Best geotargeting strategy: Subdomains or subfolders or country specific domain
-
How have the relatively recent changes in how G perceives subdomains changed the best route to onsite geotargeting i.e. not building out new country specific sites on country specific and hosted domains and instead developing sub-domains or sub-folders and geo-targeting those via webmaster tools ?
In other words, given the recent change in G perception, are sub-domains now a better option than a sub-folder or is there not much in it ?
Also if client has a .co.uk and they want to geo-target say France, is the sub-domain/sub-folder route still an option or is the .co.uk still too UK specific, and these options would only work using a .com ?
In other words can sites on country specific domains (.co.uk , .fr, .de etc etc) use sub-folders or domains to geo-target other countries or do they have no option other than to develop new country specific (domains/hosting/language) websites ?
Any thoughts regarding current best practice in this regard much appreciated. I have seen last Febs WBF which covers geotargeting in depth but the way google perceives subdomains has changed since then
Many Thanks
Dan
-
That isn't a domain at all - it's a sub-domain - what you've purchased there is yourdomain.uk.com - so your site is actually on a sub-domain of the domain uk.com
I'm guessing that in theory you could geo-target via Webmaster Tools, however I think that in reality you might struggle to get the site to rank. It would also make for some pretty mixed up looking URLs - yourdomain.uk.com/fr/ - the UK in there might mean lower click through rates as the site looks primarily UK focused.
I hope this helps,
Hannah
-
Sorry 1 more question re my client with the .co.uk who wants to Geo-target content to france.
They do have the .com version of their domain too. If the site was new I would recommend changing this round so they can geotarget france via the sub-directory on the .com and would still like to but since the site is well established I fear changing from the .co.uk to the .com will lose alot of its existing history/authority/rankings etc etc.
Is this a valid concern or should swapping the site over to sit on the .com, rather than the existing .co.uk, and then 301'ing the .co.uk pages to the .com deal with this ?
Many Thanks
Dan
-
Many Thanks Hannah !
Cheers
Dan
-
Hi Dan,
uk.com is the domain - but your site is effectively sitting on a subdomain - i.e. yourdomain.uk.com
As such I'd expect that technically speaking you could geo-target something like yourdomain.uk.com/fr/ via webmaster tools, but I wouldn't recommend it.
Partially because I don't think it will actually work - overall you're giving off a really mixed signal, but also from a user experience perspective - I don't think French users will want to transact with a uk.com site - it just looks like a site for people in the UK.
Thanks
Hannah
-
Thank you all for your helpful comments !!
So to summarise - all fine to go sub-directory route for generic domains like .com, .net etc but if you have country specific domain such as .co.uk then forget it and start afresh with a domain/language/hosting for your target country.
Just to throw a cat amongst the pigeons - if you have a .uk.com domain is that considered as a genuine uk focused tld or a .com ? So for .uk.com domains can you geo-target using sub-directories since ultimately considered as .com, or not ?
All Best
Dan
-
I would go for subdirectory approach if the site has a generic TLD like .com. Link building becomes much easier. However if you have country TLD like .co.uk then I would not go for a subdirectory approach. www.xyz.co.uk/de may be perceived a UK site for a German user from a site conversion point of view.
-
Some time ago I struggled with the same problem, and after reading articles on the seomoz blog and questions posted here I went for subdirectories.
subdirectories still give you the ability to add those folders to Google Webmaster Tools and set regio for that folder. You can go with country specific domains as well, but you will have to build links for every domain, whereas you only have to do it once when you choose subfolders.
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
-
Spammers created bad links to old hacked domain, now redirected to our new domain. Advice?
My client had an old site hacked (let's call it "myolddomain.com") and the hackers created many links in other hacked sites with links such as http://myolddomain.com/styless.asp?jordan-12-taxi-kids-cheap-T8927.html The old myolddomain.com site was redirected to a different new site since then, but we still see over a thousand spam links showing up in the new site's Search Console 404 crawl errors report. Also, using the links: operator in google search, we see many results of spam links. Should we be worried about these bad links pointing to our old site and redirecting to 404s on the new site? What is the best recommendation to clean them up? Ignore? 410s? Other? I'm seeing conflicting advice out there. The old site is hosted by the client's previous web developer who doesn't want to clean anything up on their end without an ongoing hosting contract. So beyond turning redirects on or off, the client doesn't want to pay for any additional hosting. So we don't have much control over anything related to "myolddomain.com". 😞 Thanks in advance for any assistance!
Technical SEO | | usDragons0 -
Why am I getting millions of links from my root domain to my subdomains?
My site's subdomains (us.example.com, de.example.com, etc.) are showing millions of links (in Google Webmaster Tools) from the root domain. This seems very unnatural to me. Any idea what would be cause this or is this? In addition, I just found out that we deliberately stop googlebot crawling GEO-IP redirects, so that when googlebot tries to crawl our UK, DE, FR, etc. sites, it is not redirected to us.example.com. I'm thinking they may be linked? Thanks for your help!
Technical SEO | | CMcC0 -
Best Schema Advice
Hi, I am new here and I have searched for but not got a definitive answer for this. I am sorting out a website which is a scaffolding company operating in a particular area. They are only interested in targeting a particular area and from what I have read through here I need to mark the site up with schema mentioning their company name and address. My issue is that I seem to find lots of conflicting advice about what should go it and how it should be laid out. I would love to know peoples opinions on where the best guide for setting up schema correctly for a site like this. They use wordpress, I am ok with inserting code to the site etc, I just want to make sure I get it right from the start. Once I have done this, I understand that I need to get local citations using the same NAP as how the site is marked up. Sorry for what might seem like a daft question but I am a designer and I am still learning the ins and outs of SEO. Thanks
Technical SEO | | kirstyseo0 -
Forum on toplevel or sub domain?
Hiya all I am building a site for the expansion of a facebook fan page that will be sending a fair bit of traffic to the site. One feature of the site is a forum plus a store and i have to make the dissuasion on if i should have the forum and store on the main domain or on separate subdomains for each. domain.com forum.domain.com store.domain.com So my question is would it be better to keep all of these elements on the main domain or each on a separate sub domains? Will
Technical SEO | | wildwill0 -
Preferred domain
In GWT it gives an option to do the following but which is best? and why? If you specify your preferred domain as http://www.example.com and we find a link to http://example.com, we'll consider both links the same. | <label for="no_assoc">Don't set a preferred domain</label> |
Technical SEO | | jwdl
| <label for="use_www">Display URLs as ** www.example.com**</label> |
| <label for="use_nowww">Display URLs as example**.com **</label> |0 -
Blogs are best when hosted on domain, subdomain, or...?
I’ve heard the it is a best practice to host your blog within your site. I’ve also heard it’s best to put it on a subdomain. What do you believe is the best home for your blog and why?
Technical SEO | | vernonmack0 -
Campaigns Domain and Subdomain... ?
I made two separate campaigns before I understood the meaning of "subdomain". I make one campaign for my www.com and another for my .com. I now realize I should have made the .com the domain and the www. the subdomain in the same campaign. Is there a way to edit this? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | musicforkids0 -
Redirect Multiple Domains
This is a follow-up question from one posted earlier this month. I can't linked to that because it's a private question so I'm trying to summarize it below. We have a number of domains – about 20 - (e.g. www.propertysharp.com) that point to our main domain ip adress (www.propertyshark.com) and share the same content. This is no black-hat strategy whatsoever, the domains were acquired several years ago in order to help people who mistyped the websites url to reach their desired destination. The question was whether to redirect them to our main domain or not. Pros were the reportedly millions of incoming links from these domains - cons was the fact that lots of issues regarding duplicate content could arise and we actually saw lots of some pages from these domains ranking in the search engines. We were recommended to redirect them, but to take it gradually. I have a simple question - what does gradually mean - one domain per week, per month?
Technical SEO | | propertyshark0