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Hi David,

Where you host a site isn't regarded as a strong ranking factor internationally - perhaps in the past it did make a difference, but I think that the search engines disregard this now (probably because it throws up too many issues - e.g. lots of UK targeted sites are hosted in the US).

However - site speed can affect rankings - and more importantly users - I guess I'm saying you need 'good' hosting, but it doesn't matter where it's located.

I hope this helps,

Hannah

Hi Keith,

In my experience Google mainly crawls from the US.

You're quite right, GeoIP redirection can cause major issues with indexation - as if you're redirecting everything from the US to the .com googlebot can't see the .co.uk site.

As such, I'm not a fan. Rather than implementing a hard redirect I prefer Amazon's approach. If you visit the amazon.com site from a UK IP you get a javascript overlay that invites you to visit the .co.uk version of the site instead - they let the user decide which site to view rather than actually redirecting them.

This is a nice solution as it ensures that the search bots can crawl both versions of the site, and rankings aren't endangered.

I hope this helps,

Hannah

Hi Mikel,

I'd concur with your SEO consultant's view

The subdomain set up (i.e. http://nero.hispazone.com) is sub-optimal as the search engines essentially see subdomains as individual sites - so any strength or authority you have from hispazone.com is not passed to nero.hispazone.com.

I think you're saying that you've been recommended to go down the subfolder route - i.e. hispazone.com/nero - if so I think this is a better solution for you as any strength or authority you have from hispazone.com is passed to hispazone.com/nero.

The subdomain route can of course work, but in order to rank well you'd need to build links to each subdomain as if they were separate sites - which is of course pretty resource intensive.

I hope this helps,

Hannah

Hi Adam,

As Pete says, I think you're likely to face an uphill climb with this one. Building links to the page may help, but you're fighting against a US-centric domain, and a powerful one at that.

Just out of interest, what are you trying to get this page to rank for?

Hannah

Hi Ralph,

Sounds good to me

Also great shout re first click free!

Hannah

Hey,

Thanks for the clarification - that makes sense.

In that case I think that what you're proposing should work - as long as the new pages are very similar (ideally the same).

As I said before it's a request rather than a directive so it might be ignored - I've tested cross-domain canonicals before - but not quite like this so it's hard for me to say precisely what might happen.

Obviously I'd also recommend undertaking some link building direct to the new site too - although I'm sure you plan to do that in any case

Thanks

Hannah

Hello there,

I'm a little confused about your intention here - what are your eventual plans for the old site?

Are you looking to 301 it to the new site at some point? If so, I think rather than creating a new site and 301-ing the old one to it I'd be more inclined to simply implement your new site on the old domain with all of the age and strength - i.e. re-use your strong URLs rather than creating new ones.

Alternatively if you plan to keep both sites going I'm not sure that this is best the solution. Rel-Canonical is a request rather than a directive - as such the search engines can choose to ignore it. Particularly if the pages on the new site are not actually the same as the pages on the old site. As such you may find that the rel-canonical is ignored and the new site doesn't benefit.

I'm also a little worried about having multi-lingual content on the same page - ordinarily in an instance like this I'd recommend creating separate sub-folders to target different languages (e.g. a sub-folder for all of your English pages and a sub-folder for your other language).

I hope this helps,

Hannah

Hi Ralph,

Using an IP redirect to serve country-specific content to the user is fine (i.e. it isn't considered to be cloaking as your intent isn't manipulative). However, there are issues with doing so - as you've highlighted - you're also redirecting the bots so have seen the UK site suffer.

Because of these issues I don't normally recommend the IP redirect approach. I also think that it can be bad for users too - just because someone is in the UK right now - doesn't necessarily mean that they want to see UK content - e.g. they may just be here temporarily on holiday / on business etc.

Personally I would prefer the javascript overlay (your option two) which allows users to pick the relevant country rather than implementing a hard redirect. This will also allow the bots to index both versions of your site.

I do understand the ecommerce team's concerns over this increasing bounce rate - but I'd suggest that if it's implemented well - check out amazon.co.uk from the US - this shouldn't cause you problems with bounce rate.

Likewise I understand their concerns re US / UK customers seeing the wrong content and therefore exposing the price differences - however, again I'd suggest that it's probably more important to have both versions of the site indexed.

I hope this helps,

Hannah

Here at Distilled I think it's fair to say we've also adopted a TAGFEE approach.

I think it's really good to keep in mind when building relationships with clients and I know our Exec team (Will, Duncan, Tom and Rob) also work hard to make sure that Distilled are a 'TAGFEE' company (we often talk internally about making Distilled 'the best place for the best people to work').

Outside the office? Well I think a TAGFEE human being is the kind of person I'd like to know and I'm guessing most would agree

Hi Kyle,

That does sound strange - did you set up www.automation.datalogic.com as a Subdomain (as opposed to a Root Domain - see: http://pro.seomoz.org/campaigns/new) within the Campaign Manager set up?