.com or local tld ?

[mikehenze]

Hi I have a webshop for my own clothing and boots brand.
The boots brand is changing name soon and i will move it to another domain.

I will off course 301 the boot related urls to the new domain to pass on link juice.

But now i have the option to go for bootbrand.com/uk bootbrand.com/nl bootband.com/de or use the local tld which i own allready. Bootbrand.nl bootbrand.de etc

Knowing that i own both .com and the local tld's what would be the best option for SEO?

[vmialik]

Disable or re-setup according to the new desired settings

[mikehenze]

I think you are right. Hreflang seems to be the best solution. Now i have to go and figure out how to set this up in a magento multistore backend.

I guess when i enable hreflang i can disable the geotargeting in WMT?

[vmialik]

This is what Google means by its geotargetting:

"The tool handles geographic data, not language data. If you're targeting users in different locations—for example, if you have a site in French that you want users in France, Canada, and Mali to read—we don't recommend that you use this tool to set France as a geographic target. A good example of where it would be useful is for a restaurant website: if the restaurant is in Canada, it's probably not of interest to folks in France. But if your content is in French and is of interest to people in multiple countries/regions, it's probably better not to restrict it."

Hope this clarifies the two questions you have, and it would seem that hreflang as result would be a better option no?

[mikehenze]

Dear Vadim,

I think i get it now.

_Will you publish content in multiple languages? _Yes I am

If so, will you publish multiple versions of the same content? Yes I will

_If so, you will want to make use of the hreflang tag. _I will implement this but i think setting up example.com/de and using Google WMT to set up geotargeting for Germany in this example should do the same trick or not?

Are you targeting specific countries, or multi-country regions? If it's the latter, than a single domain may be more efficient. I am targeting multi-country regions. It more the language that is important than the country. I will target German, Dutch, French and English in Europe. Which will cover a big part of Europe. I think that example.com/de will rank in Germany, Austria, Switzerland where example.de will more likely only rank in Germany?

If i understand correctly when using hreflang or WMT geotargeting it should really not mather much which approach you take....

[vmialik]

Hi Michael,

I would tackle and answer this for you but Cyrus Shephard just gives such a great answer here

Let me know if this provides enough food for thought to make a best decision about .com vs ccTLDs as this answer depends on the outcomes you desire and the work you would like to put in!