Switch from CCTLD to .com - Am I missing anything?
-
We currently have 14 international sites. (.co.uk, .fr, .es, .com.au, etc) and (language differences aside) the content is the same on all.
I want to move this content from example.co.uk to example.com/uk/ (and from example.com.sg to example.com/sg/) to consolidate our domain authority, for brand consistency, and to reduce the overhead of maintaining 14 different domains. Our .com has by far the most domain authority (90) and often outcompetes newer smaller sites like .com.sg in local search) Other sites, however, (like .co.uk DA74) do quite well locally.
My goal is to improve the performance of those sites with a low DA, without hurting the larger sites, and also to avoid the disappearance of local content in local search. e.g. currently when a user searches for "widgets" they find example.co.uk/widgets/ but in future I want them to find example.com/uk/widgets
My plan is to redirect pages with 301 redirects, and use rel-alternate and hreflang metadata to manage indexing. So in the example above, I'd 301 example.co.uk/widgets to example.com/uk/widgets, then use the following metatag on that new page to suggest that it is the UK english version (for users in the UK) of a canonical page in the .com:
(this is in accordance with the suggestion on this page http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=189077)
My question is: Am I going to severely damage the ranking of, e.g., UK pages in UK search engines by doing this? Is there a better way to do this?
Any input greatly appreciated. Thanks,
Dennis
-
Actually the methodology you have described is correct.
Just two tips/reminders:
- the correct use of the rel="alternate" previews that in the .com pages (for instance) you indicate the other 13 country targeting URLs of your site. That is needed to not seeing, for instance, your .com pages outranking your Spanish ones in Google.es because of a better link profile (or Page Authority);
- for that reason I do really suggest you to implement the rel="alternate" hreflang="x" in your sitemaps.xml more than into the code of every single page of your site (you don't want to slow your page speed, don't you?).
About what bnspak write, the correct tip is this:
- create the new site, with the new country level subcarpet arquitecture;
- implement cross domain canonical tags in your old ccTld domains
- cancel your ccTlds sitemaps.xml files in GWT and resubmit them... doing so you are explicitly asking Google to recrawl them asap
- Googlebot crawls the ccTlds and discover the rel="canonical"
- Do the 301 page by page
Finally, ccTld or Subcarpet. The decision should be just based on SEO, but on business. Yes, you're going to loose the geotargeting strenght of the ccTlds, but you acquire a stronger domain authority for those sites which were maybe struggling alone. Then, if you plan a correct and effective Content Marketing/Link Building strategy, you can add links to those country targeting subcarpets, links which will benefits all the site as an all.
-
It's hard to argue the contrary when Matt Cutts is saying "Go with CCTLDs", but I get the feeling that his point is an "all things being equal" explanation.
My problem is that all things are not equal. I have a mixed bag. I have an old strong .com (DA 90) and a long list of newer less strong domains (down to DA 27)
Re: one site ranking in multiple countries. Our .com already does this. As one example, the .com homepage ranks on the first page for one of our main head keywords in google.fr, whereas the highest ranking page on the .fr for the same keyword is at the top of page 3.
So "losing a ton of ground" doesn't make a lot of sense here, because traffic isn't going to gravitate towards local content if it's already lingering down around the third page. Wouldn't it make more sense here, to have a french language version of the homepage on the .com and use hreflang to make sure that's the version that ends up in French search results?
I know that 301's don't pass all authority, but they pass some, my feeling is that 13 sites-worth of redirection will have a strong effect on an already strong .com.
Microsoft apply this exact model (one .com, multiple languages in subdirectories, relevant results in local search) and ok, they have a strong domain, but doesn't this show that this is possible?
It would be great to hear about actual experience of similar consolidation moves, successes or failures?
-
I wouldn't drop a ccTLD to move to a .com. There are several benefits you lose
- Most engines recognize ccTLDs as specific to a given country. This can help with ranking for those engines in that country
- Traffic from specific countries tends to gravitate towards a ccTLD (i.e. French are more likely to click on a .fr)
- Engines tend to give a pass on duplicate content to ccTLDs. See Matt Cutts on point.
You're going to lose a ton of ground doing this. Trying to make one site rank well for multiple countries is hard enough. Add in the lost rank from your ccTLDs (a 301 doesn't move all PR).
-
Any time you 301 content it's going to take search engine a while to catch up. You may run into issues with duplicate content for countries that speak all the same langue such as the UK and the USA.
However I had recently read the if you rel=canonical the old page to the new locations it speeds up the indexing process. I'll see if I can find the link for you when i get home later.
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
-
.co.uk to .com domain move Dec 26th, still 40% down - do I risk moving back? (desperate)
Hi All, I'm desperate for a bit of advice. I run www.tyrereviews.com which has been my project since 2006, and after LOTS of hard work over 15 years held 1000's of P1 positions in the SERPs. I recently moved from the original .co.uk to .com to aid with future internationalising plans. I was very careful not to change ANYTHING else, just 301 from the UK to the .com and updated everything in webmaster consoles. My background is development and I spent weeks triple researching everything to make sure I followed all the google best practices, as this is my life's work and primary income source. From a tech point of view the change went perfectly, but sadly google quickly started deranking the new domain, and now two months on it seems to have stabilised at around 40% down on traffic year on year and mostly dropped from the UK region. This is mostly from medium to long tail keywords. One such example is "Michelin Primacy 4" in google UK, old webmaster tools is showing my average position this time last year as 1.4 and now I'm 12.4! The .com site is geo targeted to the UK by both webmaster tools and href lang tags. So, my question is, so I keep waiting, or do I give up andrisk the switch back to the uk domain before it's too late? Thanks in advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TyreReviews0 -
UK company not ranking .com domain in UK
Hi, we have a slight issue with our website. We have been proactively doing SEO for the past year, but we have run into a slight issue. Our website is ranking for search terms everywhere except Our local area (UK) We have tried creating separate sections of our site targeted just at the UK In search console. As well as targeting the whole site as UK preferred and setting the hreflang tags to en-GB. Nothing seems to be working, any ideas? Thanks in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEODale1 -
Having problem with multiple ccTLD sites, SERP showing different sites on different region
Hi everyone, We have more than 20 websites for different region and all the sites have their specific ccTLD. The thing is we are having conflict in SERP for our English sites and almost all the English sites have the same content I would say 70% of the content is duplicating. Despite having a proper hreflang, I see co.uk results in (Google US) and not only .co.uk but also other sites are showing up (xyz.in, xyz.ie, xyz.com.au)The tags I'm using are below, if the site is for the US I'm using canonical and hreflang tag :https://www.xyz.us/" />https://www.xyz.us/" hreflang="en-us" />and for the UK siteshttps://www.xyz.co.uk/" />https://www.xyz.co.uk/" hreflang="en-gb" />I know we have ccTLD so we don't have to use hreflang but since we have duplicate content so just to be safe we added hreflang and what I have heard/read that there is no harm if you have hreflang (of course If implemented properly).Am I doing something wrong here? Or is it conflicting due to canonicals for the same content on different regions and we are confusing Google so (Google showing the most authoritative and relevant results)Really need help with this.Thanks,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | shahryar890 -
Should we host our magazine on a subdomain of E-com site or its own domain?
We host a online fashion magazine on a subdomain of our e-commerce site. Currently we host the blog which is word press based on a subdomain ex: stylemag.xxxxxxx.com First question is are all the links from our blog considered internal links? They do not show in the back links profile. Also would it be better to host this on its own domain? Second question Is my main URL getting credit for the unique content published to the blog on the subdomain and if so is it helping the overall SEO of my website more then if it and the links were hosted on its own wordpress.com
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kushvision0 -
Periodic DNS Switching for Major Website Updates - Any Downsides?
A company is performing some major updates to a website and the proposal to go live with the updates was explained as follows: Once the updates are done on the testing environment and the site is ready to go live, we switch the DNS to the testing environment and then this testing environment becomes the production site. And the old production site becomes the new testing environment. Are there any potential negatives to this? Is there a name for this technique? Of course, we've already considered : additional hosting cost potential performance differences- reinstalling and setting up server settings - SSL, etc.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Motava0 -
Website.com/blog/post vs website.com/post
I have clients with Wordpress sites and clients with just a Wordpress blog on the back of website. The clients with entire Wordpress sites seem to be ranking better. Do you think the URL structure could have anything to do with it? Does having that extra /blog folder decrease any SEO effectiveness? Setting up a few new blogs now...
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PortlandGuy0 -
Any good link buying companies ( http://www.text-link-ads.com )
Hi guys I have been passed this website: http://www.text-link-ads.com Has anyone ever used text-links ads before?? Can anyone please show me the way and suggest any really good lin buying companies? I am really fiding it hard to find good places to place inbound links into our website.. Thanks Gareth
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GAZ090 -
.com ranking over other ccTLD's that were created
We had a ecommerce website that used to function as the website for every other locale we had around the world. For example the French version was Domain.com/fr_FR/ or a German version in English would be Domain.com/en_DE/. Recently we moved all of our larger international locales to their corresponding ccTLD so no we have Domain.fr and Domain.de.(This happened about two months ago) The problem with this is that we are getting hardly any organic traffic and sales on these new TLD's. I am thinking this is because they are new but I am not positive. If you compare the traffic we used to see on the old domain versus the traffic we see on the new domain it is a lot less. I am currently going through to make sure that all of the old pages are not up and the next thing I want to know is for the old pages would it be better to use a 301 re-direct or a rel=canonical to the new ccTLD to avoid duplicate content and those old pages from out ranking our new pages? Also what are some other causes for our traffic being down so much? It just seems that there is a much bigger problem but I don't know what it could be.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DRSearchEngOpt0