Getting the Proper CCTLDs & Subdomains to Rank in the Proper Countries
-
We seem to be having a really difficult time getting Google to do what we want in regards to getting proper domains indexed in the proper countries. In regards to English language, we tend to see a tremendous amount of crossover between .com, .in, and .co.uk. And yes international targeting is put in place.
For example, both our .com and co.uk websites are in english and when someone enters a search query for one of our particular products, the .com website shows up to users in the UK.
The countries with the hardest time are as follows and typically find them competing primarily with .com, but others can interlope as well.
**All primarily in English: **
- Canada
- UK
- India
- Australia
Any ideas on how we can get this aligned correctly to where we can get the proper CCTLD to show up in the correct country instead of the .com?
-
Hi Greg,
At first sight, it seems to be an issue on where you are searching for that international sites. Keep in mind that Google, since over a year ago, takes your IP to localize our search. So, considering you're searching in the US for your UK site, it's possible that you're the issue there.
Also, I'd take a deep dive at:
- That international configuration, it is one of the most complicated settings in SEO,
- In GSC, for the main site (.com) how much traffic is receiving from your other target countries.
- Are properly linked every site with the others?
- Crawling issues? It could probably be an issue that Googlebot isn't able to crawl entirely all sites.
As always, when it comes to international, these resources come handy:
Hreflang generator - Aleyda Solis International SEO - Moz Learning Center The Guide to International Website Expansion: Hreflang, ccTLDs, & More! - Moz Blog The International SEO Checklist - Moz BlogBest luck.
Hope it helps.
GR
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
-
US rank worse than the UK
Hi, Can you please advise? We have been focusing on the UK traffic, but this year we are expanding to all English speaking countries, primarily focusing on the US market. Our SEO efforts are not equally fruitful in the US, but they are really good in the UK. Can you please suggest what seriously impacts rank these days? our main domain that we use in the UK is domain.com. The US version uses sub-directory domain.com/us. Is this a problem? we have about 3 times more traffic from the UK than the US, and we have only UK backlinks. Do they still impact SEO significantly? can our poor US rank be related simply to a larger market? Any ideas on how we can improve? Technical suggestions, page organisation etc, I'm open to any suggestions. Many thanks. Katarina
Local Website Optimization | | Katarina-Borovska0 -
Business has multiple locations, but want to rank for commutable cities, geographies
Hello, The business I am working for has multiple locations, but the service they provide is one that you would commute for. At present, they have 20 or so pages with yucky geographical keyword stuffed content (think "New York computer services" and they are based out of a suburb (maybe 40 miles away). For some ridiculous reason, some of these pages are ranking for exact match search terms? We are in the process of revamping the whole site-taking approx five sites and integrating into one mega site. I want to first, figure out the best strategy for ranking for the region that each is in and serve, without being spammy like the previous SEO. I want to eliminate the spammy pages without losing the rank and link juice. What is the most appropriate and above-board strategy? These are my thoughts. Should I: 1. Keep the pages, but tweak them enough to make the content quality? If I do, should they be geo pages? Should they be "locations served", statistics of the area, etc? 2. Group the pages according to region (one page per region) that are location-oriented and tweaked to still include the terms they were ranking for (without the spammy look and stuffing), along with a map, etc? And then, I have to figure out how to redirect so not to lose the value we have now for some of them. The company deals with treatment for addiction, so in recommending and tips-remember that our audience will commute by car, and eventually (hopefully) by plane. 😉 Thank you so so much for any and all help you can provide! Sorry for such a long description!
Local Website Optimization | | lfrazer1231 -
Does having a host located in a different country than the location of the website/website's audience affects SEO?
For example if the website is example.ro and the hosting would be on Amazon Web Services. Thanks for your help!
Local Website Optimization | | IrinaIoana0 -
Site Getting hacked
Hi There, My one Website gets hacked Again and Again, I had Reset Many times ,But again, Also generating unnecessary URLs to My website in Webmaster tools, Can anyone Help Me To Solve This Problem please? please help, thx in advance,
Local Website Optimization | | nupuriepl0 -
Hosting Change & It's Impact on SERP Performance (with a Side of Domain Migration)
Hi everyone, I've read a lot on forums about the topic of hosting and it's impact on SEO, but I've seen conflicting opinions. I wanted to see if anyone might have a definitive answer for this scenario: Our parent company is based in the EU and wants to move our English domain to their site -- either as part of the main .com or potentially as a new subdomain. One of those things is going to happen; it's just a question of which one. One issue I have is that they host their .com with content targeting English speakers (mostly in the U.S.) in France, so if we moved our content to their site we'd be going from our existing domain hosted in the U.S. (with the majority of visitors coming from the U.S.) to a site that's hosted in France. I've read that folders are still usually better over subdomains in terms of passing the strength of the domain on to pages. So... would it be better to have a subdomain hosted in the U.S., or just have folders under the main domain, but that content would be hosted in France? Our existing domain and the domain we'll be moving to are about even in terms of domain authority and size. Happy to get any feedback you might have. Anyone come across any case studies on this particular topic that would be helpful? Thanks!
Local Website Optimization | | SafeNet_Interactive_Marketing0 -
Subdomain for ticketing of a client website (how to solve SEO problems caused by the subdomain/domain relationship)
We have a client in need of a ticketing solution for their domain (let's call it www.domain.com) which is on Wordpress - as is our custom ticket solution. However, we want to have full control of the ticketing, since we manage it for them - so we do not want to build it inside their original Wordpress install. Our proposed solution is to build it on tickets.domain.com. This will exist only for selling and issuing the tickets. The question is, is there a way to do this without damaging their bounce rate and SEO scores?
Local Website Optimization | | Adam_RushHour_Marketing
Since customers will come to www.domain.com, then click the ticketing tab and land on tickets.domain.com, Google will see this as a bounce. In reality, customers will not notice the difference as we will clone the look and feel of domain.com Should we perhaps have the canonical URL of tickets.domain.com point to www.domain.com? And also, can we install Webmaster Tools for tickets.domain.com and set the preferred domain as www.domain.com? Are these possible solutions to the problem, or not - and if not, does anyone else have a viable solution? Thank you so much for the help.0 -
Drastic changes in keyword rankings on a daily basis
Anybody ever seen keyword rankings for a site change drastically from day to day? I've got a client, a local furniture store, whose local keywords (furniture + city) rank consistently well without much change, but when it comes to broader keyword rankings (like "furniture" or "furniture store") in their zip code, they'll go from ranking at the top of Google one day to not being ranked at all the next (at least according to Raven Tools). My best guess is that it's just a reflection of personalized results from Google, but such a dramatic change day in and day out makes me wonder.
Local Website Optimization | | ChaseMG0 -
How to target an established .co.uk site/blog to audiences in other English speaking countries - UAE, Singapore for example?
Excuse for the novice questions, but looking for help! 🙂 I have an established .co.uk website/blog for which I have established a good solid following in the UK over a good number of years. That said I have recently relocated to Dubai and so I am looking to target my English blog content to English speakers here and Singapore? While the language setting of my site is "en" is there anyway that I can change this to "en-ae" and "en-sg" for example to build a following in these markets? Or is my .co.uk TLD an issue that is going to hold me back from building following in these locations? I ask as I have just read the hreflang announcement from Google, but noticed in my Webmaster Tools that I get the following message: "Your site has no hreflang tags". Thanks in advance!
Local Website Optimization | | twofourseven0