I'm looking for advice/point of view for setting up international domains. I.e. sub-domains, ccTLD, etc.
At the 10,000 ft. view - the client (international retail company) is trying to decide which type of URL structure to use in their new platform:
- Option 1: Root Domain ccTLD - www.brand.ca, www.brand.fr, etc.
- Option 2: Subdomains - fr.brand.com, ca.brand.com, au.brand.com
- Option 3: Subfolders - ]www.brand.com/ca/, ]www.brand.com/au/
Consider these scenarios/questions and use to help decide which URL structure makes sense:
1) I'm an Aussie in Australia and I do a Google search on Hank Myer Aron, which is a huge seller in the U.S. and also included at the Australia locale site.
- If we go with subfolders, am I likely to see the U.S. Aron page higher in my search results than the Australia Aron page? Or is the U.S. site not a factor in a search done outside the U.S.?
- If we use subfolders AND geo-detection, does this bump the ranking of the locale page?
- Do sites using ccTLDs always get ranked above those that don't? For example, if an Australian dealer selling Aron has URLs dealer.com.au/..., would their pages rank ahead of hankmyer.com/au/...?
- If we went the ccTLD route, would the Aron page at hankmyer.com.au take precedence over the U.S. page? (Again, assuming U.S. site is relevant in this scenario.)
2) I'm a Frenchman in France searching on Hank Myer Aron.
- If we use subfolders AND an alias URL that's translated to French (brand.com/fr/produits/sieges/sieges-aron), would we expect the page rank to be comparable to using the ccTLD and/or expect greater trust than just using subfolders without translated URLs?
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Do translated URLs have any mitigating affect on duplicate page content?
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Which URL strategy is best choice from a SEO standpont?
