Variation on the subdomain/sub-directory question... Descriptive TLDs
-
Hi there, We have a variation on the subdomain/sub-directory question...
Our business has two monetising areas, a clinic and a shop. To market them, we do recipes, blogs and social media, rather than relying primarily on SEO, but we do want to up our SEO game.
Our primary site is www.example.co.uk This is Wordpress and where we market the clinic, host the recipes and blogs, and is our main email domain. Our second site is Woocommerce, at www.example.shop
Our shop market is primarily in the UK, but we seem to pick up a fair amount of international business, partly because the clinic does virtual consultations to many countries. The shop is online only. We have physical clinics across the UK.
Both sites cross link extensively, eg with blogs advertising products in the shop. The branding is intentionally related yet different, because they have very distinct functions, and eg. I don’t want to clutter the interface or distract people with blog or clinic once we have funnelled them to the shop checkout.
I would also like to separate the blog and recipe elements from the clinic, using a slightly different theme with different functions. We use a lot of plugins, and the more we aggregate functions on the same Wordpress instance, the more likely something is to go wrong.
I like the new TLDs because they are more “human”, and they identify where you are and what you are doing more clearly. We do email footers with links to example.clinic (redirected to www.example.co.uk) and example.shop. They are simple and explain what is going on.
Conversely, shop.example.co.uk is not so easy to write or read out. www.example.co.uk/shop looks like an afterthought, rather than a shop in its own right with its own home page. So there would have to be a really good SEO reason for me to merge the shop into the main site with reverse proxy or multisite. Do you think that there is such a good reason?
If not, by the same token, would it make sense to separate out example.blog or even naturedoc.recipes from example.clinic and use .co.uk as a single page portal to the three separate sites?
My instinct, for what it is worth is that Google is smart enough to have started thinking that domains linked by topic TLDs can be equivalent to subdomains, and to recognise that we are not trying to build links from spammy unrelated sites.
My last area is about human behaviour... Are people are as happy to click on or type in a new TLD like .clinic as a local .co.uk one? ...when (a) it is not a discredited TLD like .biz, and (b) it gives them more insight into what they will get when they arrive.
And since we have the .uk domain, should we switch to this shorter version at the same time? I already use it for custom shortcodes (eg. example.uk/fte6 for people to type in from printed material or instagram). I can’t help feeling .uk has been unsuccessful, and its use now looks bad, even if it is shorter.
Many thanks in advance.
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 get listed for specific locations/cities/towns
Best practice?? I have a client that wishes to get found for services in several towns across the UK. They only have 1 physical location I have so far created a blog ( i use easyblog) and put a list of these towns..then added TAGS with the town names (this means each TAG gets a URL too) ..also i need to then monitor in moz pro somehow. Alternatively i could create web pages with additional information and give the URL the town name....however i think the tags will help...any advice welcome.
Local SEO | | CORSOLUTIONS1 -
Is using emoji's in meta descriptions a good or bad idea ? - I haven't seen it used much hence my query
Hello Mozzers, We need to redo some of our meta descriptions as our CTR's are not to good. I've noticed one of my competitors using emoji's which I personally think looks pretty good. They are using the Phone icon and ticks - as calls to action etc However, I can't see hardly anyone else using them on general serps ...so I am wondering , is it a bad idea ? thanks Pete
Local SEO | | PeteC120 -
How to promote a local SEO/Web design company via a blog (mainly blogging) and social media?
Hello, What is possible as far as promoting a local SEO and Web Design Company with a blog? I'm offering simple web design, both informational and product based, as well as SEO for existing informational and product-based companies here in Boise, Idaho. At first it won't be face to face so there's no local SEO. I honestly don't like to sell. I've done it for years and I'd like to spend my time blogging (mainly blogging), doing social media, and volunteering. How can I use this approach to get a beginning agency off the ground? Please don't tell me to go push my services. I'd like to get my company off the ground through avenues that have integrity to me. How do I do this? Feel free to include articles and videos in your response if appropriate. Thank you.
Local SEO | | BobGW0 -
Best Rank Tracking tool w/ data exports or APIs
I have briefly reviewed the API data available through the Moz API endpoints and did not see that the rank tracking data is available. I first wanted to confirm that? Second, I am looking to start tracking rank for nearly 1 million keywords (local pages multiplied by dozens of core keywords). I want to watch the rankings for a region move over time, as well as keywords generally, and then keywords in a region. My momentary initial research shows that there are a LOT of rank tracker tools, which felt a bit overwhelming to sift through them all and figure out which one would be best. My biggest needs are: handling lots of keywords and URLs exporting the data automatically (via an API or recurring export) allowing for localized results without having to qualify the keywords not breaking the bank to do so -- I'm not an SEO w/ multiple clients, these are all on 1 domain
Local SEO | | Mase0 -
Google "pigeon" update, is Google turning search over to all the directories?
The recent news re an update by Google is beginning to show some interesting changes. The first major piece on this came from SearchEngineLand and had top local people like Linda Buquet commenting. Another post on this regarding a "yelp" correction from Search Engine Land was also illuminating. With the real estate vertical, I am seeing zero local companies in Houston, in the first couple of SERP's, other than the large MLS system, HAR. The others showing are all real estate directories that are nationwide like realty com, zil low, tru lia, etc. You literally cannot get a local brokerage to show on the first two pages of serps using any high volume keyword.
Local SEO | | RobertFisher
Does this mean Google is choosing to begin relegating its search results to the directories? Obviously, there is no right answer, but it certainly means those of us in the agency world need to be very careful (yes, even more so) going forward. I appreciate your comments. Robert2 -
Im a big fan of niche web develop/seo companies. I was wondering how many clients can you ethically take on in the same field, located in the same city
How do niche web development companies justify having multiple clients in the same field in the same cities. I would love an explanation on how to justify this, and how many clients in the same field/same city is acceptable. A good example would be an seo company for auto dealers or hotels. Thanks
Local SEO | | aholyman0 -
SEO planning: Franchise/multiple local sites
I am in the planning stages of franchising a cleaning business and was wondering if anyone had some ideas on SEO strategy. If money were no object and I had a team of hundreds of copywriters at my disposal, would the ultimate solution be to have the following sort of URL structure www.cleanbiz.co.uk/city within which there are numerous www.cleanbiz.co.uk/city/local-town pages? If this is the best strategy then is it worthwhile to begin work towards ranking for cities and local towns within them prior to actually operating there? I understand that lack of physical presence will penalize me in terms of local search but would a lack of physical address and phone number render any foundation work pointless (for example, prior to having any franchises in say London, would it be worth while building quality content and links on a www.cleaningbiz.co.uk/london page, and then www.cleaningbiz.co.uk/london/notting-hill, alongside a blog and so on?) Interested to understand the best way to go about this given the enormity of the campaign! Thanks
Local SEO | | EdwardoUK0 -
SEO / PPC Middle East Recommendations
Hello - We are an online store and do a lot of business in the middle east, but are looking to expand there further and looking for a reputable company that specializes in SEO, PPC and social marketing in the region. Specifically a company that can help in region specific content (works in Arabic) and can target properly. Does anybody have any recommendations or company's they have worked with in the past? Thanks for any info!
Local SEO | | BabyBeauBelle0