Copying a Website For Better Rankings in a Specific Country
-
I've got a blog with some tools and business directories (https://www.webhostinghero.com). Actually my website is in English and is hosted in the US since its biggest source of traffic is from there. My second biggest traffic source is India. The issue is that while my website is really well optimized (in terms of speed), it is still slow for visitors from India.
So my question is: Would it be possible to have a copy of my website on a web server located in India and use a sub-domain (ie.: in.webhostinghero.com) to access it without being penalized by Google? Would that be considered duplicate content? What would be the HREF LANG tag set to for India (EN-US, EN-GB... EN-IN??)
I thought that having a sub-domain for a specific country could also help its rankings.
Thanks in advance for your inputs.
P.S. Sorry my english sucks.
-
As long as you use cross-domain rules, you will be absolutely fine - you are far from the only person who has a need or desire to do this
-Andy
-
Sorry the title was indeed misleading. I assumed that by making my website faster in India, it would help its ranking.
That said, what about using a country-based TLD domain instead of a subdomain? I do own webhostinghero.in
Would that help my rankings even though 95% of the content would be the same on the .com and .in with the appropriate href lang tags set?
-
Ahh OK you didn't say that - you only talked about speed.
One thing I can tell you is that a subdomain isn't going to help rankings - in fact, research has shown that a folder structure has been the best way to go, but doesn't sound like it might work as well.
At the end of the day, as long as you setup your HREF LANG correctly across domains, you will be fine and you won't get penalised.
Here is some required reading for international SEO:
https://moz.com/blog/hreflang-behaviour-insights
https://sites.google.com/site/webmasterhelpforum/en/faq-internationalisation https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/182192 https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/189077-Andy
-
Thank you but I'm not looking for help on how to make my current website faster. Like I've said, the website is really well optimized in terms of speed. Cloudflare is not an option. I tried it and it causes lots of issues with the site and it actually made it way slower than it actually is. I use Amazon Cloudfront as my CDN.
I want to make my website faster in India AND improve its ranking in this specific country. Using a CDN or Cloudflare won't do that.
-
Hi Stephane,
If all you are looking for is a speed boost, you could always use a CDN like Cloudflare to deliver content to your India visitors. No need to create another site
-Andy
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
-
Ranking Dropped Off for HOMETOWN + BRAND
I work with a number of local businesses that generally rank well for the query "HOMETOWN + BRAND." The brand is not the business name. In late August, three of these businesses (all located in the same large US city and owned by the same parent company) stopped ranking for this important keyword. They were all in pos. 1 before., and now they're not on the first 5 pages. There are no issues or errors recorded in Search Console, rankings haven't shifted dramatically for any other keywords and the GMB listing is fully filled out and completely accurate. I'm banging my head trying to figure out how to fix this issue and start seeing my page 1 rankings again. Also, I'm not sure if it's related but I have seen a significant increase in organic traffic from a city within the same state that's about 3.5 hours away. I thought maybe there was something on the sites telling Google they're located in the wrong city, but I'm not seeing anything. Any suggestions or ideas? Any help would be extremely appreciated!
Local Website Optimization | | LocalSEOLady0 -
What's the best SEO solution for international targeting of different english speaking countries?
Hi guys, recently won a client who operates globally, their domain is .com and their head office is in the UK. They have built regional sub-directories and translated content and pages of their site for /ru, /fr etc. The issue comes with their /us and /ca pages. This content for the most part is identical to the main .com site. The content is still in English and can't in most situations be changed to be more localised, so there are duplicate content issues. Trying to think of options: Ensure hreflang is added properly, build regional links to regional pages, get local contact details / NAP on all regional pages, set up Google business listings for each regional office and link accordingly. Will Google be able to identify these regional pages as more suitable search results for US searches? Make the main .com version of the content the canonical, which takes away any ranking benefits of the regional pages altogether, but removes the duplicate content issues and means we can focus link building and content resources into making sure the .com version of the page ranks well. Thanks!
Local Website Optimization | | SamFanatic0 -
Boost Website Traffic
Tom Beavan Websites is my business where I create and design affordable websites for small businesses in Wordpress. I am looking to improve my traffic to my website as dramatically as possible. At present, my website is a one-page website with limited content - https://www.tombeavan.co.uk. My website ranks #1 for local keywords like: Web design Wiltshire Web design Trowbridge Wordpress developer UK So in terms of keyword position, I am doing well for local business but I only get 200-300 visitors per month. I would like to dramatically improve this to improve the number of enquiries I get. I do tend to get a few enquiries but think if I improve the website traffic, the quantity of website enquiries will increase too? I have a long list of tasks I would like to do for SEO: Add a lot more content to the website Add more backlinks Guest blogging Lots more What would you recommend a good starting place or a place which will increase traffic effectively? Thanks for your advice in advance 🙂
Local Website Optimization | | tombeavan0 -
How difficult is it to rank an exact match domain nowadays in 2017?
Hey there Mozzers! It's been a while since I've been back around these parts after working at a search agency many moons ago. I remember way back how it was stupidly easy to rank for something like "date ideas toronto" when I had an exact match domain www.cheapdateideas.ca and dateideas.ca (which I still own). Anyhow, I've been looking to build up my domain www.dateideas.net with hyper local date ideas and essentially looking to build this for the long term and expand after I hit a certain critical mass in terms of high quality content mostly written by myself to start. Eventually, if it makes sense, hiring authors or getting guest contributors to contribute to the blog if there's enough incentive to do so (which I'll figure out at some point). Question for y'all for a newbie that was semi-pro and now all my knowledge from before isn't so cutting edge. How would you guys approach it. I am looking to build this for the long haul, so it may very well be that some of your answers are "write amazing content", I'll be okay with that answer. Cheers, Will
Local Website Optimization | | will_l1 -
Rank Tracking URLs from specific locations
Hi, i'm trying to report on the ranks of my local landing page URLs within my website. What is the best way of seeing this data from certain locations around the UK? For example - I have a landing page that is targeting London. How can I see how that ranks in the SERPs from various locations within the Greater London area? Can this be done accurately on MOZ or SEMrush? I would like to see how other people track their local pages for ranking locally. Thanks
Local Website Optimization | | SeoSheikh0 -
The best option for expanding a website to another country
Hi everyone, I have a couple questions about expanding my website from US to another country. Which option would be better to use: Country-Coded Top Level Domains, Sub-Directories or Sub-Domains? If I use a new domain, but I want to keep all the content, would canonicalization affect SEO of my new website? I want the new website (or another option) look just like the one I have, except for changing contact information, pictures and adding another language. Thank you!
Local Website Optimization | | KseniaLL0 -
What's your opinion on stores with multiple locations around the country that sell the same products?
Is there a way to capture local SEO traffic by only having one website/page for our product pages or do we have to have a website for each location even though the content is identical? We do have a location finder where we list each location. But we want to generate local traffic in the cities we are in to our product pages through SEO, but it's difficult because they all sell the exact same product. We know Google doesn't like duplicate content.
Local Website Optimization | | GrowBrilliant0 -
Competitor Ranking High with Questionable Backlinks
Happy Friday Mozzers! I wanted to pick your brains this morning, and see what your thoughts were on how Google missed this one. One of our competitors is ranking high in Google, and has been for some time. About 5-6 months ago, his site skyrocketed from page 3-4 to the top of page one. The site meta tag is pulling in logo alt text, content is very messy and sales driven, and after looking at the backlink profile in MOZ tools, it has a ton of links from China, Japan, Korea. Most of the backlinks are from blog pages, about everything under the sun, from UFO's to porn sites. This site has consistantly ranked high at the top of the page for many different competitive keywords. My question is this: HOW? After all the updates done by Google, and their focus on web spam, what is allowing this site to rank high constantly? Â (5-6 months now, and often in the number one spot). Here is an example of some of the backlinks. There are a LOT of them. http://sundtjek-wp.alexandra.dk/?p=1
Local Website Optimization | | David-Kley
http://ice.anyang.ac.kr/xe/teacher/2095
http://blog.so-net.ne.jp/etsuko_hayashi_ET3/2006-07-02 Don't worry, we are not looking to follow in his footsteps, lol. I was just wondering how this can happen, and for such a long time period.0