We launched our business in the UK many years ago using a .com domain and have built up good link equity back to our www site. Last year, we launched the same business in the US and host the US site on a "us." sub domain. We have used Google Webmaster Tools to demarcate the two websites so that the www site is set to target the UK and the "us." sub domain is set to target the US.
Our organic search results from Google UK for the UK business are fine but when our US customers Google brand terms the www UK site takes precedence in organic search. To complicate this further, the sitelinks within the search results include a mixture of pages from the www UK site and the "us." US site. Google clearly has some difficulty understanding that the two sites are for two different geographic audiences.
We have a good relationship with Google and they have indicated (with appropriate disclaimers) that we might consider aligning the URL structures for both sites to reduce the precedence that the www site currently receives. The www home page will become an International portal and the UK and US URL structures will be aligned. We have two options:
- Change both sites to subdomains so that we have "uk.xxxxx.com" and "us.xxxxx.com" linked to an International portal at the www subdomain
- Use sub folders so that we have "www.xxxxx.com/uk/" and "www.xxxxx.com/us/" again linked from the www subdomain
We're comfortable with use of 301 redirects and canonicals to change the structure in a search engine friendly way but cannot agree internally whether sub domains or sub folders is the way to go. Unfortunately we're to far down the line to seperate by tld.
Anyone have a strong opinion on the best approach?
Thanks,
Jeremy
