Are provincial third-level domains bad for SEO?
-
My prospect's domain ends in ".on.ca" (Ontario, Canada).
The structure of their site is companyname.on.ca (main page) and all other pages are sub-folders (companyname.on.ca/page-name-1
All pages are no more than two levels deep.
I'm wondering if anyone knows if the provincial sub-domain (.on.ca) presents an SEO challenge?
-
"most provincial level domains are reserved for government institutions" - I didn't know this, very interesting bit of info there!
It would be very hard to say if they had been definitively hindered but IMO it's seeming more and more likely
-
Not a problem
-
Thank you.
-
You're correct. As a Canadian, I wouldn't be concerned with a county level domain. For example: thismotel.ca but a .com would be better as they also attract customers from outside of Canada.
But they have a provincial second level domain. .on.ca. (thismotel.on.ca), no site can be found under just thismotel.ca and a search for WHOIS on CIRA results in this message "The domain name requested has usage restrictions applied to it."
Based on my research they've likely had this domain since before 2010 as now most provincial level domains are reserved for government institutions.
I'm thinking they will likely need a new domain for user experience alone, but I don't know if the fact they have a provincial second level domain has hindered them in the past with their SERP rank.
-
To echo what's been said:
-
no clear SEO downside of you using the TLD .on.ca
-
there may be benefit to procuring other TLDs for your domain name, particularly if:
-
.com is available,
-
you serve other provinces or other countries (and not just Ontario), and
-
your search competitors tend to use non-provincial TLDs (e.g. .com, .ca, .org, etc)
-
-
You are right but my POV is that although it's a different situation, the same limiting factors might come into play. Event with just one site with one region based TLD, these points from Google are still valid (mostly, some can be ignored):
Country-specific domain
Cons:
- Expensive (can have limited availability) - still relevant but also since this cost is already paid, of little concern to OP
- Requires more infrastructure - this is irrelevant as it's just one site so loads of infrastructure won't be needed
- Strict ccTLD requirements (sometimes) - still relevant but also since this cost is already paid, of little concern to OP
-
Pros:
- Clear geotargeting - this is highly relevant and could, IMO, if Google had written the documentation correctly - also have been listed in the cons pile
- Server location irrelevant - n/a
- Easy separation of site - n/a
So the main thing to focus on here is this statement from Google on country-specific domains:
"Clear geotargeting"
... now "clear geotargeting" can be highly beneficial, it can give your site and pages more 'relevance' for a specific area. But it's a double-edged sword! If you have international ambition, it can be a limiting factor (that's really what I was getting at) and it could make ranking internationally, very difficult indeed. It would mean that when OP does decide to go international (if that time ever comes) OP will either require a network of domains which could be costly in terms of setting up all the required infrastructure
So although OP's setup might be ok 'for now', later it could become an unwieldy leviathan which proves to be... not very scaleable. Or at the least, not so easily scaleable
So OPs decision is, does OP want to have some local gains now at the cost of having a more difficult time later when OP scales the site, or is OP unwilling to make that trade?
And think of this: Google have pretty much stated numerous times that 'locked' geo-targeting (to one specific area, either through TLD choices or Google Search Console) can make it much more difficult to rank outside of the specified area. One could make the assumption that for provincial TLDs, if Google starts interpreting them in a similar way - it could be hard to rank even outside of the local province. That could be a real thorn in OPs side later, though right now it might matter much
The truth is no approach is intrinsically 'good' or 'bad' for SEO. It entirely depends on OPs goals, KPIs and ambitions (to which we are not currently party)
-
I may have misunderstood, but I don't think 22Eighteen was asking about having multiple sites with different TLDs targetting multiple areas, I got the impression that this was a single site that happened to have a provincial TLD.
-
Google haven't extended this documentation to cover provincial third-level TLDs but if you look here:
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/182192?hl=en
... there's a table on the page (scroll down) which you might find quite useful. It outlines the various pitfalls of different types of local-specific URLs. I'd expect this kind of stuff to hold true for the newer provincial TLDs
-
I've never come across any issues with using a variety of TLD from a purely SEO point of view. I would argue that they can have some effect on CTR (which could indirectly affect your rankings) if you have competitors that use "more important" TLR with the same subdomain, e.g. yourdomain.co.uk vs yourdomain.com, but in your case, with a company name, this seems less likely to be an issue. While I would recommend getting hold of the other domains (if they haven't already) and redirecting, I would suggest migrating to a different TLD if they have used the original domain for a long period.
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
-
Subdomain or Country Code Top Level Domain
Hello Friends, I am planning to develop my website for other languages. which one is best for SEO? (The main English website is well ranked in google) 1. de.example.com (subdomain may obtain rank faster as it is part of the main website?)
Web Design | | Bold
2. example.de (this is a completely new one; so not easy to get rank?) thank you
Barsbold0 -
Advice on estate agent website SEO next steps
Hi everyone, I have been working on the SEO for this website for a while now and have had a good amount of success increasing the traffic and rankings. However our main hurdle is improving conversions on the actual website - we want to encourage more people to book a valuation. Does anybody have any suggestions on how we can improve this? The website is www.richardkendall.co.uk Thank you
Web Design | | sophiecrosby970 -
We added hundreds of pages to our website & restructured the layout to include 3 additional locations within the sub-pages, same brand/domain name. How long could Google take to crawl/index the new pages and rank the keywords used within those pages?
We added hundreds of pages to our website & restructured the layout to include 3 additional locations within the sub-pages, same brand/domain name. The 3 locations old domains were redirected to their sites within our main brand domain. How long could Google take to crawl/index the new pages and rank the keywords used within those pages? And possibly increase our domain authority hopefully? We didn't want our brand spread out over multiple websites/domains on the internet. This also allowed for more content to be written on pages, per each of our locations service's, as well.
Web Design | | BurgSimpson0 -
Blogging for SEO in Muse 2017
Can anyone give advice about SEO - specifically blogging in Wordpress and embedding it in your Muse site - that is specific to the 2017 updates. I found a lot of negative information, but that was mostly on forums from 2+ years ago. On their own forums, Muse says that you can get SEO plugins that help with this, but I am not sure I can trust those with clients yet. I have worked in Wordpress for years, but prefer the design freedom adobe provides. Specifically I am worried about whether the traffic to the site would be credited to the wordpress blog (on a different URL) or if it positively impacts my own URL used for the muse site. Would it be considered duplicate content? Also, are there any solutions that I don't know to ask about? Thanks in advance for listening.
Web Design | | Jesiwicks0 -
On site SEO opinions
Hi all, I have been testing different configurations for my on-site SEO for a while now and I think I am pretty much there. However it is always nice to know what other SEO's think about my keyword density and usage. My site is http://www.tomlondonmagic.com I am curious as to what you think regarding landing page content, whether you need lots or text or little text? I have just removed links in the text as I feel I want to keep as much juice on my landing page as possible. Thanks all!
Web Design | | TomLondon0 -
‘80-90% of SEO already done for you in Wordpress’ Am I missing something?
Hi there, I’m looking for some feedback on a statement made on my Facebook Page re Wordpress and SEO. Please understand I wouldn’t class myself as an expert but I am competent and achieve satisfactory results for clients, more so since becoming a SEOmoz Pro user, I’ve just had some great results for a client using SEOmoz guidelines in ‘On Page SEO Reports’ thank you very much! A comment however made on my FB page has got my interest…. “as you (kn)no(w) google loves WP and will get listed quicker as 80 to 90% of your SEO is already done” Does Wordpress (or Joomla for that matter mentioned in the same conversation) have some SEO advantages that Google loves as the poster would have me believe, can I save time and effort working in word press from an SEO point of view? I use the age old techniques of targeting key phrases and words and distributing them accordingly. Creating internal link structures with ‘key worded anchor text’ etc before embarking on any off page SEO. Do any of you vastly experienced (in comparison to me) SEO folk have any insight into what this statement refers to? I did not gather any references to SEO advantages in Wordpress or Joomla in the Enge and Fishkin et al book The Art of SEO, or any of the other books I’ve read, to develop my knowledge on SEO for the benefit of my clients and of course my pocket. J
Web Design | | JemRobinson0 -
What is the difference of HTML5 and web 2.0? What is web 2.0 and is this better for seo?
A little bit confused with the new stuff. The web 2.0 webpages are so much better? What changes?
Web Design | | Naghirniac0 -
To many scripts in my homepage. This is a problem in SEO?
I adding a lot of new features to my website: JS animated, menus, google translate, alexa counter, google analytics, salesforce, and so on. My website is full of scripts and im worry about the SEO. Is that an issue?
Web Design | | Naghirniac0