International Site Merge

[ThomasHarvey]

Hello,

I've never had to deal with an international site before, let alone a site merge.

These are two large sites, we've got a few smaller old sites that are currently redirecting to the main site (UK). We are looking at moving all the sites to the .com domain. We are also currently not using SSL (on the main pages, we are on the checkout). We also have a m.domain.com site. Are there any good guides on what needs to be done?

My current strategy would be:

1. Convert site to SSL.
2. Mobile site and desktop site must be on the same domain.
3. Start link building to the .com domain now (weaker link profile currently)

What's the best way of handling the domains and languages? We're currently using a .tv site for the UK and .com for the US.

I was thinking, and please correct me if i'm wrong, that we move the US site from domain.com to domain.com/us/ and the domain.tv to domain.com/en/

Would I then reference these by the following:

What would we then do with the canonicals? Would they just reference their "local" version?

Any advice or articles to read would really be appreciated.

[Aleyda]

Hi Thomas,

If a page doesn't have an equivalent on the other country version then you don't need to specify hreflangs really, you can just specify the one of the page that exist if you want, to keep the consistency, although if you see: the goal of the hreflang is to specify Google which is the "best" URL to show in their results when a search is done and there are many that could be relevant as they target the same queries, but should be targeted to different audiences, since in this case there will be only one, then it's not necessary to do it.

Thanks,

Aleyda

[ThomasHarvey]

Hi Aleyda,

The reason we want to merge to one domain is because the higher ups want to, so that's what is happening.

Anyway, thank you for your in depth reply unfortunately having suggested that the site merge and https goes live at the same time development won't be able to achieve that.

I do only have one question left really, if a page doesn't have an equivalent on one site. What does the rel alternate have to be, is it left blank or does it go to the main language url?

Thanks,

Tom

[Aleyda]

Hi Thomas,

Why do you want to merge them on a single domain? If you want to consolidate everything on a single .com domain -which is recommended in case you don't want complexity and capitalize your authority better, while targeting international markets effectively-, then it would be to:

• Migrate by 301-redirecting your current domains to their relevant country directories that you will enable in your .com, and that should be geolocalized independently each one through the Google Search Console (https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/62399?hl=en) to their specific countries: .com/gb/ to the UK and .com/us/ to the US, so each one of them can effectively be geo-targeted. Since you have an independent mobile site on an "m" subdomain this case you also have to do the same for them: m.yourbrand.com/gb/ geolocalized to the UK and m.yourbrand.com/us/ geolocalized to the US.

• Use hreflang annotations (https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/189077?hl=en) to specify for each one of the site pages their language and country alternatives, for example:

• Since you will be moving domains anyway, I'll directly migrate to the new .com site already using SSL, instead of splitting these two migrations by migrating to the .com first and then doing a migration towards the https version of the .com a few months after, the direct migration towards the https version will add maybe a bit more of complexity and additional validations to make, but since you're migrating anyway many of them you'd need to follow and do anyway.

• Finally, be aware that after any change of a Web structure, specially from one domain to another (and if this other doesn't have a highly authoritative link profile yet) will always have a short-term negative effect, so is important that you start an SEO process not only to make sure you follow best practices when migrating but to validate afterwards and grow the new domains results based on what has been found on a technical, content and link profile audit and the desired results: Optimizing the new Web structure, Optimizing or creating content,  optimizing or creating links, etc.

I hope this helps!

Thanks,

Aleyda