Campaign landing pages
-
Hi
At our company we decided we wanted to reach out to a more global audience. So we bought a bank of domains for different countries, e.g. ".asia". Some are our company name, others are things like "barcelonaprivatejets.com."
We then put up single page websites for each of these domains, which link to our main .com site.
However, I don't know if this is good for our SEO or bad. I've seen so many different things written but I cannot find a definitive answer.
The text will be different on all the pages, but being only one page, and the "design" being the same, will we get penalized in some way or another?
I've also added links to 2/3 of them in the footer of our main site but now I'm reading that this is bad too - so should I remove these?
If anyone also has any ideas of how better we could use these Country-specific domains I would be welcome to suggestions to that too! I am not an SEO person really, I'm a web developer, so this is all completely different to me.
P.S My name is Michael not Andy.
-
if we just duplicated our homepage, would we not get penalized?
You would not receive a penalty as long as the SEO was handled properly.
If you have a page mysite.com design for the US and another page mysite.com/uk designed for England then search engines should understand clearly that each site is designed for a particular country, even though they are all in English. A few added points:
-
a ".com" site is not thought of as a US site automatically. Google makes that determination based largely in part of where your site is hosted. You can also set your site's target country in Google WMT to avoid any confusion.
-
there is a langauge meta tag which is something like "EN-US" for the United States and "EN-GB" for England. By setting that tag you will help search engines understand your target audience.
-
be certain to localize your page. For example the US says "center" while English people say "centre". There are different monetary units, systems of measurements and phrases associated with each culture as well.
if our host was able to simply put the pages on different servers, would that be sufficient?
No. A different server with the same host would not be sufficient. You need to change your C-block and usually a host will retain the same C-block for all of their servers.
having a page targeted at say, Mexico, loading from a UK server may not be great for page load times.
True, which is where cloud hosting is very helpful. The prices are fairly reasonable and it is an option you may want to explore.
-
-
Hi Michael, Ryan has covered many of the relevant points but there are a couple of things I wanted to pick up.
You mention having pages of different text for each site or region but the same design and wonder if you will get penalised. I can confirm that you won't get penalised for duplicate design but if you had duplicate content you may find that the duplicate pages do not rank as you would expect or may not be indexed.
Many companies will use the same design on different regional sites to maintain consistent branding. If the sites are selling different products or services e.g one is cars and the other is cheese then it may be appropriate to vary the design to make it fit the product better.
Hope this helps.
-
Hi Ryan
That's some really great stuff, thank you. However, surely if we just duplicated our homepage, would we not get penalized? As some of the countries we'll be targeting will also be English speaking. Additionally, all the site content (news items etc) are written in English, so I'm not sure how we would handle that?
Or - could we just have a few headers/description on the target language, but then the rest in English. We're also only an English speaking company so we want to make that clear too so we don't have any awkward emails/calls.
Additionally, thanks for pointing out regarding the host. However, if our host was able to simply put the pages on different servers, would that be sufficient? Or should we absolutely have each page on a different host? I am also thinking that having a page targeted at say, Mexico, loading from a UK server may not be great for page load times.
Thanks again for a fantastic response.
-
Hi Michael.
The practice of purchasing a number of URLs then pointing them back to your main site is much more difficult to pull off then most people realize. In most cases, companies spend their time and resources but receive minimal or no benefit.
The best practice would be to develop your main website with landing pages for each country. If your main site is privatejets.com you can have a privatejets.com/es/ page for Spain, privatejets.com/uk/ for England and so forth. Each landing page should be targeted by country, not language. For example both Spain and Mexico speak spanish, but the dialects are different along with their monetary units and cultures.
In short, if you want to use your existing URLs you need to develop each of them into a solid landing page and then provide one link back to your main site. You need to also work on these pages to get them boosted in search engines so they rank well, and finally they need to be hosted with a different hosting company then your main site. Links between sites with the same C block are not valued.
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
-
What can I put on a 404 page?
When it comes to SEO what can I put on a 404 page? I want to add content that actually makes the page useful so visitors will more likely stay on the website. Most pages just have a big image of 404 and a couple sentences saying what happened. I am wondering if Google would like if there was blog suggestions or navigational functions?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | JoeyGedgaud0 -
Pages mirrored on unknown websites (not just content, all the HTML)... blackhat I've never seen before.
Someone more expert than me could help... I am not a pro, just doing research on a website... Google Search Console shows many backlinks in pages under unknown domains... this pages are mirroring the pages of the linked website... clicking on a link on the mirror page leads to a spam page with link spam... The homepage of these unknown domain appear just fine... looks like that the domain is partially hijacked... WTF?! Have you ever seen something likes this? Can it be an outcome of a previous blackhat activity?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | 2mlab0 -
How can I 100% safe get some of my keywords ranking on second & third page?
Hi, I want to know how can I rank some of my keywords which are in the second and third page on google on page one 100% save, so it will pass all penguin, pandas etc as quick as possible? Kind Regards
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | rodica70 -
Redirecting from https to http - will pass whole link juice to new http website pages?
Hi making permanent 301 redirection from https to http - will pass whole link juice to new http website pages?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Aman_1230 -
Are links on a press page considered "reciprocal linking"?
Hi, We have a press page with a list of links to the articles that have mentioned us (most of which also have a link to our website). Is there any SEO impact with this approach? Does Google consider these reciprocal links? And if so, would making the links on the press page 'nofollow' solve the issue?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | mikekeeper0 -
Shadow Page for Flash Experience
Hello. I am curious to better understand what I've been told are "shadow pages" for Flash experiences. So for example, go here:
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | mozcrush
http://instoresnow.walmart.com/Kraft.aspx#/home View the page as Googlebot and you'll see an HTML page. It is completely different than the Flash page. 1. Is this ok?
2. If I make my shadow page mirror the Flash page, can I put links in it that lead the user to the same places that the Flash experience does?
3. Can I put "Pinterest" Pin-able images in my shadow page?
3. Can a create a shadow page for a video that has the transcript in it? Is this the same as closed captioning? Thanks so much in advance, -GoogleCrush0 -
What do you think of our new category page?
Hey Mozzers! We have come up with a new layout design for a category page and would love to have your opinion on it, specifically from an S_E_O perspective Here is our current page: http://www.builddirect.com/Laminate-Flooring.aspx Our new page (pending approval): http://www.builddirect.com/testing/laminate-flooring/index.html Just to brief you in on the key differences b/w old and new layout: Left text link menu is removed in new layout
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Syed1
New layout looks funny with JS disabled - long vertical line up of products(Perhaps important keywords/ content in new layout appears way down?)
Lot of 'clunk' has been removed (bits of text, links, images, etc) Thanks for checking this out.0 -
How does someone rank page one on google for one domain for over 150 keywords?
A local seo is exclaiming his fantastic track record for a pool company(amonst others) in our local market. Over 150 keywords on page one of google. I checked out a few things using some moz tools and didn't find anything that would suggest that this has come from white hat strategies, tactics or links etc. Interested in how he is doing this and if it is white hat? Thanks, C
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | charlesgrimm0