Chop down a .com to local domains - Is it worth it?
-
I'm wondering what would be the best approach for further expanding the online presence of the business I work for. Let me start off with the resources at my disposal.
We own visafirst.com and run the business for 7 years. All that time we had the domain online. There was a penalty back in 2005, I think (for hidden text). I've been dealing with the domain since 2007.
In the last few years we got translations in French, German, Italian, some pages in Japanese, and recently we got it translated in Spanish. The translations don't hold all the products the English version has. We translate only products which we can offer to the targeted audience. So far, I use language folders /en/, /fr/, /de/ etc. I have the settings in Google's Webmaster Tools set to the most appropriate country (the one we want to attract customers from). We own a lot of local domains .co.uk, .ie, .fr .de, .es, .jp, etc. Currently we either use them for small projects, like AdWords (to improve CTR) or have them point to the .com version with canonical.
I like nothing more than the idea of having the local domains appear in local search results, without that inflicting damage on the .com version. If I decide to go with the local domains and redirect (probably I will use canonical to avoid the redirect mess) the existing portions of the site to their relevant local domain - visafirst.com/fr/ to point to visafirst.fr etc., I'm afraid that I would take too much away from the domain in terms of content and backlinks.
So, I'm faced with the following question - Should I risk it with the local domains where we have physical presence, or should I continue using the flagship domain.
Also, would local domains improve the CTR a lot? I will test that with AdWords in the days to come, however it would be nice to know if someone has faced this before.
Thank You,
Svet Stefanov
-
Thanks Ryan! The folder structure is what saved the site when one of our bigger sites went for local domains. THey were poorly maintained and in 6 months time they went under. What I will do is try the local domains on AdWords. I will use the canonical link element to try and pass any possible links the local sites might gather.
The flag idea is great. We will refresh the design soon and we will have them in mind.
In a way I will use AdWords to try and gather some natural links. At one point I might test the new domains on their own, once the have enoigh links.
Stephen, I'm afraid I can't use the redirect in this case. That is, if I don't want to be lynched by a mob of angry web developers. However, your idea makes sense. I will give it a go on a smaller site and see what happens there.
Thanks guys!
-
Hi Svet.
If I understand your question, you are asking if it is a good idea to break up your existing .com site into smaller sites, each related to their respective country. The reason you are considering this approach is to improve your ranking in local search.
I would suggest that you already have the ideal structure. You have a .com domain, your domain name includes an important keyword, and you have the proper folder structures for each language.
Some suggestions I would offer:
-
replace the letter identifiers for each language at the top of your site with flags representing each country. For people who do not speak english, letters can be confusing but people do very well recognizing their country's flag
-
consider specific landing pages per country, not language. British English is not the same as American English. The same idea applies to Spanish and other languages. Words, spelling and phrases can be very different. If you want to rank well in local-based search, focus the local area, which is more then just the language.
- build local links. If you want your /es/ page to do well, obtain links from within Spain pointing to the page. Your site is well established (7 years), covers 9 languages, but has a relatively weak link profile. Create a link campaign to generate links for your country-based pages.
-
-
Test with one.
I would redirect as a much stronger signal than canonical. Theres not much difference in the workload of either one for your devs
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
-
.com versus local domains
Hi all, One of my clients has local domain websites in various parts of the world (co.uk etc. etc.) and there has always been a discussion about where a move from local domain (the current set-up) to a targeted .com domain (i.e. .com/uk) would benefit from a SEO perspective. The main reasoning (seo-wise) that keeps coming up is that there'd only be one domain to link to which would help with link juice being passed around. Any thoughts as whether this would actually be the case or if this possible benefit would be outweighed by other cons? Recent moves (local to .com) from a few websites (the Guardian newspaper in the UK being the most recent one off the top of my head) has made me start thinking about it again! Diana
International SEO | | Diana.varbanescu0 -
Poor Google.co.uk ranking for a UK based .net, but great Google.com
I run an extremely popular news & community website at http://www.onedirection.net, but we're having a few ranking issues in Google.co.uk. The site gets most of its traffic from the USA which isnt a bad thing - but for our key term "one direction", we currently don't rank at all on Google.co.uk. The site is located on a server based in Manchester, UK, and we used to rank very well earlier this year - fluttering about in position 5-7 most of the time. However earlier this year, around July, we started to fall down to page 2 or 3, and at the start of this month we don't rank at all for "one direction" on Google.co.uk. On Google.com however we're very strong, always on page one. We're definitely indexed on .co.uk, just not for main search term - which I find a bit frustrating. All the content on our site is unique, and we write 2-4 stories every day. We have an active forum too, so a lot of our content is user-generated. We've never had any "unnatural link building" messages in Webmaster Tools, and our link profile looks fine to me. Do we just need more .co.uk links, or are we being penalised for something? (I can't imagine what though). It certainly seems that way though. Another site, "www.onedirection.co.uk" which is never updated and has a blatant ad for something completely unrelated on its homepage, ranks above us at the moment- which I find quite frankly appalling as our site is pretty much regarded as the worlds most popular One Direction news and fan site. We've spent the last few months improving the page-load times of our site, and we've reduced any unneccesary internal linking on the site. Approx 2 months ago we launched a new forum on the site, 301'ing all the old forum links to the new one, so that could have had an impact on rankings - but we'd expect to see an impact on Google.com as well if this was an issue. We definitely feel that we should be ranking higher on Google.co.uk. Does anyone have any ideas what the iproblems could be? Cheers, Chris.
International SEO | | PixelKicks0 -
.US VS .COM TLD Domains
Hi there! I have a spanish client who wants to enhance its online presence on the US. US is their most potential country. Its ok to create a .US website (and geolocalizate in GWT to the USA) and a .COM domain for the rest of ther word (without orientation) with the same content? Thank you so much. Jabi
International SEO | | overalia0 -
Geo-targeting a sub-folder that's had url's rewritten from a sub-domain
I have a client that's setting up a section of his site in a different language, and we're planning to geo-target those pages to that country. I have suggested a sub-folder solution as it's the most cost effective solution, and it will allow domain authority to flow into those pages. His developer is indicating that they can only set this up as a sub-domain, for technical reasons, but they're suggesting they can rewrite the url's to appear as sub folder pages. I'm wondering how this will work in terms of geo-targeting in Google Webmaster Tools. Do I geo-target the sub domain or the sub folder i.e. does Google only see urls or does it physically see those pages on the sub-domain? It seems like it might be a messy solution. Would it be a better idea just to forget about the rewrites and live with the site being a sub domain? Thanks,
International SEO | | Leighm0 -
Use country-specific domains or stick to already strong .com domain?
We run an online store with the majority of our customers coming from 4 different European countries. The site is accessible through TLD's of all of these countries. However our .com domain currently has the most links pointing to it and the highest domain authority. Unfortunately, we are unable to tell through which TLD visitors reach our site. The niche is rather competetive, and therefore I am unsure whether it would be worth it to solely use our .com domain for the English language, and try to rank for each of the seperate languages with its own country-specific domain. **Question/discussion: **Will it be worth the costs and time to spent to build links for the country specific domains in these countries, or should we focus on making our .com domain stronger and use it for all countries? I'm aware of the benefits of ranking with a domain in the country the user is in. Note: We have major duplicate content issues at this moment, due the content being available in different languages, on a handful of domains. On each domain, users can view the site in different languages. In addition, the language indication in the url is not very clear (?lang=x) so I believe this should be improved to make it easier for search engines to tell which language is presented. If I choose to use a different language for each TLD, then the language flag in the navigation on the site will point to a different domain, so each language is hosted on 1 domain and there is no more duplicate content. However, I'm afraid this will lead to lower rankings, as the (strong) .com domain will no longer host the content in different languages.
International SEO | | 1200wd0 -
Multilingual site - separate domain or all under the same umbrella
this has been asked before with not clear winner. I am trying to sum up pros and cons of doing a multilingual site and sharing the same domain for all languages or breaking it into dedicated subdomains e.g. as an example lets assume we are talking about a french property portal with an english version as well. Assume most of the current incoming links and traffic is from France. A) www.french-name.fr/fr/pageX for the french version www.english-name.com/en/pageX for the english version B) www.french-name.fr/fr/ for the french name (as is) www.french-name.fr/en for the english version the client currently follows approach A but is thinking to move towards B we see the following pros and cons for B take advantage of the french-name.fr domain strength and incoming links scalable: can add more languages without registering and building SE position for each one individually potential issues with duplicate content as we are not able to geotarget differenly on web master tools of google potential dilution of each page's strength as we will now have much more pages under the same domain (double the pages basically) - is this a valid concern? usability/marketing concerns as the name of the site is not in english (but then people looking for a house in France would be at least not completely alien to it) what are your thoughts on this? thanks in advance
International SEO | | seo-cat0 -
Is it necessary to choose local server?
Our business was in US and planed to start new business in UK. From our research, *****.co.uk domain get higher ranking in google.co.uk. So, we choose domain *****.co.uk. We can set up target area in Google Webmaster tool. Is it necessary to choose local server in UK? Thank you in advance! Leo
International SEO | | LeoWu0 -
Do non-english(localized) URLs help Local SEO and user experience?
Hi Everyone, This question is about URL best practice for multilingual websites. We have www.example.com in English and we are building the exact replica of English site in German www.example.de. On the Geman site, we are considering to translate some portions of the URLs for example last folder and file name as seen below: example.de/folder1-in-english/folder2-in-english/folder3-in-german/filename-in-german.html Is this a good idea? Will this help SEO and user experience both? or the mixed languagues in URL will confuse the users? Google guidelines say that this should be ok. Would love to get feedback from SEOMOZ community! Thanks, Supriya.
International SEO | | Amjath0