Is a slash just as good as buying a country specific domain? .com/de vs .de
-
I guess this question comes in a few parts:
1. Would Google read a 2-letter country code that is after the domain name (after the slash) and recognize it as a location (targeting that country)? Or does is just read it as it would a word.
eg. www.marketing.com/de for a microsite for the Germans
www.marketing.com/fr for a microsite for the French
Or would it read the de and fr as words (not locations) in the url. In which case, would it have worse SEO (as people would tend to search "marketing france" not "marketing fr")?
2. Which is better for SEO and rankings?
Separate country specific domains:
www.marketing.de and www.marketing.fr
OR the use of subfolders in the url:
-
To achieve those different geotargeting options in Google Webmaster Tools you have to add every subdirectory as a different site, otherwise you can only target one country for the top-domain.
You should add marketing.com/de and marketing.com/fr as separate sites to GWT and set the geolocation for each folder to the right country.
-
It doesn't matter, because in Google Webmaster Tools you can geo-target directories for specific countries, so there is no need for different TLD's for different regions. It seems to work well.
Also, Google is smart enough to know that if a section is in German it should be shown in Google.de, if a section is in French it will be shown in Google.fr - it is the English sections that you definitely need to point Google in the right directions with.
-
To answer on your first question, Google doesn't read this as France or Germany, but that doesn't mean it is bad for your SEO.
For example, having those different subdirectories in one domain can help you get lots of backlinks to one domain instead of backlinks to all your location based domains.
To answer your second question, your URL doesn't do all of your SEO work... If you use the right title tags, urls, on-page elements you can rank with your .com domain for different languages.
Yesterday I analysed a webshop that targets different countries (FR, NL, DE, ENG) but doesn't have different domains for each country and I must say that he was ranking for some competitive terms in several languages. If your overall SEO elements are good to target a certain language or country it doesn't matter that much if it is a .fr or .com/fr
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 domain pages showing up in Google UK SERP
Hi, Our website which was predominantly for UK market was setup with a .com extension and only two years ago other domains were added - US (.us) , IE (.ie), EU (.eu) & AU (.com.au) Last year in July, we noticed that few .us domain urls were showing up in UK SERPs and we realized the sitemap for .us site was incorrectly referring to UK (.com) so we corrected that and the .us domain urls stopped appearing in the SERP. Not sure if this actually fixed the issue or was such coincidental. However in last couple of weeks more than 3 .us domain urls are showing for each brand search made on Google UK and sometimes it replaces the .com results all together. I have double checked the PA for US pages, they are far below the UK ones. Has anyone noticed similar behaviour &/or could anyone please help me troubleshoot this issue? Thanks in advance, R
Algorithm Updates | | RaksG0 -
Still a good idea to have a niche store?
I have had a niche store since 2008. It has a higher conversion rate than my main site, and does fairly well. The site template is an exact copy of my main site, and all the product URLs are the same. The only difference is, it only has items from a certain category. My questions is, are niche store still a good idea? Will I be better of doing a page to page 301 to my main site, and just focus on a single site? Am I better of as far as SEO with one main site? If anyone has experience with this, I would like to hear about your experience. Any thoughts are appreciated.
Algorithm Updates | | inhouseseo0 -
How to Change Geo Target Location of Country Specific Domain
Hi - I have a country specific domain (www.updater.in), used it for writing blog articles Now when i go to site settings in Webmaster - the Geo target by default is coming for India, and no option of changing geographic target. Is there any way to let Search Engines know (despite .in domain) that site Geo Location is not country specific, but is meant for users from all across !!
Algorithm Updates | | Modi0 -
Google Webmaster Tools: Quality Issues on http://www.enakliyat.com.tr/
Specifically, we detected low-quality pages on your site which do not provide substantially unique content or added value. Examples could include thin affiliate pages, doorway pages, automatically generated content, or copied content. We encourage you to make changes to your site so that it meets our quality guidelines. Once you've made these changes, please submit your site for reconsideration in Google's search results. Google Webmaster Tool send me this message I think the low-quality pages is like the this http://www.enakliyat.com.tr/detaylar/bursa-fethiye-ucevler-nakliye-5834 page and we have so many pages like this... Example 1: http://www.enakliyat.com.tr/detaylar/evden-eve-nakliyat-5906 **Example 2 : **http://www.enakliyat.com.tr/detaylar/cekmekoy-izmit-5905 **Example 3: **http://www.enakliyat.com.tr/detaylar/evden-eve-nakliyat-5906 What should I do to these pages HELP 😞
Algorithm Updates | | iskq0 -
Best way of seeing how many links come from individual root domain domains.
Just wondering how best to see this - which tool to use. I'm dealing with a website with several thousand inbound links from around 100 root domains. Thanks in advance, Luke
Algorithm Updates | | McTaggart0 -
Any Google Panda/Penguin, etc updates late October 2012?
Not sure why my website traffic is dropping down late Oct 12. It showed a boost with the last Panda update in early Oct. Anyone know of a current update?
Algorithm Updates | | ChrisTS0 -
Did Google Just Punish Organic For Showing Up In Local?
Google pushed the local search results in a prominent spot on a ton of search results. That means (for me) that all first page rankings (including a lot of 1st place rankings) have completely disappeared. Subfolders still rank and homepage still ranks where local search is not included. This is weird. Is this a glitch or is there something we can do about this?
Algorithm Updates | | Discountvc0 -
SEO Test: Domain Hyphenation [Update]
In May I announced test results for domain hyphenation but after a 3 month followup the results have changed and the hyphenated domain now wins on what seems to be the first link instance advantage. I was unable to discover any other factors which may have influenced this test but if anyone has any ideas I would like to hear about it. Here are the details of the SEO test and revealed URLs.
Algorithm Updates | | Dan-Petrovic1