Shabaka domain - Impact on SEO
-
Hi All,
I heard about shabaka domain names recently and am not sure if getting a shabaka top-level domain with arabic content help from a SEO stand-point? Currently my Arabic website is on this domain: http://www.tcf-me.ae/
Do you think it is a good idea to get a shabaka domain to target the GCC countries on our Arabic website? Or does it not matter? Thoughts?
Thanks in advance for your help.
-
Hi Gianluca,
Thanks a lot for your response.
Yes I meant to say .ae
Our english website is www.tcf-me.com
Our arabic website is www.tcf-me.ae
(From a SEO point of view, do you suggest we keep the arabic version of the website on the same domain name(.com) or use a shabaka domain name for the arabic version to specifically target GCC
Thanks
-
Hi Layth,
why are you talking of a .me domain name, if it is a .ae one (http://www.tcf-me.ae/)?
Answering your new question, if your intention is targeting arabic speaking people in a region like GCC, which - as the Eurozone or Asia or Latin America - cannot be geo-targeted, then the ideal should be using a generic domain name termination, because of the limitation and added efforts a country code level domain name needs for obtaining the same results.
So... if not classic generic termination (I mean .com or .net) is available, then you think about using the new domain termination .shabaka.
I repeat it: not just because you are using that new termination your site will rank better or will tank. Success or failure will depend by other things, classic tech SEO factors, web relevancy and popularity.
-
Hi Gianluca
Thanks for your response.
So basically you suggest that I redirect my current .me website to shabaka domain or completely take down the .me domain?
The intention here is to target arabic speaking population in the GCC region..
Thanks
-
Hi Layth,
your doubts are not so different from the ones we - using western languages - have with the new domain terminations.
Sincerely, I am not at all convinced that domain terminations play a role in SEO at all, apart certain very specific cases, when Matt Cutts explicitly told that the webspam team usually associates some terminations to spam activities (i.e.: .cc, .tk or even .info).
With all this, what I am saying is that domain termination like .shabaka, .web, .marketing or whatever of the many new ones can work or not depending on the fact that the website associated is:
- technically optimized;
- have content that offers value to its targetet audience;
- have a solid digital promotion strategy sustaining its visibility.
As you can see, things that are a must for every web site independently from its domain termination.
The only real consideration I'd do is if the Saudi Arabian ccTLD was somehow impeding me to better perform outside of Google.ae, or, in other words, if I wanted to reach arabian speaking people globally.
In that case, maybe, using the .shabaka domain termination could be an option, as it is a generic domain name, hence is not automatically geo-targeting Saudi Arabia only, but it can be set to target the global market via Google Webmaster Tools.
Not that an .ae domain cannot achieve the same results, but it is known that territorial domain names struggle more than generic in obtaining organic visibility, so that they need more link building/earning efforts and gain a strong authority for "breaking" the geo-targeting barrier.
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
-
International SEO Two Subdomains Showing Up in Google Search Results
Hi I have a client that is having two subdomains showing up SERP when you Google their name. Here are the details. They have two subdomains us.companyname.com and en.companyname.com us.companyname.com is for the US and has completely different products and content than en.companyname.com en.companyname.com is the site designed for Europe and it is in English. How can I make it so that only the us. version shows up in the search results? Thanks in advance!
International SEO | | JohnWeb120 -
International corporate SEO - menu and preferences
Hi all, for internationalization we have used subfolders structure (e.g. domain.com/us/) and since we have approx 150 countries to cover, then country selector is quite a link-base, especially if pages itself can have even several hundreds of internal links as well. Currently, all links to other countries are set as rel="nofollow" and I'm planning to change them to "follow" to distribute a juice. Do you please have an experience with such internal links voluminous websites and this follow/nofollow settings? Also we are having and issue with other countries outperforming local search. So for example in US, searching for kind of "Brand America" keyword, our UK branch outperforms US. Hreflangs are set in the sitemaps and each branch (country) is set in search console correctly as well. Since there are some issues with sitemaps (e.g. not actual links, or links returning 404), I assume that google is not using these sitemaps therefore hreflang information is lost as well. Am I correct ? thank you in advance, Tom
International SEO | | execom990 -
Has any one seen negative SEO effects from using Google Translate API
We have a site currently in development that is using the Google Translate API and I am having a massive issue getting screaming frog to crawl and all of our non-native English speaking employees have read through the translated copy in their native language and the general consensus is it reads at a 5th grade level at best. My questions to the community is, has anyone implemented this API on a site and has it a) helped with gaining traffic from other languages/countires and b) has it hurt there site from an SEO standpoint.
International SEO | | VERBInteractive0 -
International SEO Question: Using hreflang tags across two different TLDs.
Hi! My UK based company just recently made the decision to let the US market operate their ecommerce business independently. Initially, both markets were operating off the same domain using sub-directories (i.e: www.brandname.com/en-us/ , www.brandname.com/en-gb/ ) Now that the US team have broken away from the domain - they are now using www.brandnameUSA.com while the UK continues to use www.brandname.com/en-gb/. The content is similar across both domains - however, the new US website has been able to consolidate several product variations onto single product pages where the UK website is using individual product pages for each variation. We have placed a geo-filter on the main domain which is 301 redirecting North American traffic looking for www.brandname.com to www.brandnameUSA.com However, since the domain change has taken place, product pages from the original domain are now indexing alongside the new US websites product pages in US search results. The UK website wants to be the default destination for all international traffic. My question is - how do we correctly setup hrlang tags across two separate TLDs and how do we handle a situation where multiple product pages on the "default" domain have been consolidated into one product page on the new USA domain? This is how we are currently handling it: "en-us" href="https://www.BRANDNAMEUSA.com/All-Variations" /> href="https://www.BRANDNAMEUSA.com/All-Variations" />
International SEO | | alexcbrands0 -
Moving my site to one domain name .com from 3
Hi Guys, I'm ranking really well for my domains in my local geo - im wondering if it will be more effective if i moved the co.nz and com.au over to the .com - the only thing is will i still see my com.au and co.nz results on the .com?
International SEO | | edward-may0 -
Multi country targeting for listing site, ccTLD, sub domain or .com/folder?
Hi I know this has been covered in a few questions but seen nothing recent that may take into account changes google may have applied. We would like to target multiple english speaking counties with a new project and I'm a little unsure as to whether ccTLD, subdomain or subfolders are the best way to publish country specific information. Can anyone shed some light on this?
International SEO | | Mulith0 -
SEO Recommendations
Our website www.nile-cruises-4u.co.uk has slowly slipped down the page one ranking of Google.co.uk for our main search terms after several years at number one. I've looked closely at our site as much as a "non-techie" can do but wondered if anyone could recommend a good SEO company/individual that could take an overview and then help us try and climb back up the page one rankings. As a small business I dont' have tons of money to spend but I realise the importance of good SEO and I am prepared to spend as much as is required within reason. I thought members of SEOMoz were more likely to be able to recommend good SEO companies rather than me trawl around the web trying to find a company or individual that might suit our needs. I hope this is a suitable question for this forum but apologise in advance if it isn't. Colin
International SEO | | NileCruises0 -
Global SEO - How quickly/aggressively should one expand into multiple countries?
SITUATION: Our client is a global company lacking the global presence, so naturally the idea is performing international/global SEO in each country. For benchmarking purposes, our plan is to focus on a select number of keywords (ie 8-15) for each country and begin link building within each respective country. All SEO effort (ie. link building) will be for sub-folders (ie. www.client.com/subfolder/) on the same top level domain. Note, each country may have multiple languages, so each language will be broken out as it's own unique SEO campaign with it's very own strategy and link building efforts. For example: Mexico has 2 languages (English & Spanish) and will be considered 2 separate campaigns. PROBLEM: The client wants to be extremely aggressive and perform SEO on 3 new countries every month. This amounts to 36 new countries/SEO campaigns per year. Assuming each country has 2 languages each, we are looking at 6 SEO campaigns per month, or 72 per year. Our concern is that since all SEO effort will be performed on the same top level domain, we may be growing too fast and the search engines may consider the addition of these new pages and links to be too 'spammy'. We'd love to hear some feedback or personal experience on what might be considered a "safe" or "healthy" expansion into different countries. Thanks!
International SEO | | ByteLaunch0