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
-
Hreflang in country specific XML Sitemaps?
Hello! I'm rolling out hreflang tags in my client's "main" XML Sitemap. My question is: do we need to implement these tags in the country level XML Sitemaps also? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | SimpleSearch1 -
New website on new url?
We have a new website on a new url (been up for around 2 years now) and our old website is slowly fading in the background, we are now at the point where the money is still ok but we are having issues running both side by side, we have a calculator on each page and are thinking about removing this and adding a box with please order from our new site here (with url of similar page). Now the issue is we don't want to link for SEO purposes and google hammer us (thinking of no - following these) and we also have a penalty we got in 2012 on the site but we did get out of this, would this cause any issue to the new site?
Technical SEO | | BobAnderson1 -
Is it worth disvowing scrappers' links?
Hello guys, Do you think it is worth disvowing scrappers' links on otherwise good linking profile. Sites like Webmaster tools shows that sites like: mrwhatis.net, askives.com prlog.ru bigbozz.com answerparty.com wordexplorer.com scrape our content and generated from 10 to 90 links to our pages. Is removing these links waste of my time? Thanks
Technical SEO | | SirMax0 -
301 redirect + new website copy
Hi There, We are currently redeveloping our website and we're rewriting and optimising our many of our service pages. I think I may already know the answer but should we apply 301 redirects from our old services pages to the new versions? The content subject matter will be the same on the new versions, they will just be completely reworded. I would be interested to hear your views. Thanks, Stu
Technical SEO | | Stuart260 -
How to target long tail keywords
Apologies if this is already answered, I'm a newbie. I'm looking to determine how to target long tail keywords. I'm supporting a site that is new and with very small budgets in the very competitive life insurance market. If we devise a list of long tail keywords, should we then add those to the page titles, meta descriptions etc rather than the short tail ones that the site will never rank for anyway?
Technical SEO | | aoifep0 -
Links to Website Author
I'm a website developer, and in the past I have usually added a tiny backlink to the footer of my clients' websites like this: Website Design by MyCompanyName I understand that Google sees this as a low-quality backlink. However, I was wondering if such links can hurt my rankings. Does Penguin sees these links as spam? If so, should I add a rel="nofollow" to the links? Is there anything else I should change? I do not want to remove these links completely because they are good for marketing my business. I just want to minimize any negative SEO impact of the links. I appreciate your input. Thanks.
Technical SEO | | SiteWizard_LLC0 -
Mobile Google Not Indexing Mobile Website
Google currently does not index our mobile website. It has the WWW website in it's index. When a user from a mobile phone clicks on a mobile search result for WWW we redirect them to our mobile website. This is posing problems for us as our mobile website is a fraction of the # of pages/sections as our WWW. So for example, mobile search results show that we have a "careers" section; but that's not the case for the mobile website. As a result a user gets a 404. How do we force mobile Google to index our mobile website instead of our WWW?
Technical SEO | | RBA0 -
How do you measure content on a website?
I never thought of this question before. Maybe because i didn't focus myself on content but only on optimizing existing content from clients. So how do you measure the content on a specific page?
Technical SEO | | mosaicpro0