Large Global Site Structure
-
Hi, I have a question about the advised structure for a website that I'm currently building. It's a large international brand with it's main office in the UK. The main website is the .com but there is a growing international franchisee network.
I've built the .com site on Wordpress but I'm not sure if I the best way forward would be to create each international website on a separate hosted site or just include it in the .com Wordpress structure using the The WordPress Multilingual Plugin.
So to sum up... should I build the entire global network on one domain and then use WPML plugin or should I build separate websites for each International franchisee?
Hope some one can educate me on the best route to take.
Thanks Moz Community
-
Great thanks for the responses Kate. I'll digest what you have sent me and decide there. Thanks again for the help, it's much appreciated
Alex
-
My deepest apologies. I don't know how I missed your response.
If each franchisee has their own section of the site that they can keep updated, then I would go down the route of geo-targeting. I doubt you would use multiple translations within any one specific section of the site per franchisee. Let me know if you think that would be needed. And what I mean specifically is a new franchisee in UAE wants their part of the site, their content, in Arabic and English. I don't even know if that would be an ask someday for those specific languages, so please forgive my ignorance, but I hope you get the idea. If that will not ever be needed, stick with just geo-targeting.
There are two options from here in terms of structure.
1 - Based on current UK setup - all on .com
You'd need to change URLs for current providers to get on a new setup that will allow geo-targeting. This might cause temporary organic traffic drops, but best in the long run in my opinion. The URL structure would be:
domain.com/uk/belfast
domain.com/uae/dubaiNow, this is assuming the same structure of franchisees and one per city. You would geo-target the first subfolder and leave the content to the franchisees. If needed, general content not specific to a city or location would be at the country level (first subfolder) and that is the geo-targeted part.
2 - Only one set of content for UAE - Change URLs
If you are not following the same UK structure and only want one set of content for the UAE and want to use the same domain, you need to change URLs like the above, but not add cities to the UAE section.
URL Examples:
domain.com/uk/belfast
domain.com/uae/3 - Based on current UK setup - ccTLDs
Another option is to have a different site for each country. Go for the ccTLD in each country. Use the .com to geo-target to the UK if that is all that is targeted with that content. This is a heavier investment as each site would need its own dedicated marketing plan that includes outreach and link building.
4 - Only one set of content for UAE - UK on www subdomain
If you are not going to do the franchisee system per city like in the UK, it gets tricky. You can't, right now, geo-target by city. So to geo-target the current structure to the UK, you'd need to geo-target at least the subdomain www, if you use that. If not, see the option below. You could technically geo-target www.domain.com to the UK and uae.domain.com to the UAE. This allows you to use the same root domain, but many SEOs have different theories on how subdomains are treated in regards to domain authority pass down to subdomains that are not the root domain. This is an option, but I don't recommend it.
URL examples
www.domain.com/belfast
uae.domain.com5 - Only one set of content for UAE - UK on root subdomain
If you are using the whole domain (domain.com) for the UK, you would need to geo-target the whole root domain to the UK to get the geo-targeting set up. That would mess with the UAE content being on that domain. You would need to purchase a ccTLD then. I doubt this is the route you want to take, but it's an option.
This is a lot but i hope you can see how things change based on your needs now and in the future. Sorry there isn't a direct answer, but it changes in every situation. Let me know if I can help with more clarification!
-
Any update on this?
-
Hi Kate, many thanks for sharing that with me. I have completed the questions. I'm still a tad unsure of which direction to go in. The company is selling artificial grass and offers maybe 8 different grass products. The UK network is made up of about 30 cities/areas and each franchisee has their own web page within the main .com site. - so companyname.com/glasgow or companyname.com/belfast
I'm not sure if it's best to keep the international network on the same Wordpress site iecompanyname.com/ea/en for United Arab Emirates network in English or create a separate Wordpress website, hosted from a separate folder on the .com server and repeat site structure but change the content for the UAE etc..
Does that make sense? If you have any advice that would be great. By the way, your questions advise that I 'Take the Integrated Approach'
Many thanks
Alex
-
Hi! I built a tool just for this question. Can you go to the link below, answer the questions and let me know what your result is?
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
-
How to find out that none of the images on my site violates copyrights? Is there any tool that can do this without having to check manually image by image?
We plan to add several thousand images to our site and we outsourced the image search to some freelancers who had instructions to just use royalty free pictures. Is there any easy and quick way to check that in fact none of these images violates copyrights without having to check image by image? In case there are violations we are unaware of, do you think we need to be concerned about a risk of receiving Takedown Notices (DMCA) before owner giving us notification for giving us opportunity to remove the photo?
Web Design | | lcourse1 -
Above the Fold Content - Use of large images
Hi All, Our designers have come to the SEO team to ask if have a large image across the top of the page taking up a large majority of the above the fold real estate will impact our SEO. Our initial thoughts are no as long as we have an optimised H1 visibal to the user landing there which informs them what the page is about. Any thoughts would be appreciated.
Web Design | | J_Sinclair1 -
Best way to indicate multiple Lang/Locales for a site in the sitemap
So here is a question that may be obvious but wondering if there is some nuance here that I may be missing. Question: Consider an ecommerce site that has multiple sites around the world but are all variations of the same thing just in different languages. Now lets say some of these exist on just a normal .com page while others exist on different ccTLD's. When you build out the XML Sitemap for these sites, especially the ones on the other ccTLD's, we want to ensure that using <loc>http://www.example.co.uk/en_GB/"</loc> <xhtml:link<br>rel="alternate"
Web Design | | DRSearchEngOpt
hreflang="en-AU"
href="http://www.example.com.AU/en_AU/"
/>
<xhtml:link<br>rel="alternate"
hreflang="en-NZ"
href="http://www.example.co.NZ/en_NZ/"
/> Would be the correct way of doing this. I know I have to change this for each different ccTLD but it just looks weird when you start putting about 10-15 different language locale variations as alternate links. I guess I am just looking for a bit of re-affirmation I am doing this right.</xhtml:link<br></xhtml:link<br> Thanks!0 -
Many errors from previous ecommerce site. Domain is now just a localized wordpress site.
Many errors from previous ecommerce site. Do I need to redirect every single page that no longer exists at this domain? loveyourcabinets.com used to be loveyourkitchenandbath.com but we have since changed course. We want loveyourkitchenandbath.com to be our local site on Long Island and NYC. Loveyourcabinets.com will be an ecommerce project that I'll be revamping in the coming months. I think Moz as well as Google still has all of the old ecommerce pages indexed. And of course, Moz is shooting me a bunch of error all regarding pages from the ecommerce site that used to be on loveyourkitchenandbath.com. Any thoughts? Commentary? Thx
Web Design | | loveyourkitchen0 -
For a real estate website, is a different mobile site warranted vs a responsive site?
I researched the major real estate websites: Zillow, Trulia, Remax, Keller Williams, Century 21, etc. They all have a separate mobile site and not a responsive one. The client wants it to be easy to search for properties from a smartphone. Is it possible to get a responsive version of a real estate website on a smartphone?
Web Design | | MassMedia0 -
Internal linking for small site
I have a site with 13 pages, 6 are product pages, 5 are free tips pages (the other 2 are the home page and contact form). Currently I have the navbar at top of site with a "products" dropdown menu for the 6 product pages and a "Tips" dropdown menu for the 5 tip pages. All categories except the contact page are at the bottom as breadcrumbs, the homepage is "home" and the rest are relevant user friendly keyword anchor text. So I have 2 more pages to ad to "Tips" and am wondering whether to have a new 2nd level tips page that links to a 3rd level of 7 different tips pages, or keep it shallow as it is, with only 2 levels from the homepage to the other (now 13) pages, with a potential of 22 pages in the foreseable few years? (and some graphics work to make it user friendly like how Zappo's has categories to the side on each of its drop down navbar menu's and non-link text categories for its bottom of page breadcrumb links) Can those aforementioned pages linking to each other in the footer dilute link equity? (I think that's one of the primary reasons I'm curious). What do you think of this: http://www.dbswebsite.com/blog/2012/08/08/internal-linking-101-5-best-practices/ (I guess I should no follow my contact page), could it be better to have a 2nd level page for "Tips" to get more equity to that page rather than across all 7 tips pages? I have read around about this on here (hence how I found out about Zappo's) and elsewhere and wanted ask to make sure.
Web Design | | Zoolander0 -
Is it better to redirect a url or set up a landing page for a new site?
Hi, One of our clients has got a new website but is still getting quite a lot of traffic to her old site which has a page authority of 30 on the home page and has about 20 external backlinks. It's on a different hosting package so a different C block but I was wondering if anyone could advise if it would be better to simply redirect this page to the new site or set up a landing page on this domain simply saying "Site has moved, you can now find us here..." sort of idea. Any advice would be much appreciated Thanks
Web Design | | Will_Craig0 -
Site redesign and links?
I have a real estate website. On my sidebar I have about 16 links to pages on various neighborhoods. I templated my site using dream weaver so the same sidebar and links are on every page. I'm thinking of redesigning the sidebar and having one link that will take visitors to a page where all the neighborhood links will be and then from there visitors can choose whichever link to go to a specific neighborhood info page. I am doing this to clear space on my side bar for other content and links. What impact would this have on my home page? The website is bronxpad.com if anyone wants to check it out and provide feedback.
Web Design | | bronxpad0