Choosing a domain name in 2016
-
Hello Everyone
I am not new to SEO but new to the forum !
I am in the travel business selling high end bicycle trips to the US market. I am about to expand my business and sell cheaper bicycle trips to the European market.
-
My company has a got a name in the industry as well as some amazing reviews on google + and other forums. My 1 st question, would you use a totally different domain name see that is a different market and different prices or would you use the same domain name ? If you were to use the same domain would you do fr.mydomain.com or www.mydomain.com/fr.
-
In terms of web domain, is exact match domain still powerful ? My current domain name is not an exact match domain and surfing the web, I feel like it still gives you a major advantage in 2016 ?
-
If I choose an exact match domain, I noticed I can get www.mydomain.travel or www.mydomain.bike or get a domain for the country I am targeting www.mydomain.co.uk. Do you have advice on which domain is easier to rank ? or doesn't it change anything ?
-
-
it does make sense: my point is that bycicletrip.com/france is a good Landing Page url.
-
It does not make sense the way you are telling him how to do it.
or
just use country codes DO NOT use /french - /english - / spanish
It would make sense to use subdomains rather than subfolders.
Good luck!
-
Sure would help also. I personally like the word in the URL.
-
It's a small ranking factor, but if you've got an established domain then I would say your established domain is more valuable.
-
but mydomain.com/fr with the correct code would do that?
-
Hi Thomas, to rank on bicycle trip france maybe?
-
Thank your your replies but isn't a exact match domain more powerful than a domain with links and history ?
-
Why mydomain.com/france? This just makes the url much longer and the two letter country codes are recognised by most people?
-
"My company has a got a name in the industry as well as some amazing reviews on google + and other forums. "
This alone answers 2 and 3. You have a brand and that's more powerful than an exact match domain, it differentiates you from your competitors.
As for "If you were to use the same domain would you do fr.mydomain.com or www.mydomain.com/fr." I would choose www.mydomain.com/fr but that's just personal preference.
-
Hi!
1: i would stay with your .com domain, .eu is terrible in regards to ranking. .com ranks well in Europe and saves a lot off time as Europe contains of a lot of different countries to target; .fr .it .de. .co.uk etc... Next i would go for www.mydomain.com/france in stead of www.mydomain.com/fr as this already helps SEO wise and you have the domain authority of your current domain
2. see 1
3. see 1
Good luck!
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
-
Important pages are being 302 redirected, then 301 redirected to support language versions. Is this affecting negatively the linking juice distribution of our domain?
Hi mozzers, Prior to my arrival, in order to support and better serve the international locations and offering multiple language versions of the same content the company decided to restructure its URLs focused on locale urls. We went from
International SEO | | Ty1986
https://example.com/subfolder to https://example.com/us/en-us/new-subfolder (US)
https://example.com/ca/en-us/new-subfolder (CAN)
https://example.com/ca/fr-ca/new-subfolder (CAN)
https://example.com/de/en-us/new-subfolder (Ger)
https://example.com/de/de-de/new-subfolder (Ger) This had implications on redirecting old URLs to new ones. All important URLs such as https://example.com/subfolder were
302 redirected to https://example.com/us/en-us/subfolder and then 301 redirected to the final URL. According to the devs: If you change the translation to the page or locale, then a 302 needs to happen so you see the same version of the page in German or French, then a 301 redirect happens from the legacy URL to the new version. If the 302 redirect was skipped, then you would only be able to one version/language of that page.
For instance:
http://example.com/subfolder/state/city --> 301 redirect to {LEGACY URL]
https://example.com/subfolder/state/city --> 302 redirect to
https://example.com/en-us/subfolder/state/city --> 301 redirect to
https://example.com/us/en-us/new-subfolder/city-state [NEW URL] I am wondering if these 302s are hurting our link juice distribution or that is completely fine since they all end up as a 301 redirect? Thanks.1 -
/en-us/ Outranking Root Domain and other hreflang errors
I'm working with a new site that has a few regional sites in subdirectories /en-us/, /en-au/, etc and just noticed that some of our interior pages (ourdomain.com/en-us/interior-page1/ ) are outranking the equivalent ourdomain.com/interior-page1. This only occurs in some SERPS while others correctly display the non-regional result. I was told we have hreflang tags implemented correctly in the meta information of each of our pages but have yet to research deeply. Should we even have a /en-us/ version when our root domain is the default version, in english, and targeted to US primarily? Any help would be appreciated as I am a little lost. Cheers, Andrew
International SEO | | AndyMitty0 -
Link juice on sub domains
We have got all our clients linking to our website blackpen.tv Based on a user's location they will be redirected to a sub domain. So for example someone in France clicking on a link blackpen.tv would be redirected to paris.blackpen.tv or blackpen.tv/paris Would this affect the amount of link juice passed down?
International SEO | | roberthseo0 -
Shall I automatically redirect international visitors from www.domain.com to e.g. www.domain.com/es? What is best SEO practice?
We have chosen the one domain approach with our international site having different language versions in subdirectory of main domain:
International SEO | | lcourse
www.domain.com/es
www.domain.com/it
etc. What is SEO-wise best practice for implementing international index pages. I see following options: entering www.domain.com will display without redirection the index page in language of user (e.g based on IP or browser) in www.domain.com
Example: www.booking.com entering www.domain.com will always show English index page.
Additionally one may display a message in the header if IP from other country with link to other language version.
Example: www.apple.com entering www.domain.com will always redirect automatically to country specific subdirectory based on IP
Example: www.samsung.com Any thoughts/suggestions on what may be best solution from a SEO perspective? For a user I believe options 1) & 3) are preferable.0 -
.cn domain vs. .com/cn/ folder structure
Hey Moz Community, I'd love to hear your response based on some real world data around leveraging a .cn domain vs. porting the site over to a sub-folder structure (ie. com/cn/ structure). Currently, the site lives on a .cn and is fully translated/localized in simplified chinese - which is the ideal state. As part of a website redesign + cost analysis there is a discussion around moving all global content under a sub-folder structure using href lang, GWT combination to define country content. My question is around China specifically - does a .cn have a signficant impact on ranking? I've read conflicing reports. Secondly, how do Chinese users react to a non-.cn domain? I would imaging the click-through rate performance from SERPs is much lower. Thoughts? Comments?
International SEO | | JonClark150 -
Is it possible to geotag language folders on a .co.uk domain
Hi all, I'm going around in circles a little on this one, so I thought that I'd as as I haven't found anyone asking quite the same thing (sorry if someone has). I have a .co.uk site and would like to set up some different language variations. I've been looking at the subfolder route for now (budget is limited). Can I set a geotag in webmaster tools on a .co.uk site or does it need to be a domain that Google considers country neutral? Many thanks for any suggestions!
International SEO | | ceecee0 -
How to Best Manage Multiple Domains?
Hi,
International SEO | | thealika
I am new here and this is my first question.
(so please excuse if my etiquette slightly off) I have just taken over the SEO work for a website in South Africa (.co.za) it is for an Attorney of immigration law, and naturally I would love to make it into a star on google. I have about 15 extra keyword domains at my disposal, 5 of them are parked and the rest are not doing anything at the moment. so my question is: what should I do with them to get the best SEO results for their keyword names? I was thinking to make a WordPress Multi Site, un-park the domains and create a separate site for each domain. Create a visually similar front page, but all the links head back over to the main site. Then work on optimising the SEO for each domain. (lengthy work but it's not too hard to rank in google.co.za) what do you think? I also heard that parking domains is a bad Idea, because google sees it as duplicate content; is that so? website:
www.migrationlawyers.co.za Parked domains:
MigrationLawyers.co.za
MigrationLawyer.co.za
MigrationLawyers.de
ImmigrationLaw.co.za
EmigrationLaw.co.za Keyword domains: Migration-Attorney.com
Migration-Lawyers.com
MigrationCounsel.co.za
ApplyForPermanentResidencesSouthAfrica.com
AvoidDeportationSouthAfrica.co.za
AvoidDeportationSouthAfrica.com
RetirementVisaSouthAfrica.com
SouthAfricanCitizenship.co.za
SouthAfricanPermits.co.za
StudyPermitSouthAfrica.co.za Thanks a lot,
Nikita0 -
How long does it take for google to realize there is a new language sub domain?
I have a global client who just launched new sub domains of their site in new languages (Spanish, Portuguese, Russian and Japanese). Example: es.client.com pt.client.com ru.amdocs.com ja.amdocs.com How long does it take for Google to recognize these new subdomains? Would submitting an XML sitemap be helpful? If so how long can we see them pick up the site? What is the best way to check that your new subdomains are showing in each countries SERPs? Thanks for your help!
International SEO | | Scratch_MM0