Soft Launch App with Country Targeting To Match?

[eTinaRose]

Hi,
We're gearing up to do a soft launch of our app in a few countries, such as Australia. Our website says to request early access since the app is not yet publicly available in the apple store. However, it will be in those soft launch countries. This is what I'm considering...

Creating a subdomain site such as au.liquidtext.net (liquidtext.au is not available). And setting that site, au.liquidtext.net, to be country targeted to Australia via webmaster tools.

Once the app is available internationally, and the main site has been updated to show this, I would then redirect any subdomains to the main site.

Thoughts? Are there any negative repercussions to this this approach that I am not considering?

Thank you for your help Moz community!!

Tina

[eTinaRose]

Thank you Kristina. This is extremely helpful! Your detailed response is greatly appreciated!

Tina

[KristinaKledzik]

Hi Tina,

Are you thinking of creating a subdomain because you want to be able to tell Google Webmaster Tools which country to target, or because you don't have the flexibility with your primary site to create pages targeted at each country?

If it's the former, you can geotarget in Google Webmaster Tools by subfolder by verifying by subfolder.

If it's the latter, I'd recommend making only one subdomain with all of the country landing pages, because you don't want to create a whole bunch of weak subdomains. New pages on your primary domain will start with more Page Authority (and therefore higher rankings) than new subdomains.

But, taking a step back, you don't really need to formally geotarget these pages through Google Webmaster Tools. Geotargeting is for when it's not apparent which country a page is targeted at, like when you're selling shoes in the UK but not in America. The page needs to be about shoes, not the UK, but still needs to tell Google that its content is only for the UK. In your situation, the page can be about the country it's targeting.

If you create a page that has the page title Liquid Text Available in Australia in May 2014 and the URL liquidtext.net/australia, Google and visitors will understand who your page is for. No need for any extra work!

Hope this helps,

Kristina