Choosing a domain name in 2016
-
Hello Everyone
I am not new to SEO but new to the forum !
I am in the travel business selling high end bicycle trips to the US market. I am about to expand my business and sell cheaper bicycle trips to the European market.
-
My company has a got a name in the industry as well as some amazing reviews on google + and other forums. My 1 st question, would you use a totally different domain name see that is a different market and different prices or would you use the same domain name ? If you were to use the same domain would you do fr.mydomain.com or www.mydomain.com/fr.
-
In terms of web domain, is exact match domain still powerful ? My current domain name is not an exact match domain and surfing the web, I feel like it still gives you a major advantage in 2016 ?
-
If I choose an exact match domain, I noticed I can get www.mydomain.travel or www.mydomain.bike or get a domain for the country I am targeting www.mydomain.co.uk. Do you have advice on which domain is easier to rank ? or doesn't it change anything ?
-
-
it does make sense: my point is that bycicletrip.com/france is a good Landing Page url.
-
It does not make sense the way you are telling him how to do it.
or
just use country codes DO NOT use /french - /english - / spanish
It would make sense to use subdomains rather than subfolders.
Good luck!
-
Sure would help also. I personally like the word in the URL.
-
It's a small ranking factor, but if you've got an established domain then I would say your established domain is more valuable.
-
but mydomain.com/fr with the correct code would do that?
-
Hi Thomas, to rank on bicycle trip france maybe?
-
Thank your your replies but isn't a exact match domain more powerful than a domain with links and history ?
-
Why mydomain.com/france? This just makes the url much longer and the two letter country codes are recognised by most people?
-
"My company has a got a name in the industry as well as some amazing reviews on google + and other forums. "
This alone answers 2 and 3. You have a brand and that's more powerful than an exact match domain, it differentiates you from your competitors.
As for "If you were to use the same domain would you do fr.mydomain.com or www.mydomain.com/fr." I would choose www.mydomain.com/fr but that's just personal preference.
-
Hi!
1: i would stay with your .com domain, .eu is terrible in regards to ranking. .com ranks well in Europe and saves a lot off time as Europe contains of a lot of different countries to target; .fr .it .de. .co.uk etc... Next i would go for www.mydomain.com/france in stead of www.mydomain.com/fr as this already helps SEO wise and you have the domain authority of your current domain
2. see 1
3. see 1
Good luck!
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
-
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 -
Spanish word as English domain name
hi anyine any issues with using Spanish, and other non English words, as domain names when trying to rank in Google uk. We launched a number of websites a while back but finding it hard to get much traction in Google uk. We are getting a reasonable number of impressions but cannot seem to get very high in the rankings. All the names are foreign words for their service. Our homeware website, for example, uses the basque word for furniture as its name. other than potential branding issues of having domains people might struggle to spell, is there any serp issues we would face with these names. thanks
International SEO | | Arropa0 -
If domain mapping subfolders to TLD's is it perceived as a fully separate entity/site therafter ?
Hi I take it once you have domain mapped a country specific subfolder to a country specific TLD (for better local region targeting reasons) Google perceives it as a completely separate entity and it no longer shares any of the parent sites domain benefits (such as domain authority etc) so from that point on requires its own dedicated link building etc ? All Best Dan
International SEO | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
Sub-domains or sub-directories for country-specific versions of the site?
What approach do you think would be better from an SEO perspective when creating country-targeted versions for an eCommerce site (all in the same language with slight regional changes) - sub-domains or sub-directories? Is any of the approaches more cost effective, web development-wise? I know this topic's been under much debate and I would really like to hear your opinion. Many thanks!
International SEO | | ramarketing0 -
Linking Between Domains
My company has a main xxx.com website and geo-specific subsites - xxx.co.uk, xxx.es, etc... We link to each of the subsites from the menu, however it also makes sense from a content perspective to link between the sites on internal pages. However, in this video Matt Cutts seems to discourage this - http://searchengineland.com/googles-matt-cutts-linking-20-domains-together-likely-a-cross-linking-scheme-167089 Do you think its worthwhile to keep the inter-site linking to just the menu or okay (or even helpful) to link between the different sites.
International SEO | | theLotter0 -
Multi country targeting for listing site, ccTLD, sub domain or .com/folder?
Hi I know this has been covered in a few questions but seen nothing recent that may take into account changes google may have applied. We would like to target multiple english speaking counties with a new project and I'm a little unsure as to whether ccTLD, subdomain or subfolders are the best way to publish country specific information. Can anyone shed some light on this?
International SEO | | Mulith0 -
Multilingual site - separate domain or all under the same umbrella
this has been asked before with not clear winner. I am trying to sum up pros and cons of doing a multilingual site and sharing the same domain for all languages or breaking it into dedicated subdomains e.g. as an example lets assume we are talking about a french property portal with an english version as well. Assume most of the current incoming links and traffic is from France. A) www.french-name.fr/fr/pageX for the french version www.english-name.com/en/pageX for the english version B) www.french-name.fr/fr/ for the french name (as is) www.french-name.fr/en for the english version the client currently follows approach A but is thinking to move towards B we see the following pros and cons for B take advantage of the french-name.fr domain strength and incoming links scalable: can add more languages without registering and building SE position for each one individually potential issues with duplicate content as we are not able to geotarget differenly on web master tools of google potential dilution of each page's strength as we will now have much more pages under the same domain (double the pages basically) - is this a valid concern? usability/marketing concerns as the name of the site is not in english (but then people looking for a house in France would be at least not completely alien to it) what are your thoughts on this? thanks in advance
International SEO | | seo-cat0