Help: Newbie trying to optimize for several international domains
-
We have three domain names co.nz, com.au and com. We are very new and have been told to optimize for co.nz first before going into com.au and com. Having said that, we have outsourced an seo company to optimize our co.nz site, however I would like to optimize the com.au and the com based on the information we currently receive for co.nz.
Any suggestions on how to go about doing this? I looked at our competition and it seems they have the same content across all 3 domains, but they have changed the meta tags for each domain and that's about it.
Any tips or ideas on how we could possibly do better? I know its early stages.... but as a newbie some advice around this would be great!
Thanks
-
I appreciate it if people tell me when I am on the wrong path.
-
I'm sorry gobro, but I had to thumb down your answer because, even if not completely wrong, it was too much generic.
Suggesting the beginners guide to SEOs to someone asking for International SEO, is like offering the Encyclopedia Britannica for consultin about a very specific topic :-).
Moreover, what Matt Cutts told and that you cites was proved incorrect by hundreds of professional specialized in International SEO.
-
I strongly suggest you to check the section dedicated to International SEO, which you can find in this part of the Learn SEO part of the Moz.com site.
Remember that if you published the same content, or even clone sites in different territorial domain names, risks are high of having very poor organic visibility for all of them.
Even if they are in the same language, remember that culture is different in those countries, as well that their English is not the same (New Zealand English has expressions that are not used elsewhere).
As gobro wrote, small things as currencies, addresses and any other "localization" elements are essential too for helping Google understanding what country a website is really targeting.
At the same time, then - as you can see more deeply in that section I linked above - you should implement the international seo mark up rel="alternate" hreflang="x-X".
Finally, remember to earn local links for each web site. Not only them are needed for making each website more authoritative, but also for reinforcing the geo-targeting of the websites themselves to Google eyes.
i.e.: if a website has more links from australian sites then american ones, that probably means that it is more relevant for australian people than american one, hence it should be shown more in google.co.au than google.com
-
You can do a lot better if that's really everything they did. This is a great resource to get started: http://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo
Side Note:
Matt Cutts told in a video in 2011, that it's not a problem to have the same content on like 3 or 4 top level domains, if they are for different countries but in the same language. But you should make sure that country specific words and for example currency signs are correct.
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
-
What is the best way to manage multiple international URLS
Hi All Our company is looking to expand into Europe (we are a UK based company) and we are planning to copy over our current .co.uk site to a .com one and create 301 redirects to maintain our SEO rankings. With the .com domain we were looking to use this as our main ecommerce site and then create sites for different countries in Europe. What we are unsure about is the best way to execute this in terms of the domain. Would it be best to have it setup as a domain structure such as: UK = www.example.com/gb/
International SEO | | MartinJC
Ireland = www.example.com/ie/
France – www.example.com/fr/ and so on. Or would we be better served creating sub domains for each country, example www.gb.example.com. Our main concerned is what is the best way to do this without hurting our SEO rankings. Thanks for the help.0 -
International SEO : Redirecting spanish visitors to spanish site
Hi There, I have a problem I need an advice for. I run an e-commerce site in French. Things are going well. I also run the Spanish version of this site. We are starting to sell. But nothing like French site. I have traffic coming to the French site from Spain from visitors with Spanish language and they don't buy anything. That is strange as the conversion rate is good. Si I want to redirect them to the Spanish site. We sell phone parts. Our SEO is mainly based on brands, make, and reference numbers. So keywords are almost the same in both languages. Of course, site.es is aiming at google.es, and site.fr at google.fr So I am wondering. If I redirect these visitors to the Spanish site, Will it affect french site's SEO? Thanks
International SEO | | Kepass0 -
Google Analytics Search Console for International Countries
Hi Moz Community, Our e-commerce site is trying to gauge the opportunity of certain queries for specific countries. I'm trying to use the search console data presented in GA to do this. I'm looking at the top queries filtered by each country and also the top landing pages for each country as well. The non filtered data for queries and landing pages is completely different than by country and some if it looks wrong. For instance, our most popular query by impressions shows 0 query impressions in the US once filtered by country. Our site is based in the US so this doesn't make any sense, the same is true for landing pages. Is the queries and landing page data in GA under search console a combination of all countries? Since our target is set to the USA in search console is this data technically US based? How is this data so off? Thanks for answering!
International SEO | | znotes0 -
URL structure of international hotel website
Hai all, Question about URL structure of international hotel website in Amsterdam: hotelcitadel.nl. Some information: - Target group are mainly english speaking guests from UK and US. Besides that guests from the Netherlands and some other countries. - Website in 6 languages. - No geo-targetting; just language targetting with hreflang annotations. Current situation: hotelcitadel.nl = dutch language version and hotelcitadel.nl/en = english language version We are thinking about changing this to: hotelcitadel.nl would become english version and hotelcitadel.nl/nl would become the dutch version. Reason: root domain hotelcitadel.nl has by far the most links,and making the root domain the english version could help the rankings in english speaking countries like UK and US. What do you think, would this be a wise idea? Regards, Maurice
International SEO | | mlehr0 -
How can I restrict the domains country by country?
Hello, I have Two Domains one is xyz.co.uk and other is xyz.com Now, my main target for .com is United States, and I don't want to open that .com domain in any other country especially India. The same with the .co.uk, I dont want to open .co.uk in other countries. I did it with some developer help but it gave me redirected error in Google Webmaster. Can anyone please guide me how I can do this the proper way ? And Other issues is, how can I implement ,if any user in United States open xyz.co.uk than he should redirect to the .com version. Thank you.
International SEO | | AmitTulsiyani0 -
Duplicate content on .co.uk and .com TLDs with different domain authority
What's the best approach to take for a site that has identical content on the .co.uk and .com versions of the root domain? The .co.uk version has a significantly higher domain authority (54 vs 32 according to Open Site Explorer - see attached screenshot). But it's an international company with its largest customer base in North America and customers in over 60 countries. The company does not intend to localize content. My initial thought before seeing the domain authority was to 301 redirect the .co.uk to the .com domain to consolidate all the link equity under one international TLD. However, I wondered if the higher domain authority for .co.uk would be passed on if we did this. I figured that a non-UK audience would be more likely to trust a .com site. I still think 301 redirecting .co.uk to .com might be the best strategy in the long term. But is there likely to be a dip in rankings and organic search volume in the short term until .co.uk is replaced in the index by .com? I'd really appreciate your thoughts on this. CbVnfSO.png
International SEO | | Torchbox0 -
Need advice - International SEO strategy
Hello Moz ! I've been working for some months on a very interesting SEO project. I even opened some discussions on it (Multi Regional website - Folder strategy, Multi Company websites) with amazing feedbacks from the community. INITIAL PROJECT Set up an international website with different subsidiaries name, 1 person to manage the whole web, different locations / regions / languages and same products. INITIAL IDEAS For the beginning of the project we opened a main website in .com with subfolders for the other subsidiaries .com/es ... However our business is mainly in English so we decided to focus harder (closing the .com/uk, using a unic com/blog, opening more pages etc.) on the main domain in .com CURRENT ISSUE How to rank locally our services with: Main domain in .com Last Google updates against link building Most of customers searching in English in different countries Company working in more than 80 countries, through 13 subsidiaries **IDEA ** I was thinking about using our blog to focus 3 months on a thematic around one service (blog post with link to the services article on our website, guest blogging with link to a blog post, discussions on Linkedin around the thematics, etc.) QUESTION What could be the best strategy to rank locally our products in this case ? Hope you can share your best advise. I guess I'm not the unique one to face this issue. So it'll be good to make a good strategy for all our community 🙂 Tks a lot ! Florian
International SEO | | AymanH0 -
Good or Bad? - buying a .com domain name that is already branded under a different county code like .nl but a different business model completely
For example - www.example.com (I purchase) and www.example.nl (is in use and well optimized but a different business model) Seeing that this business (example.com) will be based here in the USA and theirs (example.nl) is in the Netherlands and they are both completely different models, is this ok? They are well optimized for the name and it will be a little bit of a challenge to outdo them here in the US as far as the name goes, but the name is really good and the client wants it!
International SEO | | Cyclone1