.com vs .com/language ?
-
Hello Moooooooooz !
We're currently working on a new website http://www.globalmetal.fr/ which deep SEO issues.
The problematic is as always in this case: 1 company + different subsidiaries + different markets + different languages
The companies is handling different domains:
http://www.globalmetal.fr/
www.globalmetalbroker.ch
www.globalmetalbroker.com
and so on.Until recently I was totally convinced (there is no magic solution I know) that it was better for a SME to focus on 1 domain (.com) and get the other websites per language .com/fr .com/es etc.
But in their case their TLD is pretty new: www.globalmetalbroker.com (DA 1) vs globalmetal.fr (DA 15)
So I'm wondering:
1- Does Google know understand that globalmetal.fr is the french website of globalmetalbroker.com (maybe via webmaster tool) ?
2- Does it make senss to move all the (new) language websites into .com/[folders] and once the .com DA is doing better redirecting the .fr to.com/fr ?
3- Is it better to focus on .com .fr (but french speakers are not just in france) .ru and so on or to keep the .com/[languages]Hope someone got the same issue recently
-
For russia and china you're right it does make sens. But I'm still very concerned about working on so many domains rather than just one
-
In the specific case of a targeting Russia (or China), a .ru is a better solution also because you must consider that Google is not the only ĂŒber dominant search engine there. All the contrary, the most used is Yandex, and Yandex SEO has many things different from Google SEO, more than, for instance, are the differences between Google and Bing.
That means, that optimizing a web site for Yandex, especially in the link building front, may let you relying on actions that would be not so acceptable for Google.
Identical it's the case of targeting China (Baidu), Korea (Naver) or Japan (Yahoo).
-
While that's true, you can more easily geotarget your ccTLDs. A Russian site is more likely to link to a .ru site than some .com
-
Tks for this answer ! But then our issue gonna be to work on the DA (link building and so on) of .com and .fr and .ru rather than .com
-
- It's hard to say. They don't match up exactly. But Google should be able to tell the difference if both sites have essentially the same content in different Geotargeting
- No. It's important to note that ccTLDs send out a strong geotargeting signal. More importantly, you would lose some of your SEO "juice" trying to restructure that many sites into only one.
- If you have a dire need for some targeting of a language I would put a page on your .com site that would direct users to the .fr site for French. Trying to do French on an English site, when you have a French site, makes no sense.
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
-
.com and .co.uk tld question
My client has a site at mysite.com. They serve both US and UK customers. They have the..co.uk tld correctly redirecting to it. The client is asking if they should have two websites - .com for US customers and .- co.uk for UK customers. Any recommendations?
Local Website Optimization | | digitalmarketingneoscape0 -
Mixed branches / targeting countries results in the SERP
hi all, I have one hard nut to break and I would like to kindly ask you for any idea / help đ
Local Website Optimization | | execom99
we have web page localized to multiple languages targetting different countries.
e.g. we have: domain.com/int/ ... default in english, in search console / Internation targeting / Country with Target users in "Unlisted"
domain.com/uk/ ... english for UK, Target users in "United Kingdom"
domain.com/de/ ... german content for Germany, Target users in "Germany"
... etc. Each branch (country specific) has its own sitemap.xml covering approx 50-60% of all the pages for the specific branch and for most of these pages we have set hreflang (rel="alternate") for most important product pages. There are some issues in the sitemaps we are fixing (e.g. no returning link) so my assumption is that google may not use the sitemap, therefore, hreflang is not in use (it is part of sitemap). For example, one branch can have 150 pages submitted and 30 indexed in Sitemap detail of search console. The problem is, that when for example I search for the product name from Germany (google.de and German's IP through VPN in browser's incognito mode) I'm receiving mixed results. Our product names and technology are rather english, e.g. "cloud protection" and it is also phrase German user would search for. But in SERP he gets results from our domain.com/uk and also from our domain.com/sg which is completely wrong. Is there a way to really prevent it ?
thanks
T0 -
Can I block blexhn30.webmeup.com. Or does it have anything to do with my Moz Local
I am getting alot of hits from blexhn30.webmeup.com.  My web host says it could be a web service. Is this part of moz local activity?  Otherwise I want to block it. Have you seen this before??
Local Website Optimization | | stephenfishman0 -
Hreflang errors "no return tag" sitemap.xml , and local search landing page with wrong Languages
Really need help , our website when search in google(US) will provide global page (keyword:asus/asus zenfone3). and search console also return "no return tags"another wear thing is when use googlebot crawl sitemap.xml googlebot cannot finish the file less than a quarterCan you please advise on what needs to be edited or changed to make sure my implementation is correct and not returning errors?
Local Website Optimization | | June01270 -
For a generic domain say www.purplecola.com where the company is based in India (IP address there too), how should they best optimize for US search traffic?
Let's just say that they want to target the US market. Â Should they add a US based IP address? Would love to hear insight from people who have managed this, experienced this or have expertise. Obviously, a US based physical address would help. Â Thanks!! Chris
Local Website Optimization | | Sundance_Kidd0 -
Is my competitor doing something blackhat? - Cannot only access pages via serps , not from website navigation /search
Hi Mozzers, One of my competitors uses a trick whereby they have a number of different sitemaps containing location specific urls for their most popular categories on their eCommerce store. It's quite obvious that they are trying to rank for keyword <location>and from what I am see,  you cant to any of these pages from their website navigation or search , so it's like these pages are separated from the main site in terms of accessing them but you can access the main website pages/navigation the other way round (i.e if you select one of the pages from finding it in serps) </location> I know that google doesn't really like anything you can't access from the main website but would you class this as blackhat ? / cheating etc ...  They do tend to rank quite well for these  alot of the pages and it hasn't seem to have affected pages on their main website in terms of rankings. I am just wondering , if it's worth us doing similar as google hasn't penalised them by the looks of things.. thanks Pete
Local Website Optimization | | PeteC120 -
Best marketing for a language learning site
Hello everybody, I'm a programmer so I'm not very good at marketing. Any idea what the best way is to promote my language learning site? (http://www.antosch-and-lin.com/) Since Google Penguin the site has taken a big hit and the changes suggested by a SEO expert hasn't helped. Thanks for any suggestions!
Local Website Optimization | | delpino0 -
SEO: .com vs .org vs .travel Domain
Hi there, I am new to MOZ Q&A and  first of all I appreciate all the folks here that share their expertise and make everyone understand 'the WWW' a bit better. My question: I have been developing a 'travel guide' site for a city in the U.S. and now its time to choose the right domain name. I put a strong focus on SEO in terms of coding, site performance as well as content and to round things up I'd like to register the _best _domain name in terms of SEO. Let's suppose the city is Atlanta. I have found the following domain names that are available and I was wondering whether you guys could give me some inside on which domain name would perform best. discoveratlanta.org
Local Website Optimization | | kinimod
atlantaguide.org
atlanta.travel
atlantamag.com Looking at the Google Adwords Keyword tool the term that reaches the highest search queries is obviously "Atlanta" itself. Sites that are already ranking high are atlanta.com and atlanta.gov. So basically I am wondering whether I should aim for a new TLD like atlanta.travel or rather go with a .org domain. I had a look around and it seems that .org domains generally work well for city guides (at least a lot of such sites use .org domains). However, I have also seen a major US city that uses .travel and ranks first. On the other hand in New York, nycgo.com ranks well. Is it safe to assume that from the domain names I mentioned it really doesn't matter which one I use since it wouldn't significantly affect my ranking (good or bad)? Or would you still choose one above the other? What do you generally thing about .travel domain names (especially since they are far more expensive then the rest)? I really appreciate your response to my question! Best,Â
kinimod0
