Ranking Internationally
-
Whats the best URL strategy to rank for one term in different countries? We currently rank well in Australia, but are tackling many countries over the next few months.
The page I am ranking is http://www.spendbitcoins.com/buy for the term 'buy bitcoins' or 'buy bitcoins in Australia' (replace Australia with each specific country, i.e. New Zealand, Japan, etc.)
These are the strategies I have come up with, is one of these good or is there a different better way?
- Use country specific TLDs, pulling the content from the same site w/ translations
- Use country specific TLDs and create separate sites and create completely original content
- Use country specific TLDs, forwarding to the primary domain
- use a subdomain from the same site
- modify the page link to be something like spendbitcoins.com/buy/new-zealand
- Don't worry about any of this and just get links from sites with the proper TLD
-
I'm afraid there's no one "right" answer. Country-specific TLDs do have some extra power, but the problem is that then you're splitting everything - content, links, social mentions, etc. If you have the budget to really build up a site and market it in each country, then ccTLDs are great. If you aren't ready to go all-in, though, I'd probably recommend against it.
I generally would not rely on machine translations. They tend to be a poor user experience and Google can often spot them and may consider them to be thin content. A good translation done by a native speaker is perfectly fine. In this case, I'd also use the hreflang tags to let Google know that it's a language/region-specific piece of content:
http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=189077
Finally, in most cases I'd recommend sub-folders or sub-domains. Sub-domains may split authority and can act more like separate domains (but without the power of the ccTLD). There are standard practices for sub-folders, like "http://www.sepndbitcoins.com/au" and "/nz" - and this can help Google more easily understand the site structure. If the pages are all in English then I'd definitely recommend hreflang tags - they'll help Google sort out the region-specific content. You can target sub-folders in GWT. See this page for more information:
http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=182192#2
-
I'd recommend option 4, using a sub domain and specifying the geo target in webmaster tools . I should add that you might have a tough time using this strategy in some countries like Austria and France where country specific TLD's tend to rank better.
Rand covered this topic in one of his whiteboard sessions. Link
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
-
Ranking a Polish website in English with existing keywords
I have a website that is currently in Polish and I'm interested in ranking it for the same keywords in English. I'm wondering if I need to create entirely new pages for the English version or if there are plugins or other tools that can help me translate and optimize my existing content for English search engines. my website seo factor. Any recommendations or experiences are greatly appreciated!
Technical SEO | | mohammadrehanseo0 -
How long does it take to rank easy keywords?
I have an established site with low keyword ranking and the keyword I am wanting to rank for it rated below 10 on Moz. It has been a few days since I published the article.
Technical SEO | | Begbie20060 -
Home Page Not Ranking... Need an EXPERT
Hi, for about a year now, our home page seems to have been "removed" from Google (except for our branded keywords). The home page is clearly indexed, but none of the keywords for the home page rank in the top 500 (again, except for our brand, trophycentral). Other pages in the site are fine and we rank in the top 10 positions for hundreds of keywords. We are also okay on Yahoo and Bing. So the issue is the home page from non-branded words. There have been no manual penalties, but since the words, such as trophies and trophies and awards are all but gone, something is going on. It has been almost exactly a year now and I have tried everything from removing backlinks (although I still can't tell which are "bad links", to changing titles, to improving speed and structure. I have had quite a few really nice people try to help, but their suggestions don't seem to work or are too vague. I really need an expert as the impact to the business of not having a home page performing is very damaging. Thank you!!!
Technical SEO | | trophycentraltrophiesandawards0 -
Database Crash affecting our rankings
Here is one for you. We had a database crash, and was down for an hour and 15 minutes, on Dec 18th. During this time our system automatically sent out a 301 redirect to our product home page. (iboats.com/boat-parts-accessories/dm/) On Dec 24th I noticed a huge ranking drop on a lot of our keywords, and some keywords that were serving up the redirect page from our database crash, in place of its normally ranked page. So my assumption is that Google was crawling our site during the database crash and caching the redirect pages in place of our regularly ranked pages. So when a search query is made that would normally display our ranked page, it is now displaying the redirect page from the crawled cache. And on other keywords where we normally would rank for, Google no longer has that page cached, so it drops it from ranking. My question: Does this assumption sound accurate? If so, I'm assuming over time that our past ranked pages will show up once again after Google recrawls those pages and saves them in their cache. I have several sites that were affected with this: boatcovers.iboats.com boatpropellers.iboats.com iboats.com Thanks in advance for your input
Technical SEO | | tdawson090 -
Ranking via partial match
If I wanted to rank for "red hot widgets" and my domain was redhot.com, would it be better to obtain backlinks (via "red hot widgets" anchor text) pointing to: A) redhot.com (homepage) or B) redhot.com/widgets Many thanks.
Technical SEO | | martyc0 -
Rankings Last, google says no flags
I have a site thatsit.net.au I have never really promoted, but it used to
Technical SEO | | AlanMosley
rank ok, the other day I decided I should spend some time on it as its my own
site and potential customers expect to see my own site rank well. I did a bit
of checking and in Bing I come up in first 4 for Web Development Perth, that is in
the .au TLD for Australia,
but in Google I am like 700+. If I take this line out of my home page and put it in quotes “a local Perth web development company” I see I am the only person in the world to have
this long tail query in both Bing and Google. If I search for the same without
quotes in Bing I come up first. If I do so in Google, I come up absolutely last.
I thought I must be flagged, but Google have replied that there is no manual
action taken on my site. I have no answer for this, It is hard to believe if I am the only person in
the world to have a long tail term that I would come last for it. Any ideas? I hope Matt Cutts reads this, and can come up with an explanation
besides write good and useful content.0 -
My site ranking
Hello, I have a website and working more than 1 year ago,I worked hard last year and paid alot to make guys write articles from my website to other forums so my keywords rank high and got good visitors, then I get in much care in SEO and found SEOMoz with is very nice,when I downloaded the tool bar it was a shock to find my website is almost zero although the big effort I had, I can do more but I need to guide what I exactly need to improve my website,I almost read alot of the beginner PDF and got good information to work with and can hire people to help too. I did a real big work sharing my subjects and i can see them in top#5 google but for other sites and now i found I am still zero 😞 adding my links inside also didnt help or counted. attached the statistics of the website and the competitors site to let me know which important things to take care to jump over. would be very thankful for detailed help, Best Regards 1_01308477251.png 1_01308477465.png
Technical SEO | | nesr_20200 -
Lost page rank, am I in the sandbox?
Hi, Our page rank was 5 for the last 3 months. Before it was 4 for a long time. Today our page rank dropped to 0 and I have no idea why.. We didn't buy any links or did anything wrong.. I also checked every keyword rankings we are on but we didn't loose our spot in any keyword.. Is it a short term thing, or am I in the sandbox? How can I fix this problem or avoid from a worse situation..? www.gourmetmarketing.net We just changed the site template few times in last two months.. Thanks
Technical SEO | | onurkiyak0