produce: productA.brand.de
productA.brand.fr
productA.brand.cn
productA.brand.jp
ect ect ect This just would not be sustainable in license/server costs alone across 37 products and 24 countries. However, I saw in a recent presentation at SES London that (auto) geo-targeting is risky, often doesn't work well for SEO and can even be seen as cloaking. I think the above strategy could still work, but perhaps we should avoid the use of auto-geotargetting altogether and hope the search engines alone do their job in getting users to the right content as we optimise the unique content for each country (and if they don't, ensure our desgn, UX and country selectors do the job instead). SEO guru consensus is to use the ccTLD if you own it, but as described above, in the real world that just isn't possible or practical given the company's strategic position. Which leads to the final question- we do own the brand ccTLDs- if they are directed back to the content mirror for the country on the .com, is there any SEO benefit in doing so aside from directing back any link juice associated with the domain)?0