International SEO question domain.com vs domain.com/us/ , domain.com/uk etc.

[jeremycabral]

Hi Mozzers,

I am expanding a website internationally. I own the .com for the domain. I need to accommodate multiple countries and I'm not sure if I should build a folder for /us/ for United States or just have the root domain .com

OPTION 1:
domain.com/page-url -- United States
domain.com/de/page-url -- Denmark
domain.com/jp/page-url -- Japan

OPTION 2:
domain.com/us/page-url -- United States
domain.com/de/page-url -- Denmark
domain.com/jp/page-url -- Japan

My concern with option 2 is there will be some dilution and we wouldn't get the full benefit of inbound links compared to Option 1 as we would have geo ip redirection in place to redirect users etc. to the relative sub-folder.

Which option is better from an SEO perspective?

Cheers,

Jeremy

[jeremycabral]

Thank you for all of your responses - they have given me a lot of very specific help and a clear direction to move forward!

[gfiorelli1]

The use of subfolder or ccTlds (or subdomain) should not be decided because of SEO, but because of business reasons.

For instance, if Jeremy does not have already a consistent organic traffic from Denmark, maybe is better starting with a subfolder, which inherits some of the overall domain authority via internal linking, hence can obtain a first boost in organic visibility.

Once the business started having recognition and consistent and continuous traffic, Jeremy will be able to consider to migrate to a ccTld solution (if really needed).

On the contrary, let's say that Jeremy's company has physical offices in Copenhagen and it is an already known brand. Then in that case it would surely better to go for the ccTld way.

[gfiorelli1]

I do not agree.

The root is for your main market, and the subfolders for your international ones. It is so since the dawn of international SEO and it always worked well.

In GWT (Search Console), Jeremy should have to geotarget the root domain to USA (or maintain it not geo-targeted, so to target all markets but Danish and Japanese), and geotarget the dk and jp subfolders to Denmark and Japan.

[gfiorelli1]

Hi Jeremy,

option 1 is surely better, because you are quitting a level (or click).

Regarding redirecting users, you can maintain the redirection via GeoIP even if you put the USA "site" under the root and not in a US subfolder.

Said that, I strongly suggest you to order the redirection just when a user come for the first time on your site, so:

1. To give users the freedom to visit also the others versions, which is less dumb then you may believe. For me, living in Europe, is a real nightmare when I cannot visit the "Spanish" version of a site just because I am travelling and I am visiting it from another targeted country;
2. To not always redirect googlebot to the USA version because of its American IP. Even if Googlebot started crawling from countries other than the USA, from the logs' analysis I still see how the highest percentages of visits Googlebot does are from Mountain View.

Finally, correct a mistake you are doing in your URLs:

DE is for Germany (DE = Deutschland) and not Denmark. The name of the Danish subfolder should be DK.

I warn you about this because this mistake would probably end being replicated in the hreflang implementation, with obvious geotargeting issues.

[PatrickDelehanty]

Hi there

If you are trying to COUNTRY target, you should go for a ccTLD, but if you are going after a LANGUAGE target, you should do a subdirectory. You can learn more here.

I would also make sure you read the following resources:
International SEO
Country Targeting (Google & Bing)
Language Targeting (Google & Bing)

All of the above resources will help you have more success in your international efforts.

Hope this helps! Good luck!

[ClaytonJ]

Apologies I did misunderstand - Option 2 - I find it is more customer friendly as well.

[Andy.Drinkwater]

Hi Jeremy,

I think that John has misunderstood the question a little as you aren't talking about different domains, just what to do with the US / Home.

I would suggest you take option 2. because you are targeting internationally from a .com, it is important to be able to differentiate where you are as soon as you hit the site. Each sub-folder is a country.

And remember to use HREFLANG to help identify language / country.

-Andy

[jeremycabral]

Hi John

Thanks for the quick reply! I'm actually talking about having the same domain name for both situations, just not sure if I should have brand.com with the domain root targeted to US traffic or brand.com/us/ with US targeted to US traffic

cheers,
Jeremy

[ClaytonJ]

You will get caveated answers.  But for me Option 1 - by a long way.

Many articles on it, but you need to focus all resources on one domain - that gets optimum results.  Two domains = twice as much work as one, three domains = 3 times.

Look at cottonon.com - if you want to monitor a very successful version.