Top Level Domains
-
Howdy Everyone,
I have a website that will span multiple countries. The content served will be different for each country. As such, I've acquired the top level domains for different countries.
I want to map the cop level domains (e.g. domain.co.uk) to uk.domain.com for development purposes (LinkedIn does this).
I'm curious to know whether this is adviseable and if mapping a country-specific TLD to a subdomain will maintain local SEO value.
Thanks!
-
Thanks guys, great insights!
- I do have multiple ccTLDs for the same site. The content for each, however, will be significantly different.
- By 'domain-mapping' I meant actually getting into the DNS records and mapping the ccTLD URL to a sub-domain
- Rel canonical redirect: I'm assuming that the .com.uk would be the canonical page? If this page is the canonical page, and the com/uk/ is the 'discounted' page, what happens if the rest of the site uses the .com/uk convention? (In other words, is it advisable to have this inconsistency [both from a usability, index point-of-view]?)
@Gary
I think this is a very interesting point. I agree with both of you that if I saw a billboard for domain.com/uk, I might think it to be slightly odd. However, I'm not sure if consistency trumps familiarity or not.
Further down the rabbit-hole:
I will have multiple languages (let's say en, fr, es). I want this to utilise sub-directories (I want to avoid super-fancy AJAX whatnot. I HATE Google's help page URLs, for instance).
domain.com/us/en/
domain.com/us/es/The idea here is that the site rank for multiple languages, within a country (without creating super-duper long URLs). Any ideas/tips?
Maybe a quick outline might help:
1 - Main (sort of a splash/navigation page)
1 - USA
1 - EN
2 - ES
2 - UK
1 - EN
3 - France
1 - FR
2 - EN
-
Gary has a point that considering offline marketing is important in many situations. Seeing .co.uk instead of /uk definitely gives a more local feel.
Great response anyway, to follow on from that:
If you want to use www.domain.co.uk in offline marketing then you may want to consider using a rel canonical redirect. It may be a bit more time consuming to set up (there are different ways you could go about doing this) but it may help from a conversion point of view. Probably minimal I admit, but people generally don't like being redirected.
Either way, I wouldn't worry about what domain they use as a linking source if your redirects are set up correctly.
-
I agree that directories would be a better way to organise your content.
I would aim to get people to use www.domain.com/uk etc. as a linking source, but potentially still use www.domain.co.uk in offline marketing and use 301 redirects to www.domain.com/uk. If that makes any sense?
The TLD will certainly have offline local value even if it doesnt have SEO benefit.
-
If I read your first paragraph right, you have multiple ccTLDs for the same company? That will make your SEO efforts a lot more difficult and is only really appropriate in rare cases (Amazon for instance).
To make your life a lot easier, I would suggest using directories instead. i.e. domain.com/us, domain.com/au, domain.com/uk as more PageRank passes from the root level to these directories than from root level to the subdomain. Then it comes down to geo-targeting.
To sum up:
Directories > Subdomains > Unique Domains (purely in terms of SEO).
When you say you want to map the top level domains, do you mean redirect domain.co.uk to uk.domain.com? afaik, redirecting .co.uk to uk.domain would not retain any local UK SEO value directly - other UK signals may come with the redirect though.
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
-
Same URL names in one domain
Hi All, I have 9 different subdirectories for languages in the same domain example: www.example.com/page.html www.example.com/uk/page-uk.html www.example.com/es/page-es.html we are implementing hreflang tags for the languages. I know it is better to translate URLs, but we won't for now, because all the NON-ASCII characters. But we are thinking to get rid of the dashes on the languages URL: -uk or -es, so it will be: www.example.com/page.html www.example.com/uk/page.html www.example.com/es/page.hrml would this be a problem? to have same page names even if they are in different subdirectories? would we need to add canonical tags, at least for the main domain URLs? www.example.com/page.html Thank you, Rachel
Technical SEO | | RaquelSaiz0 -
301 Redirect back to original domain
We have a site, domainA.com and we split part of the site off into it's own site a couple of years ago as domainB.com. All urls from DomainA were 301 redirected to DomainB, but with a different folder structure. For business reasons, we now shuttering domainB and rolling it back into domainA. For the 301 redirects for urls that were on the original domainA, should I overwrite them to the new folder structure directly from the original urls? In other words: 301 redirect domainA.com/oldstructure to domainA.com/newstructure rather than: Existing 301 redirect domainA.com/oldstructure to domainB.com/newstructuretopic with a new 301 redirect to domainA.com/newstructuretopictopic
Technical SEO | | ang0 -
I have a blog on a sub domain, would you move it to the rood domain in a directory?
I have a blog that preforms fairly well on a sub domain, but after reading a post that Rand made to the Q & A I am thinking about moving it to the main domain in a sub directory. What are your thoughts on this? Here are some stats on it. The blog currently gets about 5 x the traffic of the main domain. The domain is older, 2008 creation date. They pretty much register for the same keywords.
Technical SEO | | LesleyPaone0 -
Purchasing a domain to redirect to a new domain (note same industry) - Black hat or White hat technique?
Hi Everyone, Ok so here is my question. I have a client who sells gourmet tea and gourmet spices. She has a culinary blog. There is a culinary blog that just posted that the website will be shut down in the near future. It has 100% white hat links. Would it be considered black hat to buy the domain and redirect it to my clients blog which is also a culinary blog? I would really like to ask Matt Cutts this question. Does anyone know how to send him questions? Thanks Carla
Technical SEO | | Carla_Dawson0 -
Domain Switch - With lost control of original domain.
Hey all, A client finally sold a domain name after being harassed to sell for many years, without talking to us about it first. They moved the site to a new domain, and the purchasing company took over the original domain. Then they called me, wondering why the site is no longer showing up in Google. I've done some initial research, and everything I find for advice assumes that you have control over the original domain. We don't. I'm hoping someone here has some creative advice, so we don't have to start from the beginning, and/or painfully update links we've acquired. My only thought was that the new company may be kind enough to post 301's for us if we provided them.... Any thoughts / advice / life rings will be greatly appreciated! 🙂
Technical SEO | | KBK0 -
Two blogs on the same domain
I have had two blogs on the same domain for a while now, and it just occurred to me that no one else seems to do this and maybe it's even weird. http://www.stadriemblems.com/blog/
Technical SEO | | UnderRugSwept
http://www.stadriemblems.com/scouting/blog/ One is our main blog, and one is for a very concentrated niche of customers. What are your opinions on this? Everything from SEO to best practices, to overall unusual-ness?0 -
IPs and Domains
If a domain loads on the domain and the IP is that a problem? So it loads on domain.com and 69.16.....com Thanks!
Technical SEO | | tylerfraser0 -
What should I set my domain setting to?
In Google Wemnaster tools, I have the option to set it to either have as default the "www" or without it. What are the pros and cons of one way or the other . . . or is this a way more complicated question/can of worms I have opened?
Technical SEO | | damon12120