International SEO: What to do when you're using a ccTLD and want to go global
-
I'm hoping someone in the Moz community can help me with this one! Essentially, we have a .co.uk brand which wants to have more of an international presence. My question is, purely based on the fact that we're a .co.uk, will we find it more challenging to develop a search engine presence in European/BRIC markets? In a perfect world, we'd have a .com/country or a .es/ etc, but if this isn't possible, how hindered are we if we stick with the .co.uk and want to build a presence in Spain?
-
Hi Jimmy,
Great to hear from you. My initial reaction is that it might be trickier to rank with the .co.uk, as well. Context wise, I hope this helps... this would be for a B2B website that sells into various countries, including the likes of Spain, Italy, Germany, as well as China, Vietnam, Thailand and more.
Primarily we'd be looking to rank for our brand name in various different languages, e.g. simplified Chinese, Thai, German, all from a .co.uk.
My initial suspicion is that a .co.uk may be trickier than getting a .com or country specific TLDs ranking (e.g. brandname.cn brandname.de), especially with Baidu which doesn't seem to have a lot of love for .co.uks.
Based on this, would you stick with .co.uk, go global with a .com or country specific with ccTLDs for each target market?
Holly
-
Hi Holly,
I think you might struggle with the .co.uk to be honest - in theory, getting links from spanish websites will help, however you would have to ask yourself why someone would link to your UK site from a local one. To help you further I'd need to understand a little more. Can you give more context to the situation? Also, are you trying to rank for English or Spanish queries in Spain?
Jimmy
-
That's super helpful, thank you. American markets aside, are there any other countries where it would be a hindrance?
-
Its not as much of a hindrance in other European countries as it would be if you're trying to expand into American markets. Not having that country's TLD does hurt your SEO in that country somewhat but the way to get around this is to work on getting links from websites in that country. If you can get the domain great, if not it's not the end of the world.
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
-
URL 301 Re-direct
Hello, If we publish a blog post with a url which accidentally contains a number at the end (blog.companyname.com/subject-title-0), is it best-practice to update the URL (e.g. to blog.companyname.com/subject-title) and put in a 301 re-direct from the old to the new one or should it simply be left as is? I've read that 301's lose link equity and relevance so is it really worth re-directing for the sake of a cleaner url? Thanks for your input! John
Technical SEO | | SEOCT1 -
One-Pager and SEO
We're building a page that is going to feature over 31 people as difference makers in their field. We're unveiling one a day for an entire month. The very early mockup of the page has name, pic, some bio info, and a link to open up a new window with the full bio. I would love to have all of the bio content for all of the people on the page (and indexable), but I'm not sure how to do that while still being able to hide the full bios until they are expanded. Anybody have any tips that are SEO-friendly and/or examples of a page that is built like this and ranks well. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | spackle0 -
Anyone using Adobe Business Catalyst and Fixing SEO URL Blog Updates?
Does anyone else have experience with the current update Adobe Business Catalyst has announced for their blog features? Florin at BC offered the code below: http://www.graeagle.com/images/fb_blog_og_img.jpg" /> However nether myself nor another commentator can figure out how to make it work: I added the meta data to my template but it seems the tags are not correct. For example, the tag {tag_blogpostmetatitle} does not automatically include the SEO title that I've called out in my individual blog post. So, it appears the browser is ignoring the tag and just including it as is. When I view the source for my live blog article, this is what I get for the lines that I've added the code in the tag: Also, I cannot get schema metadata to work on the BC blog. For example, I have used it on this page: http://www.homedestination.com/_blog/Real_Estate_Blog/post/things_to_know_before_building_a_new_home/; which yields the following in Google's Rich Snippet Tool: Extracted structured data rdfa-node property: title: {tag_blogpostmetatitle} description:__{tag_blogpostmetadescription}
Technical SEO | | jessential0 -
I know I'm missing pages with my page level 301 re-directs. What can I do?
I am implementing page level re-directs for a large site but I know that I will inevitably miss some pages. Is there an additional safety net root level re-direct that I can use to catch these pages and send them to the homepage?
Technical SEO | | VMLYRDiscoverability0 -
What are the potential SEO downsides of using a service like unbounce for content pages?
I'm thinking of using unbounce.com to create some content driven pages. Unbounce is simple, easy-to-use, and very easy for non-devs at my company to create variations on pages. I know they allow adding meta descriptions, title tags, etc and allow it to be indexable by Google, but I was wondering if there were any potential downsides to using unbounce as opposed to hosting it myself. Any help would be appreciated!
Technical SEO | | Seiyav0 -
Does adding Tool Tips to a site hurt it's SEO?
I'm wanting to add tool tips to my site as it's intended for non-technical people that are wanting high tech equipment and services. I thought that by adding tool tips, I could clear any confusion they may have about a particular word right there rather then them having to search for what it means. I did some research online and saw that it may hurt SEO ratings but wanted to verify here first before deciding.
Technical SEO | | sDevik0 -
Country domain: Seo for other languages
Hi, I have an italian domain (.it) for an italian hotel, it is an old authoritative domain (1997) and it is well optimized for the keywords that include the city the hotel is in, now the page is decently positioned in Google Italy. There are many problems to have the same rank for German version (in google.de, google.at). The German version is in the /de folder. The hotel has another .com domain, much less authoritative (2007), in a German server, but it was and is only a simple redirect 301 (by code) to the German version in the .it domain. (obviously the rank for this domain is almost nonexistent). Do you have any suggestion? Thank you.
Technical SEO | | depi0 -
Site 'filtered' by Google in early July.... and still filtered!
Hi, Our site got demoted by Google all of a sudden back in early July. You can view the site here: http://alturl.com/4pfrj and you may read the discussions I posted in Google's forums here: http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=6e8f9aab7e384d88&hl=en http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=276dc6687317641b&hl=en Those discussions chronicle what happened, and what we've done since. I don't want to make this a long post by retyping it all here, hence the links. However, we've made various changes (as detailed), such as getting rid of duplicate content (use of noindex on various pages etc), and ensuring there is no hidden text (we made an unintentional blunder there through use of a 3rd party control which used CSS hidden text to store certain data). We have also filed reconsideration requests with Google and been told that no manual penalty has been applied. So the problem is down to algorithmic filters which are being applied. So... my reason for posting here is simply to see if anyone here can help us discover if there is anything we have missed? I'd hope that we've addressed the main issues and that eventually our Google ranking will recover (ie. filter removed.... it isn't that we 'rank' poorly, but that a filter is bumping us down, to, for example, page 50).... but after three months it sure is taking a while! It appears that a 30 day penalty was originally applied, as our ranking recovered in early August. But a few days later it dived down again (so presumably Google analysed the site again, found a problem and applied another penalty/filter). I'd hope that might have been 30 or 60 days, but 60 days have now passed.... so perhaps we have a 90 day penalty now. OR.... perhaps there is no time frame this time, simply the need to 'fix' whatever is constantly triggering the filter (that said, I 'feel' like a time frame is there, especially given what happened after 30 days). Of course the other aspect that can always be worked on (and oft-mentioned) is the need for more and more original content. However, we've done a lot to increase this and think our Guide pages are pretty useful now. I've looked at many competitive sites which list in Google and they really don't offer anything more than we do..... so if that is the issue it sure is puzzling if we're filtered and they aren't. Anyway, I'm getting wordy now, so I'll pause. I'm just asking if anyone would like to have a quick look at the site and see what they can deduce? We have of course run it through SEOMoz's tools and made use of the suggestions. Our target pages generally rate as an A for SEO in the reports. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | Go2Holidays0