Ecommerce site in Europe
-
A client is looking to expand their ecommerce business into Europe. They have already purchased a number of European brand domain names and want to start their expansion in Ireland.
Is it better to have a single website with pages translated for each language or a seperate site for each domain/country?
With Ireland the only obvious difference is the currency, language shouldn't be an issue. But if we choose seperate sites for each domain/country will having the same product content/descriptions especially in the case of Ireland be an issue?
Thanks in advance
-
Guys,
I'd like to thank you both for your answers and help with this. I have a much better idea of the way forward now. -
Remember also that you can geo-target subfolders in Google Search Console, creating a specific profile for the subfolder you want to geo-target.
Therefore, in your case, the domain.com/en-ie/ subfolder can be geo-targeted to Ireland.
All the other things suggested by Dan are correct.
Regarding using subfolders or a cCtld, don't think in terms of SEO but of business.
It is true that, if your main domain is very powerful, via internal linking you can give some initial boost to a your new geo-targeted /en-ie/ subfolder, but it is equally true that it is very hard, if not almost impossible, for an internal URL to earn backlinks naturally. In other words, the Irish Time will probably link to your home page (www.domain.com) instead of your "Irish" home page (www.domain.com/en-ie/).
So, if your brand is already know in Ireland or you have the possibility to promote it well from the very beginning, it can be worth starting from zero with a new www.yourbrand.ie domain name.
Finally, if you decide to go for the subfolder way, remember at least to set user browser 302 redirections (but - important - not forcing it every time), so that the users will always land on a /en-ie/ version of your site if they are using en-IE english in their browser (or 302 redirect via IP detection).
-
If you go with a single domain, you can use hreflang to cover duplicate content targetting each location, which works for same-language/different country.
From https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/189077?hl=en
'Some example scenarios where
rel="alternate" hreflang="x"
is recommended:- You keep the main content in a single language and translate only the template, such as the navigation and footer. Pages that feature user-generated content, like forums, typically do this.
- Your content has small regional variations with** similar content in a single language**. For example, you might have English-language content targeted to the US, GB, and Ireland.
- Your site content is fully translated. For example, you have both German and English versions of each page.'
-
Andy, thanks for your reply.
We secured the irish domain, proving we already operate in Ireland was the easy part.
I'm with you on a single site, single point of administration. My huge concern was with the duplicate content.
For this to work we need to secure the .com domain.
-
Ireland a bit tricky in registering a country domain - you have to prove you have a business in the country, even in the UK it can be difficult to get a domain.
Having different sites means doubling, tripping your SEO efforts, whereas if you have the one site you can use the existing links to boost your initial ranking in a country.
There a pro and cons for either method, but I always prefer 1 domain, then your content strategy is for one site so a blog post can be useful to multiple countries and you don't need to re-write the content.
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
-
Migrating Magento site to Shopify Plus without dropping in SERPS
We have been looking at moving our ecommerce store www.pretavoir.co.uk from Magento to Shopify Plus. However, as we rank quite well at present we are interested in hearing experience others may have had making this change and also any advice that you may have... Also, any general comments on Shopify appreciated..
Web Design | | seanmccauley0 -
Multiple sites using same text - how to avoid Google duplicate content penalty?
Hi Mozers, my client located in Colorado is opening a similar (but not identical) clinic in California. Will Google penalize the new California site if we use text from our website that features his Colorado office? He runs the clinic in CO and will be a partner of the clinic in CA, so the CA clinic has his "permission" to use his original text. Eventually he hopes to go national, with multiple sites utilizing essentially the same text. Will Google penalize the new CA site for plagiarism and/or duplicate content? Or is there a way to tell Google, "hey Google, this new clinic is not ripping off my text"?
Web Design | | CalamityJane770 -
How important is w3c validation for mobile sites???
So mobile sites are all the rave, but how many are doing it correctly and with all the different options which is correct or the best? For example I have a guy telling me that the mobile site must validate here http://validator.w3.org/mobile/ or here http://ready.mobi/launch.jsp?locale=en_EN However I have run many so called mobile sites like nike (m.nike.com) and those built by dudamobiles and all dramatically fail the above tests! Responsive is another key element of web design and the guys at twitter came up with bootstrap, so I ran these sites through the above validators and all have failed. I take this site as an example from ilovebootstrap.com, please note this is not my site but was top of thelist on here. Mobi Ready 2 / 5 - result poor mobile experience Results from google pagespeed Mobile 62 / 100 Desktop 83 / 100 So while it looks good on mobile devices it does not score well If you look at the google site: http://www.howtogomo.com/en-gb/d/why-get-mo/ The case studies listed all fail the validation tests, so my question is is it worth getting our mobile sites validated and will this affect rankings?
Web Design | | iprosoftware0 -
For a real estate website, is a different mobile site warranted vs a responsive site?
I researched the major real estate websites: Zillow, Trulia, Remax, Keller Williams, Century 21, etc. They all have a separate mobile site and not a responsive one. The client wants it to be easy to search for properties from a smartphone. Is it possible to get a responsive version of a real estate website on a smartphone?
Web Design | | MassMedia0 -
Live website is an addon domain - Need site old development url inaccessable from live domain
Hi everyone, I have a website which is built in Joomla 2.5. The development site is located at www,abc.com/subdomain/. We have set the site live using an addon domain which is www.xyz.com. The problem is, www.abc.com/subdomain/ is still accessible and being crawled by Google. How is the best way to make the development url inaccessible? Any help would be appreciated!
Web Design | | DougHosmer0 -
Wordpress Blog Providing SEO to Main Site
Hi, I recently started a very much "learn on the job" SEO position, transitioning from a copywriting background. We currently have a wordpress blog up and running (and producing some decent quality content too I hope!) at example.com/blog/ and a sign up page located at example.com (sorry, can't put the address right now) for a site that is being custom built as it's got some nifty software linking to back end systems. My question is whether the content on the blog will bring SEO benefits to the main domain or whether it'll just be for the blog itself? If the latter, should we navigate the blog onto the a separate page of the main site? Thanks so much! I'm learning as much as I can as quickly as I can, but somethings still get me in a little bit of a tizzy.
Web Design | | LeahHutcheon0 -
Site redesign and links?
I have a real estate website. On my sidebar I have about 16 links to pages on various neighborhoods. I templated my site using dream weaver so the same sidebar and links are on every page. I'm thinking of redesigning the sidebar and having one link that will take visitors to a page where all the neighborhood links will be and then from there visitors can choose whichever link to go to a specific neighborhood info page. I am doing this to clear space on my side bar for other content and links. What impact would this have on my home page? The website is bronxpad.com if anyone wants to check it out and provide feedback.
Web Design | | bronxpad0 -
Finally have a budget for a great seo ecommerce site but need help choosing wordpress, joomla, modx, magneto or? Thank you in advance for your generosity of time
We finally have a budget and want to dump our intuit/homestead site www.originalartbroker.com Our budget is 5k-10k but could do more if needed. I am slowly catching my competition with this homestead site that I built. But I do realize it is time to step back, figure out what is best, and hire a pro to get the job done. I am green in the seo and web development arena so please go easy on me and please help to point me in the right direction. Just went out on a limb a couple years ago playing with homestead.com site software and built what we have today. Didn't know anything about website development...it sort of just happened. I feel and know that homestead.com solution is hindering what we could be doing due to the bloated nature of the site and inability to perform such task as 301 redirects etc.... I have been able to slowly attain first page seo rankings on keywords based of the artists we carry using this po-dunk homestead platform to build my site after a ton of work education thanks to seomoz and a lot of you. But, have never asked for help and could really use some generosity of time in explaining a solution that would work best for our business. Do we just go with a wordpress site that is similar to our current setup and use their plugins? Do we use a cms software solution like magneto or joomla? We will only have 200-300 pieces at any given time. We are constantly selling and buying new pieces providing us content. We are need of a site that can perform well in terms of seo. I have heard of a lot of people talking about joomla, wordpress, and magneto. Would like to be able to have a product catalogue that ultimately sends whatever inventory we are uploading to our social sites and blogs so I don’t have to pump the product out to all of these sites. We offer free custom framing with our pieces and it would be nice to have a program that could wrap the photos of the pieces with the different frames for our customers. When I add a new piece I would like this software to have a predesigned product page that it plugs the information into. I would like it to create the url extension based of the artists name, medium used, and piece name to create unique and individual urls. I would like it to also create its own H tags throughout that product page according to the artist name description, and medium used. I would like to be able to sink this up to google merchant and other sites to carry our product. Bottom line is we sell art. We sell pieces by specific artists. We are constantly buying and selling. I need something powerful that keeps up with our content
Web Design | | forecastedinvestments1