Setting up a website targeted for the US
-
Hi,
As an English company we have a co.uk domain with .com domain pointing to this. We are now looking to launch a separate (new) website targeting the American market and I have been asked to do the following:
If an American or Canadian IP address visits the .com website it automatically goes to our newly created website i.e. website 2.
If a non-American or non-Canadian IP address goes to .com it automatically goes to the original website i.e. website 1.
If a user is on website 1 and clicks an American flag it takes the website user to website 2.
If a user is on website 2 and clicks on the UK flag it takes the website user to website 1.
Can anyone advise the best way to go about doing this as I feel that this could effect our search rankings. I am concerned how the search engines will penalize website 2 (original site) which has good rankings.
Thanks in advance.
-
First of all, let me see if I understood well the situation...
You are going to have to websites:
- .co.uk targeting Great Britain
- .com targeting USA and CA
And then you want to use IP detection for redirecting users to the "correct" website depending on their location...
Honestly, I don't like this tecnique...
- in the 90% of the cases googlebot comes from an USA IP... if you redirect via IP detection you are always redirecting googlebot to the USA/CA website, substantially not letting it to enter and crawl the UK one.
- as a user who travels a lot, I hate when a website always redirects me to the version it consider I am interested about just because of the IP address. For instance, if I am in Great Britain for travel and I want to visit the USA version of your site because I most interested in it (eg: because of currencies, or because my account is for the USA site), I would rant like a troll if you were obliging me to use the GB version.
I always consider that the best option is offering the users (and the bots) to visit the website version they want but using this "tactic": if you detect (from IP or Browser agent) that somehow located in the USA/CA entered in the UK site, you can present an alert saying >>> "We saw you're visiting us from the USA/CA. Maybe you are more interested in visiting our USA website [link to your .com version]"
This is what Amazon does.
As an alternative, use redirection based on user browser detection and not IP. That is safer in regards to googlebot.
Said that, the redirection should be automatic just the first time someone enters in your site, and not always present. With this I mean that if someone from USA enters in your .co.uk site, he will be redirected to the .com, but once landed in the .com site, he will be eventually able to click on the link pointing to the .co.uk and not being redirected again the to american version.
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
-
International SEO - UK & US
Hi! I'm currently working with a brand that is well established in the UK and is looking to expand it's reach in US. The UK site has a solid link profile and I think that creating a sub-folder for the US site is by far the best solution. My only concern is that the UK site uses a .co.uk domain. Would it therefore be counter-productive to use a subfolder that looks like this: www.example.co.uk/us In an ideal world I would advise the brand to acquire a location neutral domain (e.g. www.example.com) however the [brandname].com isn't available and options are otherwise very limited! Steps would be taken to ensure all other technical bases are covered (hreflang tags etc) but I'm struggling to find any further insight on this issue. Any feedback from the community would be greatly appreciated! Many thanks, Harrison
International SEO | | harrycox0 -
Using .ag for agriculture site with global targeting
Would using .ag with a short punchy domain like farm.ag, that was targeting a global audience be a wise decision? Versus say an 11 character descriptive ".com". Is there any benefit to using a ".ag" if the site is for agriculture? Note, this is a heavy content site so SEO important, with plans to serve different languages later.
International SEO | | mag7770 -
How To Proceed With Int'l Language Targeting if Subfolders Not An Option?
I’m currently working with my team to sort out the best way to build out the international versions of our website. Any advice on how to move forward is greatly appreciated! Current Setup: Subdirectories to target languages - i.e. domain.com/es/. We chose this because… We are targeting languages not countries Our product offering does not change from country to country Translated site content is almost identical to the english version Current Problem: Our site is built on WordPress and our database can’t handle the build out of 4 more international versions of the site. The database is slowing down and our site speed is being affected for multiple reasons (WordPress multilingual plugin being one of them). **What to do next? **My developers have said that we cannot continue with our current subdirectory structure due to the technical infrastructure issues I’ve mentioned above (as well as others I’m yet to get full details on). Now I’m left with a decision: Change to a subdomain structure Change to a ccTLD structure Is there an option 3? From what I’ve read it does not make sense to build out language targeted sites on a ccTLD structure because that limits the ability for people outside of the targeted country to find the content organically. I.e. a website at www.domain.es is targeted to searchers in Spain so someone in Columbia is less likely to find that content through the engines. Is this correct? If so, how much can it hurt organic discovery? What’s the optimal setup to move forward with in this case? Thanks!
International SEO | | UnbounceVan0 -
International SEO - Mixing country targeting and language targeting in GWT.
Hi all! I want to start with International SEO process for my ecommerce. We sell worldwide with a .com domain, although the business is mainly focused in Spain. We maintain three languages, spanish, english and french with a non suitable structure. Now, after read a lot about it, I'm considering to use subdirectories for each language, /es/, /en/ and /fr/. And heres it's my first doubt: Could I avoid /es/ from spanish language as it's the default one? I've understood from recents Q&A that it's not needed although more user friendly. I'm trying to avoid tons of 301 from old urls for my main language. Anyway I want to know the best approach regardless complexity. My second doubt is about country targeting. After some research, I consider that it'd be interesting target country for /fr/ subdomain but language for /en/. Do you see any problem mixing both strategies? I know I also need to add the hreflang tag to guide googlebot. But I prefer to clarify these points first. Thanks a lot! Best regards.
International SEO | | footd1 -
Website Domains, Geographical targeting and Duplicate Content
My colleagues in Holland have 2 websites. I've copied and pasted their question - my comments are at the bottom "www.ancoferwaldram.nl with NL, EN and FR language www.ancoferwaldram.com with only EN language The EN versions Google sees as “duplicate content” so we have to get rid of that. I think we better use 1 website: www.ancoferwaldram.com with NL, EN, FR and maybe other languages and deactivate www.ancoferwaldram.nl Or keep the www.ancoferwaldram.nl with only the NL language? Or keep the www.ancoferwaldram.nl with direct links to www.ancoferwaldram.com and no content?" The focus is to get the site to rank in Non-eu countries for export. So given the .nl has higher DA (though only about 15) would it be better to have seperate .fr, .be, .com sites for specific languages and geo targeting. Or would it be better to keep everything on the same site? If so which domain? i assume that the duplicate content can be resolved by stating which is the canonical version, once the domain strategy is resolved welcome any thoughts here. 🙂
International SEO | | Zippy-Bungle0 -
Webmaster tools International Targeting
Hello there, If we have country specific websites such as: usa.domain.com (For the US) uk.domain.com (For the UK) fr.domain.com (For France) Should each of the above sub-domains be set up separately in webmaster tools? With "target users in" for each of the specific countries? Thanks
International SEO | | roberthseo0 -
SEO for .com vs. .com.au websites
I have a new client from Australia who has a website on a .com.au domain. He has the same domain name registered for .com. Example: exampledomain.com.au, and exampledomain.com He started with the .com.au site for a product he offers in Australia. He's bringing the same product to the U.S. (it's a medical device product) and wants us to build a site for it and point to the .com. Right now, he has what appears is the same site showing on the .com as on the .com.au. So both domains are pointing to the same host, but there are separate sections or directories within the hosting account for each website - and the content is exactly the same. Would this be viewed as duplicate content by Google? What's the best way to structure or build the new site on the .com to get the best SEO in the USA, maintain the .au version and not have the websites compete or be viewed as having duplicate content? Thanks, Greg
International SEO | | gregelwell0 -
Internationally targetted subdomains and Duplicate content
A client has a site they'd like to translated into French, not for the french market but for french speaking countries. My research tells me the best way to implement this for this particular client is to create subfolders for each country. For ease of implementation I’ve decided against ccTLD’s and Sub Domains. So for example… I'll create www.website.com/mr/ for Mauritania and in GWT set this to target Mauritania. Excellent so far. But then I need to build another sub folder for Morocco. I'll then create www.website.com/ma/ for Morocco and in GWT set this to target Morocco. Now the content on these two sub folders will be exactly the same and I’m thinking about doing this for all French speaking African countries. It would be nice to use www.website.com/fr/ but in GWT you can only set one Target country. Duplicate content issues arise and my fear of perturbing the almighty Google becomes a possibility. My research indicates that I should simply canonical back to the page I want indexed. But I want them both to be indexed surely!? I therefore decided to share my situation with my fellow SEO’s to see if I’m being stupid or missing something simple both a distinct possibility!
International SEO | | eazytiger0