Ecommerce site in Europe
-
A client is looking to expand their ecommerce business into Europe. They have already purchased a number of European brand domain names and want to start their expansion in Ireland.
Is it better to have a single website with pages translated for each language or a seperate site for each domain/country?
With Ireland the only obvious difference is the currency, language shouldn't be an issue. But if we choose seperate sites for each domain/country will having the same product content/descriptions especially in the case of Ireland be an issue?
Thanks in advance
-
Guys,
I'd like to thank you both for your answers and help with this. I have a much better idea of the way forward now. -
Remember also that you can geo-target subfolders in Google Search Console, creating a specific profile for the subfolder you want to geo-target.
Therefore, in your case, the domain.com/en-ie/ subfolder can be geo-targeted to Ireland.
All the other things suggested by Dan are correct.
Regarding using subfolders or a cCtld, don't think in terms of SEO but of business.
It is true that, if your main domain is very powerful, via internal linking you can give some initial boost to a your new geo-targeted /en-ie/ subfolder, but it is equally true that it is very hard, if not almost impossible, for an internal URL to earn backlinks naturally. In other words, the Irish Time will probably link to your home page (www.domain.com) instead of your "Irish" home page (www.domain.com/en-ie/).
So, if your brand is already know in Ireland or you have the possibility to promote it well from the very beginning, it can be worth starting from zero with a new www.yourbrand.ie domain name.
Finally, if you decide to go for the subfolder way, remember at least to set user browser 302 redirections (but - important - not forcing it every time), so that the users will always land on a /en-ie/ version of your site if they are using en-IE english in their browser (or 302 redirect via IP detection).
-
If you go with a single domain, you can use hreflang to cover duplicate content targetting each location, which works for same-language/different country.
From https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/189077?hl=en
'Some example scenarios where
rel="alternate" hreflang="x"
is recommended:- You keep the main content in a single language and translate only the template, such as the navigation and footer. Pages that feature user-generated content, like forums, typically do this.
- Your content has small regional variations with** similar content in a single language**. For example, you might have English-language content targeted to the US, GB, and Ireland.
- Your site content is fully translated. For example, you have both German and English versions of each page.'
-
Andy, thanks for your reply.
We secured the irish domain, proving we already operate in Ireland was the easy part.
I'm with you on a single site, single point of administration. My huge concern was with the duplicate content.
For this to work we need to secure the .com domain.
-
Ireland a bit tricky in registering a country domain - you have to prove you have a business in the country, even in the UK it can be difficult to get a domain.
Having different sites means doubling, tripping your SEO efforts, whereas if you have the one site you can use the existing links to boost your initial ranking in a country.
There a pro and cons for either method, but I always prefer 1 domain, then your content strategy is for one site so a blog post can be useful to multiple countries and you don't need to re-write the content.
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
-
Is it against google guidelines to use third party review sites as well as have reviews on my site marked up with schema?
So, i look after a site for my family business. We have teamed up with the third party site TrustPilot because we like the way it enables us to send out reviews to our customers directly from our system. It's been going great and some of the reviews have been brilliant. I have used a couple of these reviews on our site and marked them up with: REVIEW CONTENT We work in the service industry and so one of the problems we have found is that getting our customers to actually go online and leave a review. They normally just leave their comments on a job sheet that the workers have signed when they leave. So I have created a page on our site where we post some of the reviews the guys receive too. I have used the following: REVIEW TITLE REVIEW Written by: CUSTOMER NAME Type of Service:House Removal Date published: DATE PUBLISHED 10 / 10 stars I was just wondering I was told that this could be against googles guidelines and as i've seen a bit of a drop in our rankings in the last week or so i'm a little concerned. Is this getting me penalised? Should I not use my reviews referencing the ones on trust pilot and should i not have my own reviews page with rich snippets?
Web Design | | BearPaw881 -
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
Web Design | | SeoSheikh0 -
Responsive Design vs Mobile For This Site?
They are going to do an entire website redesign for http://gaport.com/ and I think they should adhere to responsive design best practices. However, I'm just saying that because everything I have read says that's the "way of the future" if not the way of the present already. Any reason, they shouldn't do that and keep the desktop/mobile sites? Thanks, Ruben
Web Design | | KempRugeLawGroup0 -
Sitemap Question - Very Old Ecommerce Site, Never Used A Map
I help manage a family website, that has about 10,000 products... It was top ranked since 1996, then got smacked by Penguin and recovered but its still receiving only a fraction of the natural traffic it used to get. Something we have never used... Is a sitemap. I'm curious if anyone knows reliable software that will generate a sitemap? My cart is custom built, website uses html pages across the board. Dynamic content and parameters are set up properly, onsite seo is in the excellent range. The only thing that I haven't been utilizing is a sitemap. Because the cart was hand built, it would a huge convenience to use a lightweight program thats compatible with any website, has parameter settings, exclusions and anything else useful to negate any duplicate content. I have a few highly dynamic pages as well... If anyone knows a product or a possible solution, it would be much appreciated. Working it up myself would be very time consuming. Thx
Web Design | | Southbay_Carnivorous_Plants0 -
New site or fix the old one
I have a delima. Basically the main business product I used to offer is not going to be offered anymore. The types of sales events we conducted for auto dealerships are not able to be insured any longer forcing the change. So I am pivoting to just offering direct mail and I plan on going into digital probably social, landing pages, content marketing and not sure what else. I was able to register http:www.roiautos.com and www.roidirectmail.com both variations of www.roiautosolutions.com withc was the original site. Also that is the closest to the actual name of the business. My question is whether to build a site focusing on direct mail using the direct mail dot com, or just to redo the current site. The current site doesn't have much rank if any because the old product was not something that was searched for. As a mater of fact 99% of my business came from referrals and word or mouth so I just never really bothered. My thoughts are that ROI Direct Mail will work better for search and I am even going to use that as a DBA and TM. But I am unsure of what to do for search. One thing that has to happen is that all references to offering staffed sales events have to be removed from any site per my insurance company. Any advice?
Web Design | | roiautos0 -
Comparing the site structure/design of my live site to my new design
Hi SEOmoz team, for the last few months I've been working on a new design for my website, the old, live design can be viewed at http://www.concerthotels.com - it is primarily focused on helping users find hotels close to concert venues throughout North America. The old structure was built in such a way that each concert venue had a number of different pages associated with it (all connected via tabs) - a page with information about the venue, a page with nearby hotels to the venue, a page of upcoming events, a page of venue reviews. An example of these pages can be seen at: http://www.concerthotels.com/venue/madison-square-garden/304484 http://www.concerthotels.com/venue-hotels/madison-square-garden-hotels/304484 http://www.concerthotels.com/venue-events/madison-square-garden-events/304484 http://www.concerthotels.com/venue-reviews/madison-square-garden-reviews/304484 The /venue-hotels/ pages are the most important pages on my website - and there is one of these pages for each concert venue - they are the landing pages for about 90% of the traffic on the website. I decided that having four pages for each venue was probably a poor design, since many of the pages ended up having little or no useful, unique content. So my new design attempts to bring a lot of the venue information together into fewer pages. My new website redesign is temporarily situated at: (not currently launched to the public) http://www.concerthotels.com/frontend The equivalent pages for Madison Square Garden are now: http://www.concerthotels.com/frontend/venue/madison-square-garden/304484 (the page above contains venue information, events and reviews) and http://www.concerthotels.com/frontend/venue-hotels/madison-square-garden-hotels/304484 I would really appreciate any feedback from you guys, based on what you think of the new site design compared to the old design from an SEO point of view. Of course, any feedback on site speed, easy of use etc compared to the old design would also be greatly appreciated. 🙂 My main fear is that when I launch the new design (the new URLs will be identical to the old ones), Google will take a dislike to it - I currently receive a large percentage of my traffic through Google organic search, so I don't want to launch a design that might damage that traffic. My gut instinct tells me that Google should prefer the new design - vastly reduced number of pages, each page now contains more unique content, and it's very much designed for users, so I'm hoping bounce rate, conversion etc will improve too. But my gut has been wrong in the past! 🙂 But I'd love to hear your thoughts, and thanks in advance for any feedback, Cheers Mike
Web Design | | mjk260 -
301 redirects from old site to new
hey all, we just did a site redesign and have less pages on the new site than the old. is it bad to redirect multiple pages from the old site to the same page on the new? for example redirect ...com/apps ...com/android ...com/mobile and point them all to....com/custom-apps thanks!
Web Design | | jaychow0 -
Turning my Design Business site into a site to promote SEO
I need advice on retooling my website for my SEO biz. I have shifted my business model from graphic designer who does websites, to "internet marketing consultant who does graphics too". My main website and domain name is over 10 years old, so I've made the decision to keep it, even though it has no keywords in the name. The name works well for the new business, otherwise. The site has a PR3 and I rank well for small business advertising terms, which gets me graphic design business. I intend to keep doing graphic design, but that is a smaller part of my income. I had considered making 3 satellite sites with keyword domain names to cover my offerings of graphic design SEO, website development, and internet marketing. But am leaning against it for several reasons (that all of us SEO's know) but mainly the fact that I cannot keep up with both working for my clients and blogging on multiple sites and link building for multiple sites. So my question is (you knew there was one coming, right?), what is the best approach to building categories of web development, internet marketing, and SEO into my existing graphic design/advertising oriented website? This is slightly embarrassing to ask as an SEO, but given the multiple approaches possible, and knowing the importance of doing it right the first time, it's best to get an consensus perspective on the BEST approach. My main concerns are the navigation system and the links from the homepage into the site. I have too many pages I've identified as essential to link off of the home page and navigation menus? (Website development, social media marketing, link building, keyword research, pay per click, online advertising, graphic design, brochures, catalogs, Logos, Branding, SEO, keyword research etc.) I've always tried for the ratio of one link off of any page for every 100 words of content. Do I create a home page that is of monster proportions? Do I just have the 4 basic areas linking off the home page then create a "landing zone" of 4 folders and create down from that? I am concerned about URL length as I go deeper with that approach. Or, does it make more sense to have a dozen second-level pages, and not link them all off the home page, and build from beneath (and relying on external juice). Next issue is the nav system. It will be huge. Am I best off just keeping it to 4-6, and creating subnavigation on everypage within the site according to section (PITA)? I've read dozens of blog opinions on how much nav systems do or do not hurt link juice. I've always thought footer links were right next to worthless to pass any juice, but given this situation, does it make sense to make a footer link for each major page (about 20)? Thanks for your opinions.
Web Design | | JCDenver0