Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Targeting different countries with domain name
-
Hi currently have a eCommerce store .com.au targeting Australia. We want to start targeting the US market with the same products.
I guess what would be the top choice in this case since our domain is location-specific to Australia and not a generic top-level domain (gTLD)?
Cheers,
Chris
-
@Seoman10 - don't really agree with your answer:
1. Targeting the us market with a .com.au extension doesn't make sense (source https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/62399)
"If your site has a generic top-level domain, such as .com or .org, you can help us determine which countries are most important to you. If your site has a country-coded top-level domain (such as .ie or .fr) it is already associated with a geographic region (in this example, Ireland or France). If you use a country-coded domain, you won't be able to specify a geographic location. "
2. Duplicate content on different TLD's if they target different countries / languages can be handled using hreflang tags (check https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/189077) in combination with geotargeting (check https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/182192?hl=en#2)
Dirk
-
Typically the TLD should match that of the country you want to target, although practically I've never seen it make much difference. If it was a very competitive market sector and very location specific it may make more of the difference.
One thing you should be aware of do not just add a second TLD to your website, this will cause Google to see duplicate content which it doesn't like possibly other search engines as well.
-
Hi Jay,
I would suggest you to buy the .com domain if its available. Using a country specific domain to target international market is not a good idea. If .com isn't available, you can think about buying country specific domains to target various countries.
https://moz.com/learn/seo/international-seo can help you understand more on this. 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
-
How to target for misspelled Brand name searches
Hi to all the SEO experts here, I am working on SEO of my 4 months old website. For example, its 'abz.com'. We like the brand name 'abz' for the business and we are able to SEO well for keyword 'abz'. However, we would also like to target for the keyword 'abc'. There are 2 reasons for that: 'abc' is an actual word. So there is a possibility that our users may type 'abc' instead of 'abz' to reach us. For 'abc', the top result is 'abct.us', which is a site of adult in nature. Also our website doesn't feature at all in the results. This is hitting us hard in terms of or brand visibility. So the questions are: How to feature in results of keyword search of 'abc'? Will the following approach work: Buying an available domain 'abc.co.in', and use it to feature in 'abc' results and 301 redirect to 'abz.com' Having 'abc' in the page meta (title and description). This is hard for us, since we need to rethink our taglines and copyrights. 2. If we search for 'abz', Google says "Do you mean abc". Is there a way to not have this suggestion? It would helpful to have some more ideas for this problem.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | manasag0 -
Redirect domain or keep separate domains in each country?
Hi all Hoping this might be something that can be answered given the number of variables 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | IsaCleanse
My main site is www.isacleanse.com.au (Obviously targeted to Australian Market) and also www.isacleanse.co.nz targeted to NZ. The main Keywords im targeting are 'Isagenix' for both and also Isagenix Australia, Isagenix Perth, Sydney (Australian cities) and Isagenix NZ, Isagenix New Zealand, Isagenix Auckland etc.. for NZ The Australian site gets a lot more traffic and Australian market gets a lot more searches - I also have a section www.isacleanse.com.au/isagenix-new-zealand/ on the Australian site. The question is am I best off redirrecting the .co.nz domain completley to the Australian Domain to give it extra SEO Juice?0 -
Merging two different domains - subdomain or subfolder?
My company has two sites on different domains. We are considering merging the sites into one and keeping only the dominant domain. The dominate site is already a sub-domain of a larger organization so the new sub-domain would be two levels deep. I realize this is a little abstract so below is an example Dominant company site: company.root-domain.com Secondary company site: other-root-domain.com When they merge, everything will be on company.root-domain.com. Should it be other.company.root-domain.com or company.root-domain.com/other Note: The other site has several hundred pages. Both sites have strong authority and link profiles. I want to maintain as much of the value on the other site as possible with the merge.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEI0 -
SEO value in multiple backlinks from same domain and from various sub-domains.
A site has a link to my site as one of their main tabs, which means whenever a user clicks through to another page within the site, my link - being a main tab - is there. This creates thousands of links from this site. How does Google treat this? Do we have a rough formula estimate. In other words, assume it creates 1,000 backlinks would the SEO value be around the same as if I had just 2 link total as a main tab, but on 2 different non-related sites? Or, does it actually count fully as 1,000 links? Links from various sub-domains. Several .EDU's are linking to my site. Different schools within the overall same university. Example: nursing.abc.edu links to my site, but so does business.abc.edu. For SEO does that count as much as if I had links from complete non-related universities, or would Google evaluate that these links are related (since same main domain) and that will discount any links more than 1 to some extent? If discounted, then what do we estimate the discount to be? thank yoyu
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | knielsen1 -
Domain Name Change - Best Practices?
Good day guys, We got a restaurant that is changing its name and domain. However they are keeping the same server location, same content and same pages (we are just changing the logo on the website). It just has to go a new domain. We don't want to lose the value of the current site, and we want to avoid any duplicate penalties. Could you please advise of the best practices of doing a domain name change? Thank you.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Michael-Goode0 -
Is it allowed to have different alt on same image on different pages?
Hi, I have images that match several different keywords and I wondered if I can give them different alts based on the page that they are displayed or will Google be angry with me? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeytzNet0 -
New Site: Use Aged Domain Name or Buy New Domain Name?
Hi,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | peterwhitewebdesign
I have the opportunity to build a new website and use a domain name that is older than 5 years or buy a new domain name. The aged domain name is a .net and includes a keyword.
The new domain would include the same keyword as well as the U.S. state abbreviation. Which one would you use and why? Thanks for your help!0 -
Exact match domain names
Hello, Someone approached a client of mine to sell a exact match domain name for a very competitive and high converting keyword. Would this be of any use and what are the best tactics to employ if it is purchased? I was of the opinion that the 'power' of exact match domain names are dying fast but would be interested to hear what people with experience in this think and what they have done with them (i.e. set-up a website on that domain or re-directed it)? Thanks, Rikki
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RikkiD220