Best strategy behind moving country subdirectory to dedicated TTLD wo/ loosing organic search volume?
-
Community,
We are about to move one of our most popular country sub directories from brandname.com/de/.. to brandname.de . We have just purchased the domain so while the domain has been registered in 2009 the URL has zero domain authority.
What is the best strategy to execute the move while being cautious about loosing too much organic search volume the subdirectory is receiving right now?
Obviously it will take some time to build up DA on the TTLD so maybe it is a good idea to keep the country directory for a little longer and start on the TTLD with just a static landing page, place some links, wait until it receives some DA builds up and then perform the move.
Thoughts?
/TomyPro
-
Thanks for those references Ryan, I appreciate it. I will have a look tonight.
/Thomas
-
I will share the below articles. They address this exact topic and are presented very well. Review them and draw your own conclusions.
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/international-seo-where-to-host-and-how-to-target-whiteboard-friday
http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/folders-vs-subdomains-vs-cctld-in-international-seo-an-overview
-
Ryan,
Thanks for your thoughts - I appreciate them, however I think this makes for a great SEO discussion.
The reason for moving to a CCTLD is mainly to increase search volume. We expect the search volume to go down in the intermediary but hope that it is a wise investment in the future. These are our reasons:
- Using a CCTLD will allow more SEO power in local search results for local keywords
- Using a CCTLD will allow us to host the site on a local physical server and separate IP
- Using a CCTLD should increase CTR in local markets
- Non-SEO Using a CCTLD should allow charging higher CPM rates
The reason for us doing this move is that over the years we have observed us being constantly outranked in local searches (e.g. Brazil) by sites that have
- less DA and mozRank
- local CCTLD (e.g. com.br)
- local server hosting
Their backlink profile was very similar to ours in a sense that both would get local backlinks from within the market yet we were not able to outrank them.
Do you have any quantitative data that would imply your statement of consolidating properties under one umbrella is the way to go for a highly internationalized offering that relies on local organic search volume?
Cost and Time concerns do not apply given the way our infrastructure is setup.
Looking forward to your and other SEO gurus comments.
Best /Thomas
-
Best strategy behind moving country subdirectory to dedicated TTLD wo/ loosing organic search volume?
Best strategy would be not to move it.
I'll make my prediction. You will move the site. You will lose ranking. You wont easily recapture your old ranking. You will then either move the site back or really wonder what you were thinking when you had this idea.
Your present DA is collected between your brandname.com site as a whole and the /de site. When you split the site, both domains will lose DA. That is one of the primary reasons the current best SEO practice is to condense sites into a single domain. There are also the cost and time benefits of maintaining a single site vs multiple sites. You are moving in the wrong direction. You may have good reasons, but I would recommend rethinking them.
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
-
Search Causing Duplicate Content
I use Opencart and have found that a lot of my duplicate content (mainly from Products) which is caused by the Search function. Is there a simple way to tell Google to ignore the Search function pathway? Or is this particular action not recommended? Here are two examples: http://thespacecollective.com/index.php?route=product/search&tag=cloth http://thespacecollective.com/index.php?route=product/search
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | moon-boots0 -
Language/Country Specific Pages All in English
Hi Folks, I have been checking how many pages our competitors have indexed in Google compared to our website and I noticed that one of our main competitors has over 2 million indexed pages and I have figured out that it is because they have language/country specific pages for every page on their website. That being said, these pages contain all of the same content and the language doesn't actually change, it remains in English. Now my question is this. Will this not in fact hurt their rankings, in terms of duplicate content? Or am I missing something here? The URL's essentially do something like www.competitor.com/fr/ for France for example but as I say the content is in English, and duplicates their main website. Seems odd to me but would love your opinions on this. Thanks. Gaz
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PurpleGriffon0 -
Does anyone know how to appear with snippet that says something like: Jobs 1-10 of 80 in the beginning of the description on Google? e.g. like on: https://www.google.co.za/#q=pickers+and+packers
Does anyone know how to appear with snippet that says something like: Jobs 1-10 of 80 in the beginning of the description on Google? e.g. like on: https://www.google.co.za/#q=pickers+and+packers Any markup that could be used to be listed like this. Why is some sites listed like this and some not. Why is the adzuna.co.za page listed with Results 1-10 while some other with Jobs 1-10 ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | classifiedtech0 -
Question on Moving Content
I just moved my site from a Wordpress hosted site to Squarespace. We have the same domain, however, the content is now located on a different URL (again, same base domain). I'm unable to easily set up 301 redirects for the old content to be mapped to the new content so I was wondering if anyone had any recommendations for a workaround. Basically, I want to make sure google knows that Product A's page is now located at this new URL. (www.domain.com/11245 > www.domain.com/product-a). Maybe it's something that I don't have to worry about anymore because the old content is gone? I mean, I have a global redirect set up that no matter what you enter after the base domain, it now goes to the homepage but I just want to make sure I'm not missing something here. Really appreciate your help!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TheBatesMillStore1 -
Local Coverage Strategy
Hi Mozzers, I've had some successful national and international campaigns but this will be my first attempt at local. The client is a landscape designer, services several cities within a 50 mile radius and has a rural address which is not located in any of the cities serviced. What's my best strategy for ranking in the desired cities considering the client's address is not located in any of them?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | waynekolenchuk0 -
Keyphrase / Keyword arrangement
Hi all, What are your thoughts on the arrangement of keyphrases / words? For example, does it make a difference if the words are arranged in the following way: "Keyword 1 Keyword 2" or "Keyword 2 Keyword 1" Both ways make a phrases which is favourable in the search engines. Can I stick with 1 way or should I be going with both arrangements. Hope that is clear 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | wtfi0 -
Posing QU's on Google Variables "aclk", "gclid" "cd", "/aclk" "/search", "/url" etc
I've been doing a bit of stats research prompted by read the recent ranking blog http://www.seomoz.org/blog/gettings-rankings-into-ga-using-custom-variables There are a few things that have come up in my research that I'd like to clear up. The below analysis has been done on my "conversions". 1/. What does "/aclk" mean in the Referrer URL? I have noticed a strong correlation between this and "gclid" in the landing page variable. Does it mean "ad click" ?? Although they seem to "closely" correlate they don't exactly, so when I have /aclk in the referrer Url MOSTLY I have gclid in the landing page URL. BUT not always, and the same applies vice versa. It's pretty vital that I know what is the best way to monitor adwords PPC, so what is the best variable to go on? - Currently I am using "gclid", but I have about 25% extra referral URL's with /aclk in that dont have "gclid" in - so am I underestimating my number of PPC conversions? 2/. The use of the variable "cd" is great, but it is not always present. I have noticed that 99% of my google "Referrer URL's" either start with:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | James77
/aclk - No cd value
/search - No cd value
/url - Always contains the cd variable. What do I make of this?? Thanks for the help in advance!0 -
Best multi-language site strategy?
When reading about multi-language site structure, general knowledge says that there are 2 right ways of doing it right: Assign one domain per region/ language: www.domain.fr www.domain.de www.domain.co.uk ... If a country has more than one language, such as Switzerland, you can create folders for those languages: www.domain.ch/fr - in french www.domain.ch/de - in german Have a unique domain www.domain.com for the whole site and create folders for language region: www.domina.com/fr www.domain.com/uk ... If a language is spoken in more than one country, you can create subfolders www.domain.com/fr-ch - french in switzerland www.domain.com/de-ch - german in switzerland At first sight, it seems that option 1 is the right one. However, sites such as www.apple.com are using option 2. I am unable to decide... what would you recommend? Any objective criteria?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | hockerty0