Would other TLDs (Top Level Domains) be helpful?
-
Hi,
I have a website geared towards an international crowd. It is written in English on the .com TLD. We are currently having it translated to Japanese on the .jp TLD and to French on the .fr TLD. Is getting a TLD for each country/translation a good way to go? Not only in terms of SEO, but is this the best way to get found in these other countries?
Second questions: Would getting TLDs in other English speaking countries do any good? Like .com.au or .com.nz or .ca? Again, both in terms of SEO and reach for users in those countries.
Last question, since I'm not going to change the content much (or any...) for the other English TLDs, how should I go about them? 301 redirect to the .com website? Show same content without a redirect? Other idea?
Thank you in advance!
-Elad
-
Yes but still not as good as promoting the one site.
You seem to like the local idea, so go with that, if at some stage you think its the wrong stratigy, you can always stop promoting all, and concentrate on the .com only -
Oh... but the proverbial rabit hole goes even deeper
If I have local sites, with better local search results, I have more local linking opertunities. Since these landing pages will be linking to the main .com site, this will also be giving some link juice to the main site. So these links not only boost the local results, but also boost .com site, no?
-
Yes it will, but when you have so many sites, how to get the links.
Getting quality links is hard.What is best, getting 100 quality links each for 5 sites, or 500 qualitty links for 1 site, i think the latter.
so we have a trade off, more links, or the benifit of local?
Toss a coin
-
As with any landing pages, you should always be testing. So, test the localized pages. Create a landing page that is .com.au and test it against a .com (both identical in every other way) and see how each converts.
With your snippet showing .com.au versus .com, you could likely test the does the .au improve your chances with Google.com.auYou can PM me when you have results as I would be very interested in them.
-
Thank you for the detailed reply!
We are an Internet only business. We will not be taking advantage of Places and localized listings, etc.
I agree with your customer acquisition perspective, given a choice, I would opt to first visit a local site.
In terms of cost, it will be negligible. The cost of these domains is less than 10$/yr. and all our English content is done in-house, so it's bought and paid for anyway.
But still, would localized landing pages, with just several pages (or maybe even just one) of content and links to the main site hurt the main site in any way or render the localized domain useless?
I'm currently leaning towards giving it a try, I just don't want to end up shooting myself in the foot.
-
As to the English translation to French, Japanese, Spanish, etc. this does not count as duplicate content in the eyes of google. From Google webmaster blog:
What isn't duplicate content?
Though we do offer a handy translation utility, our algorithms won't view the same article written in English and Spanish as duplicate content. Similarly, you shouldn't worry about occasional snippets (quotes and otherwise) being flagged as duplicate content.So, in my opinion you are going the right direction. The question about having a different TLD for each English speaking country assuming the content is different, I would think that it would depend on the benefit you derive from localization beyond having Places locations should you include bricks and mortar sites in your business model. If the cost in time and money is such that it is very small, then it probably helps to localize the TLD. (If not from an SEO perspective, potentially from a customer acquisition perspective.) My opinion is that if I have a site that is .AU and another that is .com and appears to be U.S., I am more likely to buy from the one where I live. So, for me, the US site is preferable as a consumer.
Without weighing the costs involved, I do not think you can make a determination of value for the other country specific TLD's.
-
It's a moderately competitive industry, but most sites are global and don't make any local effort. On-Page SEO is very powerful even for the global site. I'm guessing the local site will have even more weight put in the on-page factors. The questions is, will having a .com.au site give me an advantage with searches on google.com.au, for example.
-
That will get you around the duplicate content problem, but how about seo for so many sites, are you in a commpeditive industry?
-
For languages other than English, I would opt for a local domain, and I agree that it should not be a problem. As for TLDs for English speaking countries, I would still like to have a local TLD. I was thinking of maybe making a local landing page for the TLD, which gives some country specific content, and links to the .com site for further information and registration. Any thoughts on that?
-
This is a hard one, going local is always better, global is hard, but haveing duplicate content is not going to help, if you use a 301 or canoical tags only one site is going to rank.
I would think that duplicate content in anther lingo is usefull and should not be a problem, but in english it would.
Maybe a site for each lingo, not country
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 avoid duplication across multiple country domains
Here's the scenario: I have a client currently running one Shopify site (AU) They want to launch three more country domains (US, UK and EU) They want each to be a standalone site, primarily so the customers can purchase in their local currency, which is not possible from a single Shopify site The inventory is all from the same source The product desscriptions will all be the same as well Question: How do we avoid content duplication (ie. how will canonical tags work in this scenario)?
International SEO | | muzzmoz0 -
Problems with the google cache version of different domains.
We have problems with the google cache version of different domains.
International SEO | | Humix
For the “.nl” domain we have an “.be” cache..
Enter “cache:www.dmlights.nl” in your browser to see this result. Following points are already adapted: Sitemap contains hreflang tag Sitemap is moved to the location www.dmlights.nl/sitemap.xml We checked the DNS configuration Changed the Content language in de response header to : Content-Language: nl-NL Removed the cache with webmastertools Resolved serverrequest errors. Can anyone provide a solution to fix this problem? Thanks, Pieter0 -
Shabaka domain - Impact on SEO
Hi All, I heard about shabaka domain names recently and am not sure if getting a shabaka top-level domain with arabic content help from a SEO stand-point? Currently my Arabic website is on this domain: http://www.tcf-me.ae/ Do you think it is a good idea to get a shabaka domain to target the GCC countries on our Arabic website? Or does it not matter? Thoughts? Thanks in advance for your help.
International SEO | | LaythDajani1 -
Duplicate content on .co.uk and .com TLDs with different domain authority
What's the best approach to take for a site that has identical content on the .co.uk and .com versions of the root domain? The .co.uk version has a significantly higher domain authority (54 vs 32 according to Open Site Explorer - see attached screenshot). But it's an international company with its largest customer base in North America and customers in over 60 countries. The company does not intend to localize content. My initial thought before seeing the domain authority was to 301 redirect the .co.uk to the .com domain to consolidate all the link equity under one international TLD. However, I wondered if the higher domain authority for .co.uk would be passed on if we did this. I figured that a non-UK audience would be more likely to trust a .com site. I still think 301 redirecting .co.uk to .com might be the best strategy in the long term. But is there likely to be a dip in rankings and organic search volume in the short term until .co.uk is replaced in the index by .com? I'd really appreciate your thoughts on this. CbVnfSO.png
International SEO | | Torchbox0 -
Is .in domain affecting international traffic inflow to my site?
My holiday website http://seekandhide.in/ was completed and went live in Feb 2012. Last month I got 83% traffic from India and 3-5% each from USA and UK. The rest is a mixed bag from other countries. This is largely the trend since the last 3-4 months. I want to attract more organic traffic from UK and rest of Europe. My SEO consultant says that with a .in domain that will be difficult. My website currently features unique holiday properties in India that typically attract European tourists so I don't think it is a product issue. But both website visits and sales enquiries remain primarily Indian even though total number of visitors have increased gradually over the last 6 months.. My queries are 1. Is it only the .in domain that's affecting inflow of international traffic? 2. Is there anything that I can do to offset it? 3. I own seekandhide.co.uk too. Is there something I can do with that site without building a whole different website there? If I shift completely to .co.uk, I will have the same issue of being geographically limited and end up losing Indian traffic. 4. Is there something else that is not ok on the site that I am missing? 5. Advice that I get from a lot of consultants is to buy seekandhideindia.com but I plan to add international properties in a couple of years so that name would limit my appeal. Thanks in advance! Sudha
International SEO | | Sudha_Mathew0 -
Chinese domain offered for sale!! Very suspicious
We have been approached by a company offering us a chinese domain we would like to own, they are based in China but provide no company information and only their escrow account for us to transfer the funds. My first reaction is to run a mile but we have been asked to see if we can secure it from these people any urgent advice would be greatly appreciated as we have never done a transaction like this as the overseas domains are a new venture for us. Any guidance really appreciated.
International SEO | | loopylu030 -
Does penguin update affect all sub-domains?
A UK sub-domain of a big US site got hit by Penguin last week. The two operations are completely separate apart from sharing a parent domain. The US site also run a multitude of other sub-domains in the same marketplace. Their link profile is not squeaky clean. The question is, could the actions of the US site, either in bad links, or poor on-site issues, have caused Penguin to hit the UK sub-domain? Unfortunately I have no access to the US Analytics or rankings data to know if they were hit by Penguin too. Thanks
International SEO | | BeattieGroup0