Country Specific Domains
-
Is there any type of "best practice" for country level domains?
I run a TLD .com, and have a few country specific domains (.co.uk, .eu, ...). Right now, I'm not doing anything with them. Previously, I had them redirected to the main .com, but didn't want to anger the Google gods with any type of duplicate content, redirects, or anything of that nature.
Any suggestions on how to best utalize these domains?
-
Hey,
It really depends on what you're looking to do - are you wanting to actively trade via those other ccTLDs?
For example - with your .co.uk; do you have the ability to offer your product in the UK? If so, then it's absolutely fine to set up as a separate site.
However, if you're just going to replicate your current site you will need to do a little work to avoid that content being seen as duplicate.
You can geo-target via webmaster tools see - http://www.seo-chicks.com/1463/geotargeting-on-the-same-domain-using-xml-sitemaps.html
You can also implement rel-alternate hreflang via your sitemaps see - http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/multilingual-and-multinational-site.html
As Fidelityim says - I'd also recommend you including other signals e.g.
- Local phone numbers
- Local bricks and mortar addresses
- Local currency
This helps the search engines understand where you're trying to target.
Please note, that whilst this activity will help in terms of geo-targeting your content in order to actually rank in these countries you'll likely need to do some link building for each of these sites too.
I hope this helps,
Hannah
-
Good point from Highland.
If you're not looking to build out largely different/unique sites for each ccTLD, just re-produce your main .com site on the other ccTLDs and start off by adding in a country flag and maybe a 'local' phone number just to send some signals to users that this is a more 'locally' relevant site.
-
There's nothing wrong with doing that. ccTLDs can be duplicates of their .com brethren because it's understood that they're localized. As Matt Cutts said, spammers are not using ccTLDs like that and Google is pretty smart at figuring that out.
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
-
2 domains for one website
Hi, I was wondering: i have 2 domains. One is the name of the company the other one is an exact match domain. There is only one website. If I use both domains for this website which one will rank? How google react to website configured like that? Regards
Technical SEO | | LeszekNowakowski0 -
Domain Change -- Drop in Rank
So I had a client that recently decided to change their URL to make it more "searchable"/shorter. Since doing so, I have noticed a significant drop in rankings for a number of the keyword terms we were previously ranking for. Is there a way to push the links to the new URL or is the only solution to revert back to the old URL?
Technical SEO | | maxcarnage0 -
International architecture: Country specific subfolders > domain mapping to tld
Hi Ive got a clients dev saying they are setting up with country/language specific subfolders (as i recommended) BUT now they are saying they want to set up on network.domain.com (for example) and then each language will have its own sub-folder BUT will be domain mapped to the TLD as and when they get them. I have asked them to clarify since sounds a bit strange since thought best to have domain.com then /uk and /us etc etc and sure ok to forward country specific TLD's to these subfolders. Its this new subdomain (network.) thats concerning me and mapping rather than forwarding (or is it the same thing) but anyone know off hand if above sounds ok or also thinks a bit strange or know issues with such a set up ? many thanks dan
Technical SEO | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
Keyword in Domain Name
Hello!My website is www.enchantingquotes.com. I also own the domain www.enchantingwallquotes.com,which forwards to my site. About 90% of my business comes from the keyword "wall quotes". Should I consider changing switching to the enchantingwallquotes.com domain and redirecting? And if I do, do I need to recreate the entire website or is there an easier way that I am overlooking? Thank you for any advise/insight!
Technical SEO | | eqgirl0 -
301'ing domain to an addon domain
My googlefu failed me in finding this... How to 301 a domain to an addon domain? Domain structure is as follows: http://addondomain.maindomain.com/ http://www.maindomain.com/addondomain/ http://www.addondomain.com/ <--(addon domain has its own domain as well) I want main domain to all point to the addon domain like so: http://www.maindomain.com/ --> http://www.addondomain.com/
Technical SEO | | JasonJackson0 -
Parking Domains
I currently have a website domain.com.au, an American branch of the company who own domain.com are currently having their site built and want to forward there domain.com to domain.com.au while construction is taking place. Are there any negative effects to parking the domain.com on my domain.com.au? What is the best method to do this without causing any problems for my domain.com.au?
Technical SEO | | Pork0 -
Impact of moving all the domain from .net to .com
Hi, We are thinking of moving a domain from a .net extension to a .com because of internal political reason. It's a french website with 3 000 pages.The organic trafic is 65 % from France and 35 % from Canada. We have decent rankings and we have around 150 000 organic visits/month. For sure,if we move the site, we will do all the rigth 301 redirect. We will also use Google Webmaster Tools to tell the new location of the site. But even if we do all the best practices. What would be the impact of changing the extension. Is anyone had some experience with this ? I will really like to have your opinion on this. Thanks Rick
Technical SEO | | Adviso0 -
Redirecting /default to domain ??
Google analytics shows me that this: http://www.quicklearn.com/default.aspx is my "top content page" This page doesn't redirect to my root domain: http://www.quicklearn.com IT tells me that "/default.aspx" can not redirect to my domain. I am told: "You can only redirect deeper into the site." We have had an ongoing issue with duplicate content (that we are in the process of correcting). Anyone with experience in redirecting that can help? Any advice welcome
Technical SEO | | QuickLearnTraining0