Is a slash just as good as buying a country specific domain? .com/de vs .de
-
I guess this question comes in a few parts:
1. Would Google read a 2-letter country code that is after the domain name (after the slash) and recognize it as a location (targeting that country)? Or does is just read it as it would a word.
eg. www.marketing.com/de for a microsite for the Germans
www.marketing.com/fr for a microsite for the French
Or would it read the de and fr as words (not locations) in the url. In which case, would it have worse SEO (as people would tend to search "marketing france" not "marketing fr")?
2. Which is better for SEO and rankings?
Separate country specific domains:
www.marketing.de and www.marketing.fr
OR the use of subfolders in the url:
-
To achieve those different geotargeting options in Google Webmaster Tools you have to add every subdirectory as a different site, otherwise you can only target one country for the top-domain.
You should add marketing.com/de and marketing.com/fr as separate sites to GWT and set the geolocation for each folder to the right country.
-
It doesn't matter, because in Google Webmaster Tools you can geo-target directories for specific countries, so there is no need for different TLD's for different regions. It seems to work well.
Also, Google is smart enough to know that if a section is in German it should be shown in Google.de, if a section is in French it will be shown in Google.fr - it is the English sections that you definitely need to point Google in the right directions with.
-
To answer on your first question, Google doesn't read this as France or Germany, but that doesn't mean it is bad for your SEO.
For example, having those different subdirectories in one domain can help you get lots of backlinks to one domain instead of backlinks to all your location based domains.
To answer your second question, your URL doesn't do all of your SEO work... If you use the right title tags, urls, on-page elements you can rank with your .com domain for different languages.
Yesterday I analysed a webshop that targets different countries (FR, NL, DE, ENG) but doesn't have different domains for each country and I must say that he was ranking for some competitive terms in several languages. If your overall SEO elements are good to target a certain language or country it doesn't matter that much if it is a .fr or .com/fr
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
-
Linking from high ranking sub domain pages to less ranking main domain pages to benefit latter
Hi all, We have our product guide pages on sub domain which are years old, so have some backlinks and high ranking for the beand related queries. Now we created new guide pages on our main website and we want these new pages to rank top beating the old pages from sub domain. Again we can't deindex or rel canonical to solve the issue as there are some part of users still using the old pages. We are planning to give a link from every old page of sub domain to same new page on main domain. Will this linking increases the authority of new pages technically and helps in ranking better? Like we give a link to "Moz guide 1" page to "Moz guide 2" page to rank latter better. Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Is it a good idea to 301 redirect one same niche site towards another site for seo benefit
Hello friends, I have 2 android niche sites, one site is running on a technology dropped domain i catch 1 year ago it has, almost 400+ domains linking to different parts of the site, the other one i established from scratch and both are running from jan 2015. Now i want to redirect first site which already has 400 links pointing towards it to the home page of my 2nd android site. Is it a good idea to do so and does it give any boost in terms of seo?
Algorithm Updates | | RizwanAkbar0 -
New Website Old Domain - Still Poor Rankings after 1 Year - Tagging & Content the culprit?
I've run a live wedding band in Boston for almost 30 years, that used to rank very well in organic search. I was hit by the Panda Updates August of 2014, and rankings literally vanished. I hired an SEO company to rectify the situation and create a new WordPress website -which launched January 15, 2015. Kept my old domain: www.shineband.com Rankings remained pretty much non-existent. I was then told that 10% of my links were bad. After lots of grunt work, I sent in a disavow request in early June via Google Wemaster Tools. It's now mid October, rankings have remained pretty much non-existent. Without much experience, I got Moz Pro to help take control of my own SEO and help identify some problems (over 60 pages of medium priority issues: title tag character length and meta description). Also some helpful reports by www.siteliner.com and www.feinternational.com both mentioned a Duplicate Content issue. I had old blog posts from a different domain (now 301 redirecting to the main site) migrated to my new website's internal blog, http://www.shineband.com/best-boston-wedding-band-blog/ as suggested by the SEO company I hired. It appears that by doing that -the the older blog posts show as pages in the back end of WordPress with the poor meta and tile issues AS WELL AS probably creating a primary reason for duplicate content issues (with links back to the site). Could this most likely be viewed as spamming or (unofficial) SEO penalty? As SEO companies far and wide daily try to persuade me to hire them to fix my ranking -can't say I trust much. My plan: put most of the old blog posts into the Trash, via WordPress -rather than try and optimize each page (over 60) adjusting tagging, titles and duplicate content. Nobody really reads a quick post from 2009... I believe this could be beneficial and that those pages are more hurtful than helpful. Is that a bad idea, not knowing if those pages carry much juice? Realize my domain authority not great. No grand expectations, but is this a good move? What would be my next step afterwards, some kind of resubmitting of the site, then? This has been painful, business has fallen, can't through more dough at this. THANK YOU!
Algorithm Updates | | Shineband1 -
Do panda/penguin algorithm updates hit websites or just webpages ?
If I have a website that been affected by the panda/penguin update, do bad links affect the entire site or just the page the bad link(s) are linked to? If it is the latter and penguin/panda actually affect webpages, not websites (as is the common reference/conception), then wouldn't simply creating a new URL, targeting this new URL, shifting meta-tags and restarting link-building efforts again (this time using the right quality strategies) be a really common-sense approach instead of the tediousness of the disavow approach that so many go down?
Algorithm Updates | | Gavo0 -
How to Change Geo Target Location of Country Specific Domain
Hi - I have a country specific domain (www.updater.in), used it for writing blog articles Now when i go to site settings in Webmaster - the Geo target by default is coming for India, and no option of changing geographic target. Is there any way to let Search Engines know (despite .in domain) that site Geo Location is not country specific, but is meant for users from all across !!
Algorithm Updates | | Modi0 -
Location Vs. Typing
Hi all, I wonder I am NOT located in Dallas and i type in Google : buy groceries online dallas Is it the same like someone in Dallas that will type: buy groceries online Lets say the two persons open a new incognito window and their history no effects the resoults Thank you ivgi
Algorithm Updates | | iivgi0 -
Increased importance given to spammy/educational domains in SERPs!?
Hey guys, Can anyone shed some light on these bizarre and confusing SERPs which Google seems to be producing following their latest update?? For example, we have a client who targets "payday loans" with another targeting "IT services". However, since the update, the former keyword brings back a host of spammy domain results while the latter seems to have given all focus to educational institutions like universities. This just seems utterly ludicrous considering that if I'm searching for "IT services" I don't want the help desk of a local university - that's completely irrelevant, right? Can anyone provide some information on what seems to be going on? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | Webrevolve0 -
Title of home page is changed to domain name in SERPs
Hi, We have a unique problem, we are getting a totally different title in Google serps for a large site. When we search with domain name with space in google.com. We are getting title as domain name with space. We don't have any Open Directory listing. We don't have any cannonical issues and other pages with title as domain name. Can you please tell us what we have to do get our original title back in SERP ? Thanks, With Regards,
Algorithm Updates | | semshah1430