What’s the best way to convert ccTLD to global TLD?
-
We started out as a Canadian site targeting Canadian users. Now our site http://iCraft.ca has a lot of international buyers and sellers and .ca TLD doesn’t make sense anymore, as we are not performing well on Google.com
We are doing a complete site redesign right now, which will address a lot of coding and content specific issues, but we suspect .ca domain will always hold us back in achieving good positions on Google.com.
Since Google doesn’t allow ccTLDs to set geo-targeting, what are our options?
a) Migrating to a brand new .com site and setting up 301 redirects for all links from iCraft.ca.
Would we lose all rankings in this example and pretty much start building them from scratch? Or would PR be transferred page by page from one domain to another through 301 redirects?
b) Setup a separate .com site with mirrored content to target global audience and keep .ca site to target Canada.
Not sure if splitting PR for the same pages between 2 sites is a good idea.
Also, how would you address duplicate content properly in our situation?
In this video that I found here on forum http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ets7nHOV1Yo Matt Cutts says that it’s ok to have duplicate content on different ccTLDs, but he says - make sure you localize your content on those domains.What if you can’t? Most of the content on our site is meant for anyone, not just Canadian users. So, for the most part, we’d have exactly same content on .com site, as we have on .ca site. We could display prices in different currencies on product pages, but the rest of the content – blogs, forum etc. are not country-specific and can’t be localized easily.
Also, it’s not clear from the video if all mirrored sites should sit on the same domain name for each country, like example.com and example.ca or is it ok to have example.com and icraft.ca?
c) Is there a better option?
Thanks for your help!
-
From my opinion the best way to do it and from my experience with this is:
1. Set the .com domain up with content targeting a global audience.
2. Leave the .ca domain up with content targeting the Canadian audience.
The .ca domain will rank better in Canadian serps over time.
But it comes down to budgets and what you want to do from a resources point of view, If you can not potential run 2 sites then yes do a 301. You would also need to map out the 301's cross site you may loose some anchor text value too.
With a 301 re direct you will loose rankings, it may be for a few days or a few weeks but once the uptake happens, in my opinion you may loose some ranks in the .ca rankings if you have competitors with the country level TLD and you now have the .com I have seen it happen time and time again.
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
-
Geolocation issue: Google not displaying the correct url in the SERP's
Hello, Im running a multi-country domain with this structure: domain.com/ar/
International SEO | | EstebanCervi
domain.com/mx/
domain.com/cl/
etc I also have: domain.com/int/ for x-default
domain.com/category/ does a 301 redirect through IP geo-location to the correspondent url, example if your IP is from Mexico, then you got redirected to domain.com/mx/category/ hreflang is correct. webmaster tool geo-location is correct. Example of the issue Im facing right now: When users from Chile do a keyword search in Google Chile, the domain ranks well but the URL that appears in the SERP is the /mx/ version, or the /int/ version or any other country version. Other times is the /cl/ version. The same happens for all the users / countries / keywords. I need to understand what Im doing wrong, because Google is not displaying in the SERP's the correct URL version for the country of the user who is doing the search. Thank you so much! I will appreciate your ideas. PS: I think I should try to change the 301 to a 302 redirect, or completely remove those redirects. Any ideas? Suggestions? Thanks!0 -
.edu or country TLD, which one would be better?
Hi,we are working right know with an Education Instutition located Outside the U.S. I think they would be in a possition where they could get de .edu TLD. Right know they have good rankings in its own country cause they are working with their country specific TLD, and they rank well there. But, of course, a considerable percentage of their students are foreigners, so they are very interested in improving their interantional rankings (note that U.S is not a target market). I was wondering if it would be ok to recommend them to change to the .edu TLD, because all their competitors have that tld too. Whould that TLD increase their domain authority inmediatly? I know that .edu is well consider by google when it sends you a link, so it would be reasonable to think that having a .edu domain would be great, but as this domain is very related with the US and all their markets are outside the U.S, I am not sure about what recommend them. What do you think?? Thank you!!!
International SEO | | teconsite0 -
Best process to 301 ecommerce store?
Hi, We have decided to segment our products and languages on to different country tlds. I know how to 301, but I am curious as to how I should actually do this, in what order to do it. Let's call the existing site with all products on OLDsite, and the new tld, where the products will also appear NEWsite. I am thinking of: Setting up NEWsite, but no sitemap. On launch of NEWsite, 301 all products on OLDsite to NEWsite (they will no longer appear on OLDsite) After some time, add sitemap, google verification in GWT, etc... on NEWsite. My thinking is that if I launch NEWsite and notify Google it will index the same products and content as OLDsite, and not necessarily check the 301 right? Which could lead to dupe content issues... Any ideas? We are only redirecting part of the site, so not all of it. Thanks!
International SEO | | bjs20100 -
Two versions of a website with different languages - Best way to do it?
I'm working on a website for a Swedish artist and her page is in Swedish, everything is in Swedish on the site, even though it's not a lot of text on the site. We would like to have the site in English too, or another version of the site in English on a separate domain, what's the best way to proceed from here? The domain name is a .se (swedish domain), would it be better to create a another domain and host the english version of the site on a .com domain? Or will we bump into problems with duplicate content if we create a replica of the swedish site in english. We're using wordpress and I know that there's translation plugins out there, is that a good option? I'm a bit clueless on how to proceed and would love some help or guidance here.
International SEO | | Fisken0 -
Dynamic Google search snippet text based on user's language
On Google search results page, I want to show search snippet text (of my webpage) in Hindi language if user is user is using Google in Hindi language. If user chose another language on Google search page, my snippet text should be shown in that language. Is this possible? How?
International SEO | | Avinashmb0 -
Best URL structure for Multinational/Multilingual websites
Hi I am wondering what the best URL format to use is when a website targets several countries, in several languages. (without owning the local domains, only a .com, and ideally to use sub-folders rather than sub-domains.) As an example, to target a hotel in Sweden (Google.se) are there any MUST-HAVE indicators in the URL to target the relevant countries? Such as hotelsite.com**/se/**hotel-name. Would this represent the language? Or is it the location of the product? To clarify a bit, I would like to target around 10 countries, with the product pages each having 2 languages (the local language + english). I'm considering using the following format: hotelsite.com/en/hotel-name (for english) and hotelsite.com/se/hotel-name (for swedish content of that same product) and then using rel=”alternate” hreflang=”se-SV” markup to target the /se/ page for Sweden (Google.se) and rel=”alternate” hreflang=”en” for UK? And to also geotarget those in Webmaster tools using those /se/ folders etc. Would this be sufficient? Or does there need to be an indicator of both the location, AND the language in the URLs? I mean would the URL's need to be hotelsite.com/se/hotel-name/se-SV (for swedish) or can it just be hotelsite.com/se/hotel-name? Any thoughts on best practice would be greatly appreciated.
International SEO | | pikka0 -
When is it best to use a ccTLD or TLD?
I understand that the relative importance of domain extensions - .com is better than .biz, etc. - is a bit of a myth. I also believe that using a ccTLD is likely to affect rankings for that site outwith that country. But, is the opposite true? Will giving a site a ccTLD help improve its SEO in that country? If you have a global organisation, is it better to establish a series of country specific sites - ccTLD - or to purchase the country specific domains and point them to the.com (if only to stop cyber-squatting)? What if the company wanted to establish regional microsites that feature content about products only available within that region? Many thanks, Iain
International SEO | | iain0 -
What is the best way to make country specific IP redirect for only product pricng pages?
My website has 3 services and its price will be different for US/EU/Developed world and Asian/African countries.Apart from pricing page, all other things remain same. I want to use IP based redirect .I heard this thing is called cloaking and used by black-hat guys. What kind of instructions should I give to my web developer to look best to Google/Search bots and correctly show visitors the intended prices.Is there any caution to be taken care of. Thanks for your time
International SEO | | RyanSat0