Geo-Redirect: good idea or not?
-
Hi Mozzers,
The background:
I have this very corporate .com domain which is used worldwide. Next to that, we have another .com domain which is specifically created for the US visitors. Within the organic rankings, we notice that our corporate domain is ranking much better in the US. Many visitors are arriving on this domain. As it is a corporate domain being used worldwide, they get lost.
My questions:
I know there are ways to redirect by location. Would it be smart to automatically redirect US visitors for the corporate domain to the commercial US-specific domain? Is it possible to only redirect US visitors and leave the website as it is for visitors from other countries. Won't this harm the corporate website (organically) worldwide?
If this would be a good idea, any recommended plugins or concrete procedures?
Thank you so much for helping me out!
Sander -
Thank you for your answer Dirk. This looks really solid.
Sander
-
Hi Sander
Redirecting based on ip address can be quite tricky. If you would redirect US visitors based on ip address to the US site rather than the corporate site you risk that you will redirect the main Googlebot (who is crawling your site with a Californian ip) to the US site as well. You could exclude the Google ip's from the redirection - but that would be against the Google Guidelines (check http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.be/2008/06/how-google-defines-ip-delivery.html : "Googlebot should see the same content a typical user from the same IP address would see.")
You could consider to use the ip detection to show a message to US visitors - inviting them to visit the US site rather than the corporate one. This way you give the choice to the user - continue the visit on the corporate site or going to the dedicated US version (which is probably better in terms of usability as well - personally I always find it annoying when a site redirects me somewhere based on my location). For frequent visitors you could store their choice in a cookie & redirect them automatically if the cookie is set for this particular visitor)
Hope this helps,
Dirk
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
-
Redirecting non www site
Hello Ladies and Gentlemen. I 100% agree with the redirecting of the non www domain name. After all we see so many times, especially in MOZ how the two different domains contain different links, different DA and of course different PA. So I have posed the question to our IT company, "How would we go about redirecting our non www domain to the www version?", "Where would we do that?", " we cant do the redirect on our webserver because the website is listed as an IP address, not a domain name, so would we do the redirect somewhere at GoDaddy?" who is currently maintain our DNS record So here is the response from IT: " I would setup a CNAME record in DNS (GoDaddy), such that no matter if you go to the bare domain, or the www, you end up in the same place. As for SEO, having a 301 redirect for your bare domain isn't necessary, because both the bare domain and the www are the same domain. 301 is a redirect for "permanently moved" and is common when you change domain names. Using the bare domain or the www are NOT DIFFERENT DOMAINS, so the 301 would not be accurate, and you'd be telling engines you've moved, when you haven't - which may negatively impact your rank. It sounds to me that IT is NOT recommending the redirect. How can this be? Or are we talking about two different things? Will the redirect cause the melt down as the IT company suggests? Or do they nut understand SEO?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Davenport-Tractor0 -
Primary Domain or Redirect?
We are starting a new travel guide for a resort town. I have bought an expired domain with decent related links and PR (which seems to have survived the transfer (4 months ago). Beofre we launch the new site I am trying to decide if we should use this expired domain as the primary URL for the new site or just do a permanent redirect and buy a new domain that better matches the theme of the site. I am obviously concerned with starting from scatch with a new domain. I am confident we can build some good rellevant links in a short time but this space is very competetive. Any input would be greatly appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Locals0 -
301 Redirect To Another 301 Redirect
Hi, We have a client with an old domain that they want to redirect to their primary domain. They also have a few older domains pointing to the old domain. Do you recommend leaving them as redirects that point to the old domain? This will create a redirect to a redirect situation. Or, is it better to go ahead and redirect those older domains to the primary one's, removing one layer of redirect? Thank you! Jessie
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JessieT0 -
Canonical tags required when redirecting?
Hello, My client bought a new domain and he wants it to be the main domain of his company. His current domain though has been online for 10 years and ranks pretty well on a few keywords. I feel it is necessary to redirect the old domain to the new one to take advantage of its ranking and avoid any broken links. The sites are exactly the same. Same sections and same content. Is it necessary to place canonical tags on one of the sites to avoid duplicate content/sites? Any thoughts? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Eblan0 -
Redirection strategy for mobile site
Hello folks! I am just about to launch a mobile specific version of our website. We were not able to make the main site responsive so have decided to make a seperate copy on an m dot subdomain. I have kept the url structure identical between both sites and added a canonical url on the mobile pages pointing to the desktop site. I will detect and redirect all mobile devices and googlebot mobile crawler to the m dot site. The questions i have are as follows... Is that the best approach if you use a mobile specific site on a seperate subdomain? What type of redirects should i use to send mobile users (and googlebot mobile) to the mobile site? My mobile site does not have all the pages the desktop site has. What happens if i redirect a mobile user from a page on the desktop site to a page on the mobile site that does not exist? (will give 404 currently). I guess i could maintain a list of valid mobile urls but this would be a pain (and a bit of an overhead) Your help is most appreciated Regards
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RobertHill0 -
Multiple 301 Redirects for the Same Page
Hi Mozzers, What happens if I have a trail of 301 redirects for the same page? For example,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Travis-W
SiteA.com/10 --> SiteA.com/11 --> SiteA.com/13 --> SiteA.com/14 I know I lose a little bit of link juice by 301 redirecting.
The question is, would the link juice look like this for the example above? 100% --> 90% --> 81% -->72.9%
Or just 100% -----------------------------------------> 90% Does this link juice refer to juice from inbound links or links between internal pages on my site? Thanks!0 -
301 Redirect pages with .aspx extension
I want 301 redirect all a website's subpages with a .aspx extension to a page without the .aspx etension. Example: I want to 301 redirect www.website.com/services.aspx to www.website.com/services Right now if you do not include .aspx on the end of every URL it gives a 404 error. I have used the web.config file to 301 redirect non-www to www and /default.aspx to /. I am not extremely familiar with IIS 7.0 or web.config, so any help would be great. Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | VentaMarketing0 -
Geo-specific SERP Rank Tracker that is good for hyper local results?
We've had a lot of success using Raven Tools, as well as some other tools for SERP Rankings for our clients; however, most only go down to the country level. We're researching into some good hyper local trackers (down to the city/zip level). Does anyone have any suggestions?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BlastAM0