2 Top level domains - not ranking?

[edward-may]

Hi Guys

I'm a bit confused, I have 3 top level domains com, com.au and co.nz I have set up the right CcLTD's and also the correct Hreflang tags - but for some reason, I'm only been found for my co.nz site and not for the com.au and the com

My site is zenory com and zenory.co.nz, zenory.com.au the co.nz is doing well in the nz search but how come I can't find anything for the other two?

Is there something I'm doing wrong here?

[edward-may]

Hi Rick

Thanks for your response!

According to WMT and Moz I have added the CcTLDs and Hreflang tags correctly and set up geo targeting seems to be fine.

Just can't seem to find out why the .com and com.au isn't ranking or showing any sign of being in the top 50 for a long tail keyword yet?  I launched in Nov 2014 and we rank reasonably well for the NZ search, but it seems the .com doesn't appear to show anything.

I'm mindful I had submitted the same sitemap for the co.nz to thecom.au and also the com and wondering if that had any effect.

We are in the middle of a site re-design so I wasn't going to submit the new sitemaps until the new design had been updated to the live environment.

[edward-may]

Thanks Dirk for the information!!!! I'm in the middle of a redesign it is mobile friendly but won't be launching for a few weeks!

[DirkC]

Hi Justin,

Next Tuesday is the 21/4 - the day the Mobile Friendly update is launched. You can find more info about it here: http://moz.com/community/q/google-s-mobile-update-what-we-know-so-far-updated-3-25

rgds,

Dirk

[edward-may]

Hi Dirk

Thanks for your response! Actually I have been having issues with this! I generated the sitemap through an auto generator in google and the sitemap for com.au keeps send the com sitemap, i then proceeded to try screaming frog sitemap generator, but I'm not sure if I need to fix any canonicalised issues firstly.... Sorry I'm extremely new at all this and finding a little over my head with all the technical jargon.

[edward-may]

Hi there

Thanks for the update! I'm in the middle of a design overhaul but won't be ready in for two weeks! Whats the significance for next Tuesday?

[PeaSoupDigital]

Not entirely related, but your site isn't mobile-friendly. So from next Tuesday, you may start seeing a drop in traffic if this is not addressed.

[LinkWheelOldSchool]

Dirk, you might be right, but then again why have 3 identical sites? Even if the hreflang tags are properly set up, the whole content is duplicated - even the currency across all 3 sites. If you had different currencies on each (as described in the video) it would be something. But right now, all the content is identical (not almost identical but fully identical).

Don't get me wrong, this is not a problem about spamming, it's just that with 3 identical pages, google is going to rank the one that it first saw, the one it considers to be the original - or the one that has the best ranking signals (links and what not).

[DirkC]

Hi Rick,

Don't fully agree on that - having almost identical content on different TLD's isn't necessary considered duplicate content - as indicated in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=BE&v=Ets7nHOV1Yo. The sites also use the hreflang tag to indicate that they are related & which version should be shown to which user.

I do agree that it would be better to take into account country specifics like currency & spelling

rgds,

Dirk

[LinkWheelOldSchool]

If you really have the same site on 3 top level domains, that's duplicate content and it's probably one of the reasons why the other 2 don't show up in the searches. All 3 sites are indexed, I have checked. If you wanna have 3 sites, you should definitely use different content on them, or you can just keep the 3 domains and redirect 2 of them to the most important one.

[edward-may]

Hi Rick

We have the same exact site on 3 top level domains.

zenory.com, zenory.co.nz, and zenory.com.au - **I know a competitor of ours does really well with all 3 domains and is based in NZ.  **

[kwoolf]

Hi Justin. Most search engines take into account your physical location when displaying results. If you are physically in NZ and search for your high ranking keywords, you will more than likely get the NZ site. If you have access to a server in the USA and run the same search, chances are you'll get the .com site. Likewise, if you're in AU then the .au site "should" show higher in the search results. Google has made it very clear here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ce9jv91beQ that just because a site ranks well in one language doesn't mean it'll rank well for a translated site or language-specific subdomain.

Other than that, your biggest issue is that you have very little content for search engines to consider. Google used to recommend about 250 words of relevant content, but these days I'm seeing longer articles rank much better. Your site performance could also be better, so I recommend a read on YSlow scores and how certain front-end optimizations might speed up your site.

But you should have already know what we were going to tell you. Your psychics should have told you! LOL

Cheers!

[DirkC]

Hi Justin,

You might want to look at your server configuration - all the domains seem to have some config issues (no SOA record / no DNSSEC processing). I am not really into this technical stuff, and cannot judge if these issues are really important or not.

http://dnscheck.pingdom.com/?domain=www.zenory.com.au×tamp=1429174636&view=1

http://dnscheck.pingdom.com/?domain=www.zenory.co.nz×tamp=1429174857&view=1

http://dnscheck.pingdom.com/?domain=www.zenory.co.nz×tamp=1429174857&view=1

(I noticed when I tried to crawl the .com.au site with Screaming Frog and got a Connection Error)

Apart from that, as mentioned in a previous answer, the fact that prices are listed in NZ$ is probably a bit strange for .com (and .com.au users). Language used is NZ version - in the States spelling is slightly different (ex. behaviour vs behavior).
Did you manage to create sitemaps for the US & AU versions?

Not related to the ranking issues - but the homepage seems to be very heavy - you might want to work on that (http://www.webpagetest.org/result/150416_2D_J3X/)

Hope this helps,

Dirk

[LinkWheelOldSchool]

What do you mean you're only found for the .co.nz site?

And one thing I don't understand, do you have 3 different sites or just 3 different domains (and 2 of them redirect to the other one)?