Large Global Site Structure
-
Hi, I have a question about the advised structure for a website that I'm currently building. It's a large international brand with it's main office in the UK. The main website is the .com but there is a growing international franchisee network.
I've built the .com site on Wordpress but I'm not sure if I the best way forward would be to create each international website on a separate hosted site or just include it in the .com Wordpress structure using the The WordPress Multilingual Plugin.
So to sum up... should I build the entire global network on one domain and then use WPML plugin or should I build separate websites for each International franchisee?
Hope some one can educate me on the best route to take.
Thanks Moz Community
-
Great thanks for the responses Kate. I'll digest what you have sent me and decide there. Thanks again for the help, it's much appreciated
Alex
-
My deepest apologies. I don't know how I missed your response.
If each franchisee has their own section of the site that they can keep updated, then I would go down the route of geo-targeting. I doubt you would use multiple translations within any one specific section of the site per franchisee. Let me know if you think that would be needed. And what I mean specifically is a new franchisee in UAE wants their part of the site, their content, in Arabic and English. I don't even know if that would be an ask someday for those specific languages, so please forgive my ignorance, but I hope you get the idea. If that will not ever be needed, stick with just geo-targeting.
There are two options from here in terms of structure.
1 - Based on current UK setup - all on .com
You'd need to change URLs for current providers to get on a new setup that will allow geo-targeting. This might cause temporary organic traffic drops, but best in the long run in my opinion. The URL structure would be:
domain.com/uk/belfast
domain.com/uae/dubaiNow, this is assuming the same structure of franchisees and one per city. You would geo-target the first subfolder and leave the content to the franchisees. If needed, general content not specific to a city or location would be at the country level (first subfolder) and that is the geo-targeted part.
2 - Only one set of content for UAE - Change URLs
If you are not following the same UK structure and only want one set of content for the UAE and want to use the same domain, you need to change URLs like the above, but not add cities to the UAE section.
URL Examples:
domain.com/uk/belfast
domain.com/uae/3 - Based on current UK setup - ccTLDs
Another option is to have a different site for each country. Go for the ccTLD in each country. Use the .com to geo-target to the UK if that is all that is targeted with that content. This is a heavier investment as each site would need its own dedicated marketing plan that includes outreach and link building.
4 - Only one set of content for UAE - UK on www subdomain
If you are not going to do the franchisee system per city like in the UK, it gets tricky. You can't, right now, geo-target by city. So to geo-target the current structure to the UK, you'd need to geo-target at least the subdomain www, if you use that. If not, see the option below. You could technically geo-target www.domain.com to the UK and uae.domain.com to the UAE. This allows you to use the same root domain, but many SEOs have different theories on how subdomains are treated in regards to domain authority pass down to subdomains that are not the root domain. This is an option, but I don't recommend it.
URL examples
www.domain.com/belfast
uae.domain.com5 - Only one set of content for UAE - UK on root subdomain
If you are using the whole domain (domain.com) for the UK, you would need to geo-target the whole root domain to the UK to get the geo-targeting set up. That would mess with the UAE content being on that domain. You would need to purchase a ccTLD then. I doubt this is the route you want to take, but it's an option.
This is a lot but i hope you can see how things change based on your needs now and in the future. Sorry there isn't a direct answer, but it changes in every situation. Let me know if I can help with more clarification!
-
Any update on this?
-
Hi Kate, many thanks for sharing that with me. I have completed the questions. I'm still a tad unsure of which direction to go in. The company is selling artificial grass and offers maybe 8 different grass products. The UK network is made up of about 30 cities/areas and each franchisee has their own web page within the main .com site. - so companyname.com/glasgow or companyname.com/belfast
I'm not sure if it's best to keep the international network on the same Wordpress site iecompanyname.com/ea/en for United Arab Emirates network in English or create a separate Wordpress website, hosted from a separate folder on the .com server and repeat site structure but change the content for the UAE etc..
Does that make sense? If you have any advice that would be great. By the way, your questions advise that I 'Take the Integrated Approach'
Many thanks
Alex
-
Hi! I built a tool just for this question. Can you go to the link below, answer the questions and let me know what your result is?
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
-
How to find out that none of the images on my site violates copyrights? Is there any tool that can do this without having to check manually image by image?
We plan to add several thousand images to our site and we outsourced the image search to some freelancers who had instructions to just use royalty free pictures. Is there any easy and quick way to check that in fact none of these images violates copyrights without having to check image by image? In case there are violations we are unaware of, do you think we need to be concerned about a risk of receiving Takedown Notices (DMCA) before owner giving us notification for giving us opportunity to remove the photo?
Web Design | | lcourse1 -
Help, site traffic has dropped significantly since we changed from http to https
Heya, so I am just in charge of the content on the site, and the SEO content, not the actual back-end stuff. A little under 2 weeks ago we switched to https, and our site traffic has been down a lot ever since. When I SERP check our keywords, they don't seem to have dropped in rankings pages. Here is what I got when I asked our dev guy if 301 redirects were put in: I did not add any redirects so all of the content is accessible on both unless individual links get hardcoded one way or the other. The only thing in place is a Cloudflare plugin which rewrites links in cached pages to match the way its accessed, so if for example you access a page over https you don’t get the version cached with a bunch of http links since that will throw up mixed content warnings in the browser. Other than that WP mostly generates all its links to match whatever protocol you are accessing the current page with. We can make specific pages redirect one way or the other in the future if we want to though... As a startup, site traffic is a metric we track to gouge progress, and so I really need to get to the bottom of if it was the change from http to https that has causes the drop, and if so, what can we do about it? Also, in case it is relevant: the bounce rate is now sky high (ave. 15% to 64% this last week!) Any help is very welcome! Site: https://mobileday.com Thank you!
Web Design | | MobileDay1 -
Moving to new site. Should I take old blog posts with me?
Our company website has needed a complete overhaul for some time now and the new one is almost ready to go live. We also have a separate "news" site that is houses around 800 blog posts and news items. (That news site will be thrown away because it's on a completely different domain and causes confusion.) So we have a main site with about 100 decent blog posts and a separate news site with 800 poor posts. I plan on bringing all the main site blog posts over to the new site (both WordPress), but my question is whether or not to bring over the news site posts? All, handful, none? Another issue is the news site doesn't have Google Analytics, so I'm not sure if any posts actually generate traffic, but I can from the main site we do get some referrals from it. As far as quality of content goes, it's poor. Not sure who wrote it all, but it's mainly text press releases that aren't very interesting. Is it worth bringing over for SEO purposes or simply delete the site and create a mass redirect so all of those pages will direct to the new website's blog page? Any help is greatly appreciated.
Web Design | | codyfrew0 -
Old site to new WordPress site - Client concerned about Yahoo Ranking
Hello, Back Story I have a client (law firm) who has a large .html website. He has been doing his own SEO for years and it shows. I think the only reason he reached out to a professional is because he got a huge penalty from Google last fall and fell very far down in rankings. Although, he still retains a #1 spot in Yahoo for his site for the keyword phrase he wants. I have been creating a new WordPress theme for the client and creating all new pages and updating the formatting/SEO. From the beginning I have told the client that when we delete the old site and install a new WordPress site (same domain name, but different page hierarchy) he will take a bump in the search engines until all the 301 redirects get sorted out. I told him I can't guarantee any time frame of how long the dip in SEO will last. Some sites bounce right back while others take longer. Last week, during a discussion, he tells me that if he loses his #1 ranking on Yahoo for any length of time he thinks he will go out of business. Needless to say I was a little taken back. When it comes to SEO I use best practice techniques, do my research, stay on top of trends but I never guarantee rankings when moving to a new site. I'm thinking of ways I can help elevate any type of huge SEO drop off and help the client. Here is what I was thinking of suggesting to the client and I would love some feedback. Main Question He has another domain he isn't doing anything with. It's pretty much his domain name with pc added. I was thinking about using that domain to create a simple 1-2 page WordPress website with brand new content (no duplicate content) aimed at attracting his keyword phrase. I would do as much SEO as I could with a 1-2 page site and give it a month or so to see if this smaller site can get into the top #10 in Yahoo, or higher. Then, when we move the site he will still have a website on the first page of Yahoo for his keyword phrase. I hope I explained it clearly 🙂 I would be open to any suggestions anyone may have. Thanks
Web Design | | Bill_K0 -
Site Review Please
A few weeks back I posted a question regarding a client's website and the very high Bounce Rate. We were looking at about 70 to 80% BR. The site was rough, and so I asked for some feedback that can be seen here: http://www.seomoz.org/q/high-bounce-rate-on-this-specific-page Since that time we've changed the WP Theme and the client would like specific feedback from the SEO experts. The BR has dropped by roughly 53% over the past month since we changed things, as traffic has risen by roughly 20%. We have lost some rankings for our targeted keywords, even as nothing has greatly changed on the site other than the theme. But even as we've lost some rankings for targeted keywords, we've gained for others and increased traffic dramatically. So, what do you think of the new site? Any feedback would be greatly appreciated. Thank you! http://EraseDisease.com
Web Design | | Linwright0 -
What is a really great bounce rate for a product or service site? What does Good look like?
I am really curious about a result I have never seen before. Our bounce rate went down a lot on a new site. So, what is good??? Recently, we took on a project with a company that offers a product they install for consumers and who had been in business for 15 plus years. The company is successful, has good customer base of those who have been made very happy, etc. It is not a repeat sale type of product, etc. One and done. Their site when we began talking was roughly a year old and was not well constructed but not terrible. Most of the issues were around I frames, use of older coding, poor SEO, etc. There was not really a way to "redesign" and we built a new site. This became a true collaboration in a B2B environment as the owner pushed us like crazy. Not the bad kind of push, the one that makes you say to your team, "Let's find a way!" The result, IMO, was a gorgeous site. But, as you know, those are a dime a dozen. But, to get to the point, when we took over the account they had a bounce rate of around 45%. I did not see this as either good or bad, but a fact and for this industry probably not bad at all. In all honesty, I was not looking at that as a first metric I wanted to move, but it was obviously at or near the top for all the reasons we know. So, this site is a local business, not an everyday product and gets about 2500 to 3000 uniques per month. If we compare to May of 2011/2012: 2011 2012 Total Visitors 1852 3,298 Uniques 1609 2,740 Pageviews 5,634 23,203 Pages/visit 3.04 7.04 Avg Duration 2.05 3.20 Yes, I am leaving off what we are getting, yes, I am leaving off the site. Please don't hate me. I am really wanting to see what others see with site changes and bounce rates first and will disclose. So, what's a great bounce rate? How do you know?
Web Design | | RobertFisher0 -
Multiple Sites, multiple locations similar / duplicate content
I am working with a business that wants to rank in local searches around the country for the same service. So they have websites such as OURSITE-chicago.com and OURSITE-seattle.com -- All of these sites are selling the same services, but with small variations in each state due to different legal standards in the state. The current strategy is to put up similar "local" websites with all the same content. So the bottom line is that we have a few different sites with the same content. The business wants to go national and is planning a different website for each location. In my opinion the duplicate content is a real problem. Unfortunately the nature of the service makes it so that there aren't many ways to say the same thing on each site 50 times without duplicate content. Rewriting content for each state seems like a daunting task when you have 70+ pages per site. So, from an SEO standpoint we have considered: Using the canonocalization tag on all but the central site... I think this would hurt all of the websites SERPs because none will have unique content. Having a central site with directories OURSITE.com/chicago -- but this creates a problem because we need to link back to the relevant content in the main site and ALSO have the unique "Chicago" content easily accessable to Chicago users while having Seattle users able to access their Seattle data. The best way we thought to do this was using a frame with a universal menu and a unique state based menu... Also not a good option because of frames will also hurt SEO. Rewrite all the same content 50 times. You can see why none of these are desirable options. But I know that plenty of websites have "state maps" on their main site. Is there a way to accomplish this in a way that doesn't make our copywriter want to kill us?
Web Design | | SysAdmin190 -
Using Wordpress as CMS for large Websites
Is Wordpress good enough to be used as a full fledge CMS for a large website. In particular, I'm talking about a news website. We have been online since 2002 but pretty soon we will have digitized our print newspaper archives of about 60 years. So, my question is, is it OK to use Wordpress for the entire website and if so what are some of the important things that need to be kept in mind. Cheers!
Web Design | | RishadShaikh590