Two domains for different countries? or one big domain with folders?

[daniel.alvarez]

I know this might sound as a newbie question or maybe not, here it goes.

I've had a client for the past 2 years, and we have accomplish many good things for his local website .com.ve (venezuela). It's been so good that he is opening a branch in Dominican republic .com.do.

The content, strategy and even the services are exactly the same, but the owner  wants to have different site for each country. Of course he only wants to pay for one domain.

I do want to share our success ont the .com.ve with the other domains and he actually owns the "global" domain .com with his brand name.

So, what should I reccomend... Develop a second site and start from scratch? Migrate my blog from the .com.ve site to the .com site and give each country a separate folder? /ve /do?.

What it's the best scenario for me to have all the traffic we have earned transfer to the global brand and to have separate info for each country...

Thank you so much for your answer that I kno would be great.

Dan

[daniel.alvarez]

I agree with you.

I think down here in venezuela people are not as aware as maybe other countries to figure out that the domain changed.

My main worry, as i told moosa is that the client does not have the resources to maintain both sites. I guess using the .com domain was the only way to combine both.

The Client it's offers several consulting services, business plans, financial planning, legal consulting etc.

thanks

[daniel.alvarez]

Ok... thanks for your answer.... However the client does not have the manpower o resources to produce content for both sites.

What would you do in that case?

dan

[GTGshops]

Daniel,

I think it is more important to look at the UX instead of the SEO part.

You schould ask yourself the question what would the people prefer a .com site or a site from there own country. If the site is about information and such i think people will not mind. But if it's a E-commerce site than the visitors will be more likely to order at a national oriented site. ( talking from experience)

[MoosaHemani]

Daniel,

In my opinion this is very much depends upon what risks you are ready to take and how targeted people are going to react to it!

If you already have a stabled .com.ve website then my advice would be to go with separate domain that is .com.do instead of shifting to .com with country level sub folders!

Here the reasons why you should do that!

• Shifting from one domain to another will lose some of your page rank no matter if you do a proper 301 redirect!
• Shofting from .com.ve to .com/ve might hurt your rankings in search engines (no hard hit but still)
• You never know how .com.ve people will react to the new domain!
• Local domains build more trust!

Above are the reasons why i believe you should not switch to the .com versions. If this was the new website then i would have advised to go for single domain but in your case the %age of risk is greater!