Website in English targeting different countries - is it worth investing in .com?
-
Hi,
I was wondering...
Let's say there is a company in Norway and It sell tours in Norway. Website is only in english, content stays exactly the same for each country (as the website is for people looking for tours in Norway). The domain is registered with .no ccTLD. Main target is USA, Canada and Uk and couple of other countries in Europe. Would the website benefit from having .com instead of .no?
Thanks!
-
The structure is really going to be up to you. The differences in terms of what helps ranking are so very small today that it is better to choose based on user preference and your own.
For consistency, it would be best to get a .co.uk that is on brand, but that route takes a ton of work over time. My favorite route is a subfolder (/uk) off of a gTLD in most instances.
If your .com.au is already ranking well, expect that to keep happening until the UK subsite has had a chance to strengthen. And make sure your content is different!
-
Hi Kate - here's the results - essentially its suggesting a number of options for URL structure similar to ones I am tossing up between but still unsure which is the best option in short or long term?
Keep in Mind:
- The site content in each country must be different.
- Don't use IP detection for country targeting, but ask your customers to set a cookie.
- Only use people native to the country for outreach in order to minimize cultural differences.
Action Items:
- Pick the URL structure for your international growth and stick with it. Keep in mind that the structure needs to include both translations and geo-targeting. We recommend one of the following options:
- ccTLD and subfolder:
www.domain.co.uk/de/product - ccTLD and parameter:
www.domain.co.uk/product?lang=fr - Subdomain and parameter:
ca.domain.com/product?lang=fr - Subdomain and subfolder:
ca.domain.com/fr/product - Subfolder and parameter:
www.domain.com/ca/product?lang=fr
- ccTLD and subfolder:
- Translate your content. Don't machine translate; while manual translation is costly, it's the best for your brand and user experience.
- Put your HREFLANG in XML sitemaps.
- Use the Language Meta tag for Bing translation targeting.
- Set up Google Webmaster Tools Geo-Targeting.
- Set up Bing Webmaster Tools Geo-Targeting.
-
Did you visit that tool? Can you let me know the result?
-
Hey Kate
Really appreciate you taking the time to respond and help out!
So for a business that is currently operating in USA, Canada, Australia, NZ and opening in UK and Germany soon with further expansion on cards how would you tackle this scenario:
I already have a .com.au that ranks #3 on Page1 of Google for highest traffic keyword
I have a .co.nz that ranks #5 on Pg1 for highest traffic keywordNow looking to do do a .co.uk howver someone has pinched it. Do you suggest going for:
.com/uk/
uk.domainname.com (and keep reusing subdomains
Or a .co.uk domain?Just as an FYI and to throw futher spanner in the works.... my .com.au domain ranks on #2 for Page1 of Google UK for my target keyword as its currently not very competetive
Any feedback is helpful!
-
Thank you!
Have a lovely day
-
Yes, but that is if none of your competitors ever move to a gTLD. It's one of many factors. The right thing to do is bite the bullet and move it now. But I would not expect much of a short term gain.
-
To sum up: preferably go with .com. Itself it wouldn't have a big impact but in long run and with good SEO strategy in place it should actually help with ranking.
On the other hand if i go with .no and do the same work, the effect should be generally the same, right?
-
In theory, all else being equal in terms of relevance, page quality, and ranking page strength (which it never is), yes. Your page would be from a site that is not targeting a specific country, so it should be marginally more relevant. However, as stated above, it won't MAKE you rank better for sure. There are a host of other factors.
And yes, it is lack of knowledge and geo-centricity. You all see .no more often, so that is the go to in the other business owners heads. Lack of knowledge is the primary problem though.
-
So lets have this example of another nordic country: Iceland
If you type "tours in iceland" - 90% pages that will come up will have .is ending. Yet they are still ranking internationally. If we were to launch a .com in Iceland, would it have an advantage over the other ones(assuming that everything else is equal)?
Why they are all using ccTLD? Is it lack of knowledge?
-
Actually, if the page is the most relevant to the users query, any TLD can rank well in Google.com, Google.co.uk, etc.
This is not a matter of user preference. It is a matter of indicating the the search engines what your target market is. A ccTLD indicates that you want to only target one country. That is not the case here. But they can rank with a .no to users in the other countries, it is just harder.
-
You can't geo-target a ccTLD to another country outside of the ccTLD's country, so depending on your business needs, you might need a gTLD like .com. Check out this strategy tool and let me know what result you get. I can recommend further from there. http://outspokenmedia.com/international-seo-strategy/
-
Hm, actually no. It's an interesting dilemma, but I would still prefer the .com.
You are too focused on your product - and not enough on your target audience. They are not from Norway - therefore the .no is wasted.
-
Hi Leszek,
Your target markets/audience will not come to google.no or any other search engine with .no extensions to search. Search engines they will be searching on will be with .com, .ca and .co.uk etc. so it certainly makes sense for you to invest in .com or some other generic domains like .tour etc. if available for your industry.
-
Hi LSlversen,
thank you for your response.
But don't you think that people looking to book tours in Norway expect to do it on the website located in Norway (domain-wise)?
-
Thank you Kate for response.
-
I would definitely use the .com domain.
Honestly, in your situation a .no doesn't make that much sense. The site is about Norway, sure, but your language is English and you're targeting basically every other country than Norway. If you're using a ccTLD, it's fair for a consumer to expect the language on the website to match the cc - which is not the case here.
So a .com would absolutely be the way to go, in my opinion.
-
Hey Kate
What would you suggest for a .com.au domain that is now looking to expand into UK?
Would you suggest uk.domainname.com.au or www.domainname.com.au/uk/ ?
Is there a best practise for this?
-
Yes. Simply put, all else being equal, if you are targeting an multiple country international audience in which your offerings do not change, you should have a general TLD rather than a ccTLD. I can't say that you will start ranking better for sure, but it'll help in the long run.
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
-
We switched the domain from www.blog.domain.com to domain.com/blog.
We switched the domain from www.blog.domain.com to domain.com/blog. This was done with the purpose of gaining backlinks to our main website as well along with to our blog. This set us very low in organic traffic and not to mention, lost the backlinks. For anything, they are being redirected to 301 code. Kindly suggest changes to bring back all the traffic.
Technical SEO | | arun.negi0 -
Can you have 2 different websites on 1 webmaster tools account
Someone set up both our sites on the one webmaster tools account is this the best way to do it or should we have 2 different accounts. We are having problems with our site verification not working and our google shopping feeds not working could this be the cause.
Technical SEO | | CostumeD0 -
SEO impact classifieds website
Hi, I'm part of an organization running a classifieds platform in Spain. (Mercadonline.es) We are hit by Google penalties since a few weeks, possibly caused by numerous errors we are experiencing. Most frequent errors are 404's and duplicate content (titles tags etc) since the nature of our website is dynamic. Many ads change daily, are added or removed, causing Googlebots (and others) to flag us and not being able to see our more unique content. Until what part of our platform should we be indexed? Since we have +34,000 pages indexed (mostly due to internal filter pages) I would need a systematic solution for us to display relevant and unique content, with enough usage of keywords that can bring us back up - we are actually ranked <50 on google for most of our main keywords. It is costing us precious time and money since we can only aquire our visitors (adwords etc) and not being to attract any organically. I can go in more detail with someone who can give me a bit more direction. Your answer is much appreciated! Ivor
Technical SEO | | ivordg0 -
Dynamically serving different HTML on the same URL
Dear Mozers, We are creating a mobile version for a real estate website. We are planning to dynamically serve different HTML on same URL. I'm a little confused about the on-page optimization for the mobile version. The desktop version pages has lot of text content and I strongly believe that made us ranking for various keywords. Now if I'm creating this mobile version do I need to serve all the same exact text content on the mobile version too? I found zillow.com using the same method, their desktop version has lot of text content and mobile version is clean without any text. Does this affect the sites SEO anyway? Please help, share your thoughts. RIyas
Technical SEO | | riyas_0 -
Duplicate page issue in website
i found duplicate pages in my website. seomoz is showing duplicate web pages this is issue or not please tell me?
Technical SEO | | learningall0 -
Cloud Hosting + CDN worth it?
Hi, Never used cloud hosting before. Found a service for $60-70 a month, just want to give it a try on a new website. They also have an additional CDN feature for additional $40 a month. It promises great results as well as google's love. Does cloud hosting+cdn worth it's money? Website will have around 500 visitors a day, but all will be ppc, so there is no need for a server. but reliability is a great issue Thanks, Serge
Technical SEO | | Kotkov0 -
Page Analysis Difference Between Root and Subdomain
I have a site where the canonical version is the subdomain www, with a permanent redirect to ensure this is so. When I do a page analysis from the MozBar for the domain I see that www and *.domain are both displayed, with numbers from *.domain being shown by default in the mozbar. Does MozBar show *.domain numbers by default, and do I correctly understand that the (higher) www numbers displayed in page analysis for www are valid and a result of my canonical strategy?
Technical SEO | | waynekolenchuk0 -
If a redirecting URL has more value than the website should I move it?
Client has two website addresses: Website A is a redirect to Website B. It has one indexed page. But this is the URL being used in collateral. It has the majority of back links, and citations everywhere list Website A as the URL. Website B is where the actual website lives. Google recognizes and indexes the 80+ pages. This website has very few backlinks going to it. This setup does not seem good for SEO. Moreover, the analytics data is completely messed up because Website B shows that the biggest referral source is... you guessed it Website A. I'm thinking going forward, I should: Move all the content from Website B to Website A. Setup Website B to permanently 301 Redirect to Website A. Is that the best course of action?
Technical SEO | | flowsimple0