Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Working with country specific domain names vs. staying with .com
-
I've recently inherited a client that has a country specific domain for Canada (.ca) but there is also a US branch for the company at the .com address. They have a direct competitor that operates also in the U.S. and Canada that has decided to operate entirely under the .com address and re-direct all .ca traffic to their .com address.
When I compare the link analysis data for both the .ca, .com, and competitors site, I'm finding there is a huge difference between the .ca site and the competitors site, but not a huge difference between the .com site and the competitors site. For example, the domain authorities are as follows:
- myclient.ca (Canadian branch) - 22
- myclient.com (US branch) - 46
- competitor.com - 53
When I do a brand search for my client in Canada, the Canadian branch website shows up first, but the American one is second.
At this point, would it be better for my client to consolidate the two branches into the .com address and focus on increasing external followed links to the .com website? Or, is there merit in continuing to create a separate inbound link strategy for the .ca site?
Thanks.
-
Hello James,
Having a ccTLD definitely provides some ranking benefit in the target country. If the .ca domain is doing well for them I don't think I would consolidate it. Contrary to the other response, it is perfectly fine to have a separate ccTLD/domain for other countries.
However you might want to look into geotargeting each domain in Webmaster Tools (setting the .com version to US geotargeting may take care of the 2nd place brand search issue).
Of course this is just my opinion based on my own experiences. I will leave the question open for awhile so you can get more input from others.
-
Thanks for your response!
In the US, Google doesn't show the .ca domain until the 3rd page of results (.com is 1st result), so that's not too concerning to me. But in Canada it shows .ca first and .com second, which is a bit confusing.
I think my client may not be able to get everything organized under the .com URL because of the way the company is structured, but I want to be clear that that is the best recommended course of action for SEO success before offering them a link building campaign for the .ca site.
-
I think you've correctly identified a couple of things here. Firstly that you shouldn't be running multiple domains for the same website, and secondly that US customers are unlikely to click on a .ca domain for a local branch.
I think the .com domain would be best for you here. You might want somebody to back me up on this, but I believe if you 301 redirect .ca to the new .com address appropriately the good SEO juices from the .ca domain will be transferred to .com. I don't think this is an overnight thing, but I imagine that as soon as Google realised ".ca now lives at .com" they'll work out the rest quite quickly.
If the US and Candidan websites aren't the same then consider having the different regions as subfolders on your .com domain - for example yourclient.com/us/ and yourclient.com/ca/
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
-
Moving from single domain to multiple CCTLDs
Hi, I have a website targeting 3 markets (and therefor 3 languages). I was currently using a single domain with each market being targeted in the following format: www.website.com/pl
International SEO | | cellydy
www.website.com/de
www.website.com/hu It's clear to me by looking at organic results, that in my industry (Real Estate) Google is putting a large emphasis on local businesses and local domains. Top 10 organic results for all my keywords in all markets have country specific CCTLDs. I decided to migrate from a single domain strategy to a multi domain strategy. I own the domains. The new structure is www.website.com/pl -> www.website.pl
www.website.com/de -> www.website.de
www.website.com/hu -> www.website.hu All the website have been added to google search console and 301 redirects are in place and working correctly. The pages are all interlinked and have rel=alternate to each other. The sitemaps are all done correctly. My question is how do I tell Google about this. The change of address feature only works for changing one domain to one other domain. It's been a week and the old www.website.com domain is still showing up (even considering 301 redirects). Or do I just need to be patient and wait it out? Any tips?0 -
Subdirectory vs. gTLD
So I am merging two ecommerce brands together and have decided to do so either under a Subdirectory or gTLD. My aim here is to increase the quality of my SEO for the weaker site (this would be the second italic domain shown in A and B below), thus taking domain authority from the dominant site, while 301 redirecting all pages from the old domain which will hopefully boost the authority and rank for the merged site). My options for the merged site are: A. www.website.com & www.website.com/hreflang=en B. www.website.com & www.website.com/us Or a combination of A & B (below): C. www.website.com & www.website.com/us/hreflang=en Factors: Option A and C results in a longer URL structure for the merged domain which has a negative impact on SEO, while Option B is much more succinct. Both Option A and Option B are the same distance from the root directory, weakening the SEO credibility of the merged domain somewhat. While option C would be further still. Here are my questions: Option B consolidates Domain Authority, but do Option A and C do the same? Will the first domain receive a boost in Domain Authority and Rank due to 301 redirects targeting the second italic domain? Will any option cause duplicate content issues (some categories/products are identical on both sites)? And if so, how best to avoid them (having Google ignore the subdirectory/gTLD is not an option). One website will target the UK/EU while the other will target the US, will the merged italic site be able to rank well in the US? Are there any other ranking factors I have missed or should consider? I know this is quite an advanced series of questions, so I would appreciate the opinions of others so I can make the most informed choice. Thank you
International SEO | | moon-boots0 -
Country subfolders showing as sitelinks in Google, country targeting for home page no longer working
Hi There, Just wondering if you can help. Our site has 3 region versions (General .com, /ie/ for Ireland and /gb/ for UK), each submitted to Google Webmaster Tools as seperate sites with hreflang tags in the head section of all pages. Google was showing the correct results for a few weeks, but I resubmitted the home pages with slight text changes last week and something strange happened, though it may have been coincidental timing. When we search for the brand name in google.ie or google.co.uk, the .com now shows as the main site, where the sitelinks still show the correct country versions. However, the country subdirectories are now appearing as sitelinks, which is likely causing the problem. I have demoted these on GWT, but unsure as to whether that will work and it seems to take a while for sitelink demotion to work. Has anyone had anything similar happen? I thought perhaps it was a markup issue breaking the head section so that Google can no longer see the hreflangs pointing to each other as alternates. I checked the source code in w3 validator and it doesn't show any errors. Anyway, any help would be much appreciated - and thanks to anyone who gets back, it's a tricky type of issue to troubleshoot. Thanks, Ro
International SEO | | romh0 -
For a website in portuguese what would you use? pt.domain.com, br.domain.com or domain.com.br
Hello We are a company with a website in several languages, one of them is portuguese. Our market is 2 times bigger in Brazil than in Portugal, but obviously Brazil has more potential in the future. In domain.com we have our main site in English. What would you use? pt.domain.com, br.domain.com or domain.com.br? In the first case, it means just portuguese, in the second Brazil but it is not geolocalized, and in the third, you are almost ignoring Portugal users... Duplicating content, doesn't seem to make sense... The content is basically international, so it is just the language that matters. Any help will be very much appreciated.
International SEO | | forex-websites0 -
Sub-domains or sub-directories for country-specific versions of the site?
What approach do you think would be better from an SEO perspective when creating country-targeted versions for an eCommerce site (all in the same language with slight regional changes) - sub-domains or sub-directories? Is any of the approaches more cost effective, web development-wise? I know this topic's been under much debate and I would really like to hear your opinion. Many thanks!
International SEO | | ramarketing0 -
Best domain for spanish language site targeting ALL spanish territories?
hi, we're have a strong .com domain and are looking to launch a site for spanish speakers (ie latin america + spain). we already have various subdirectories for some foreign language sites (eg. ourdomain.co.uk, us.ourdomain.com, ca.ourdomain.com, ourdomainchina.com, ourdomainindia.com etc) we already have a B2B site ourdomain.com-es which will remain the same. I'm thinking best practice would be to launch translated copy for the following: ourdomain.com/es ourdomain.com/cl ourdomain.com/mx ourdomain.com/pt etc etc firstly is this the best option? secondly, i'm really interested to hear whether there is a less time/resource intensive route that would give us visibility in ALL spanish speaking territories? Also - if we go with just one of the above (eg ourdomain.com/cl) how likely are we to get traction in other spanish speaking territories? any help much appreciated!
International SEO | | KevinDunne0 -
Country specific domains pointing to a .com site
Hello, I am new to seo so please be easy if this happens to be a "silly" question. My company has a .com site. We are expanding into global markets, focusing on specific countries right now. General question: Would I be penalized for duplicate content if I purchased country-specific domains and pointed them to the .com site? Thanks, Jim
International SEO | | jimmer0 -
Domain strategy for UK and USA
Hi Everyone, We have example.org.uk with 20K inbound links. We want to target the US as well as the UK. I would be interested to hear what approaches are best for SEO. For example is it better to keep our current domain and have subdirectories for USA for example. Or would it be better to register example.org and then use subdirectories. Or is it better to use different domains for each country? Any help with this much appreciated. Cheers
International SEO | | MarkChambers0