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.
Best URL structure for SEO for Malaysian/Singapore site on .com.au domain
-
Hi there
I know ideally i need a .my or .sg domain, however i dont have time to do this in the interim so what would be the best way to host Malaysian content on a www.domainname.com.au website?
www.domainname.com.au/en-MY
www.domainname.com.au/MY
domainname.com.au/malaysia
malaysia.domainname.com.au
my.domainname.com.auIm assuming this cant make the .com.au site look spammy but thought I'd ask just to be safe?
Thanks in advance!
-
Google has stated they are better now at relating subdomain content to the TLD domain, but you're probably still better off using a subfolder. If you do go with a subdomain, make sure to link them in your GA code for better reporting.
There are so many languages spoken in Malaysia that this domain issue is really not going to help visitors on your site. If you're going for consistency, you'd need subfolders or subdomains for all supported languages. If you're only using English, then I wouldn't even consider this change. Simply use www.domainname.com.au/malaysia/ to host content relevant to this market until you can get your TLD. This would send the strongest signal to both search engines and site visitors that your content is targeted for Malaysia.
-
I'd choose one of the top 3 options listed as subdirectories are going to better associated with the root domain than subdomains. Moz has done several tests of this with one of their latest recaps here: http://moz.com/blog/subdomains-vs-subfolders-rel-canonical-vs-301-how-to-structure-links-optimally-for-seo-whiteboard-friday. From Rand's WBF:
You're asking, "Should I put my content on a subdomain, or should I put it in a subfolder?" Subdomains can be kind of interesting sometimes because there's a lot less technical hurdles a lot of the time. You don't need to get your engineering staff or development staff involved in putting those on there. From a technical operations perspective, some things might be easier, but from an SEO perspective this can be very dangerous. I'll show you what I mean.
So let's say you've got blog.yoursite.com or you've got www.yoursite.com/blog. Now engines may indeed consider content that's on this separate subdomain to be the same as the content that's on here, and so all of the links, all of the user and usage data signals, all of the ranking signals as an entirety that point here may benefit this site as well as benefiting this subdomain. The keyword there is "may."
Cheers!
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
-
How to improve PA of Shortened URLs
Why some of shortened urls like bitly/owly/googl has PA>40? I tried everything to improve PA of my shortened urls like facebook shares, retweets and backlinks to them but still i have PA-1. Checkout this URL: https://moz.com/blog/state-of-links in MOZ OSE and you will many 301 links from shortners
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | igains
I asked many seo experts about this but no one answered this question so today subscribed MOZ pro for the solution. Please give me the answer.0 -
The use of a ghost site for SEO purposes
Hi Guys, Have just taken on a new client (.co.uk domain) and during our research have identified they also have a .com domain which is a replica of the existing site but all links lead to the .co.uk domain. As a result of this, the .com replica is pushing 5,000,000+ links to the .co.uk site. After speaking to the client, it appears they were approached by a company who said that they could get the .com site ranking for local search queries and then push all that traffic to .co.uk. From analytics we can see that very little referrer traffic is coming from the .com. It sounds remarkably dodgy to us - surely the duplicate site is an issue anyway for obvious reasons, these links could also be deemed as being created for SEO gain? Does anyone have any experience of this as a tactic? Thanks, Dan
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | SEOBirmingham810 -
Preventing CNAME Site Duplications
Hello fellow mozzers! Let me see if I can explain this properly. First, our server admin is out of contact at the moment,
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | David-Kley
so we are having to take this project on somewhat blind. (forgive the ignorance of terms). We have a client that needs a cname record setup, as they need a sales.DOMAIN.com to go to a different
provider of data. They have a "store" platform that is hosted elsewhere and they require a cname to be
sent to a custom subdomain they set up on their end. My question is, how do we prevent the cname from being indexed along with the main domain? If we
process a redirect for the subdomain, then the site will not be able to go out and grab the other providers
info and display it. Currently, if you type in the sales.DOMAIN.com it shows the main site's homepage.
That cannot be allow to take place as we all know, having more than one domain with
exact same content = very bad for seo. I'd rather not rely on Google to figure it out. Should we just have the cname host (where its pointing at) add a robots rule and have it set to not index
the cname? The store does not need to be indexed, as the items are changed almost daily. Lastly, is an A record required for this type of situation in any way? Forgive my ignorance of subdomains, cname records and related terms. Our server admin being
unavailable is not helping this project move along any. Any advice on the best way to handle
this would be very helpful!0 -
How to 301 redirect from old domain and their pages to new domain and pages?
Hi i am a real newbie to this and i hope for a guide on how to do this. I seen a few moz post and is quiet confusing hopefully somebody able to explain it in layman terms to me. I would like to 301 redirect this way, both website contain the same niche. oldwebsite.com > newwebsite.com and also its pages..... oldwebsite.com/test >newwebsite.com/test So my question here is i would like to host my old domain and its pages in my new website hosting in order to redirect to my new domain and its pages how do i do that? would my previous page link overwrite my new page link? or it add on the juice link? Do i need to host the whole old domain website into my new hosting in order to redirect the old pages? really confusing here, thanks!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | andzon0 -
How would you optimize a new site?
Hi guys, im here to ask based on your personal opinion. We know in order to rank in SEO for a site is to make authority contents that interest people. But what would you do to increase your ranking of your site or maybe a blog post? leaving your link on blogs comment seem dangerous, nowadays. Is social media the only way to go? Trying to get people to write about you? what else can be done?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | andzon0 -
Merging four sites into one... Best way to combine content?
First of all, thank you in advance for taking the time to look at this. The law firm I work for once took a "more is better" approach and had multiple websites, with keyword rich domains. We are a family law firm, but we have a specific site for "Arizona Child Custody" as one example. We have four sites. All four of our sites rank well, although I don't know why. Only one site is in my control, the other three are managed by FindLaw. I have no idea why the FindLaw sites do well, other than being in the FindLaw directory. They have terrible spammy page titles, and using Copyscape, I realize that most of the content that FindLaw provides for it's attorneys are "spun articles." So I have a major task and I don't know how to begin. First of all, since all four sites rank well for all of the desired phrases-- will combining all of that power into one site rocket us to stardom? The sites all rank very well now, even though they are all technically terrible. Literally. I would hope that if I redirect the child custody site (as one example) to the child custody overview page on the final merged site, we would still maintain our current SERP for "arizona child custody lawyer." I have strongly encouraged my boss to merge our sites for many reasons. One of those being that it's playing havoc with our local places. On the other hand, if I take down the child custody site, redirect it, and we lose that ranking, I might be out of a job. Finally, that brings me down to my last question. As I mentioned, the child custody site is "done" very poorly. Should I actually keep the spun content and redirect each and every page to a duplicate on our "final" domain, or should I redirect each page to a better article? This is the part that I fear the most. I am considering subdomains. Like, redirecting the child custody site to childcustody.ourdomain.com-- I know, for a fact, that will work flawlessly. I've done that many times for other clients that have multiple domains. However, we have seven areas of practice and we don't have 7 nice sites. So child custody would be the only legal practice area that has it's own subdomain. Also, I wouldn't really be doing anything then, would I? We all know 301 redirects work. What I want is to harness all of this individual power to one mega-site. Between the four sites, I have 800 pages of content. I need to formulate a plan of action now, and then begin acting on it. I don't want to make the decision alone. Anybody care to chime in? Thank you in advance for your help. I really appreciate the time it took you to read this.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | SDSLaw0 -
How Is Your Approach Towards Adult SEO?
I would like to know how SEOMoz community members approach adult SEO. How do you approach a project when you get one (if you do it that is). If you dont do adult SEO, why do you not do it? Is it because it's much more difficult than normal SEO or do you not want to associate yourself with that industry?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | ConversionChamp0
