Splitting a site into 2 international sites
-
Hi all,
I have a client that currently has a .com domain that ranks in both the US and the UK for various search terms. They have identified a need to provide different information for UK and US visitors which will require 2 versions of all pages. If we set up a .co.uk domain and keep the .com obviously that will be a brand new UK site which will have zero rankings.
Any suggestions as to the best way to introduce this second version of the content without losing UK rankings?
Thanks
-
Thanks - that helps.
-
Hi Dan,
Is there a reason you want to go for a .co.uk? Why not just add the UK content into a /uk/ version of the site and set HREFLANG to handle the different international pages? That way you don't lose any rankings and all you are doing is moving content around on a current domain.
No need to take it to another site.
Here is some good reading that will help you setup the site and make sure you don't miss anything:
- https://mza.bundledseo.com/blog/the-international-seo-checklist
- https://sites.google.com/site/webmasterhelpforum/en/faq-internationalisation
- https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/189077?hl=en
The fact that is is on the same domain doesn't matter because HREFLANG will tell Google which content is for which country.
-Andy
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
-
International SEO & redirects - do these solutions make sense?
I’m currently working on SEO for an international website with subdirectories set up for each international version. The site is has never had any SEO previously and is having a lot of indexing and visibility issues. Also geotargeting seems very off in search results. I’ve diagnosed various issues and want to check my assumptions and solutions below make sense... The root domain uses a 302 redirect to display content from the /en-GB page. (302 redirects seem to be a default language fallback setting configured in the CMS) and they’re used for most key pages. I’m concerned these redirects are contributing to a lot of the issues with incorrect indexing. The en-GB is the default language version of the site. So far, the en-GB has been set as the canonical version too. Both the root domain and this subdirectory URL display the same content. (en-US is also a near duplicate page). All other international homepages appear only on their subfolder URL. Various SEO tools have been showing redirect loops (caused by language changing parameter versions of URLs being crawled that don’t have redirects on them) and issues with hreflang and canonicals. I believe the hreflang tags and canonicals have been ignored due to relative URLs being used for each, as search results don’t always contain the desired versions of the URLs (in terms of regional version and preferred canonical versions). My questions are: Could these 302 redirects be conflicting with hreflang tags? If so, I’m thinking they should be removed (if not made 301s). GSC doesn’t like the fact these are on key pages, as redirected pages are listed in the sitemap. Will changing hreflang tags and canonical tags to absolute URLs possibly be enough to fix these issues from what you can tell? (Or will redirects need to go too?) Is the en-GB correctly set as the canonical when the root domain is also accessible, indexed and using this page’s content within the CMS too? (I feel like the root domain should be the canonical version, but not sure that works together with other language version subfolders or with a redirect in place from root to subfolder). As an extra point to the last question, GSC has recently chosen the root domain as the canonical (despite en-GB being set as user preference) and is now choosing to deindex some international versions of the homepage as a result. Hoping that getting the hreflang tags fixed and possibly redirects removed should correct this ASAP. But perhaps this also confirms en-GB should be the canonical and marked X-default too. I hope that all makes sense and sorry it’s a small collection of related questions. Really appreciate any replies.
International SEO | | MMcCalden0 -
Managing multi-regional and multilingual sites
Hello, It's been a year since we launched our website and at first, we did it with a domain name called misitio.co. We have just bought the domain name mysite.com and my doubts are what should I do with the domains I have in other countries, for example .mx .br, should I redirect them to mysite.com or manage them independently? Thank you very much
International SEO | | Isabelcabreromunoz1 -
CcTLD vs subfolder for international SEO
In what situations is subfolder better than ccTLD, and vice versa.
International SEO | | MedicalSEOMarketing1 -
Site Ranking in all countries except USA
Hello, I have a site www.apdermatology.com in is ranking #1 for
International SEO | | element8design
"Dermatologist Chelsea Mi" "Dermatologist Chelsea Michigan" In Google in Canada, UK, Australia, Etc.. But in the USA it is on the 4th+ Page, it has been this way for weeks if not months. And does not seem to come up. I originally thought maybe that google was penalizing the site although, it comes up in all other counties. Does anyone have any recommendations how to resolve this, or what the problem may be? Thanks.0 -
Huge increase in US direct visits to a UK site, why?
Hi all, My UK website usually gets around 10,000 direct (Direct in Analytics) visits per month however for August this has shot up to 24,000! However the majority of these direct visits seem to be coming from the US and as a result the bounce rate is through the roof, 84%! Why would my UK based site suddenly be receiving huge amounts of US visits? Any ideas?
International SEO | | MarkHincks0 -
Best practice for multi-language site?
Recently our company is going to expand our site from just english to multi-language, including english, french, german, japanese, and chinese. I deeply understand a solid and feasible plan is pretty important, so I want to ask you mozzers for help before we taking action! Our site is a business site which sells eBook software, for the product pages, the ranks are taken by famous software download sites like cnet, softonic, etc. So the main source of our organic traffic is the guide post, long-tail keywords. We are going to manually translate the product pages and guide post pages which targeting on important keywords into other languages. Not the entire english site. So my primary question is: should I use the sub-domain or sub-category to build the non-english pages? "www.example.com/fr/" or "fr.example.com"? The second question: As we are going to manually translate the entire pages into other languages, should I use the "rel=alternate hreflang=x" tags? Because Google's official guideline says if we only translate the navigations or just part of the content, we should use this tag. And what's your tips for building a multi-language site? Please let me know them as much as possible Thanks!
International SEO | | JonnyGreenwood0 -
Multinational Sites - The main SEO issues
I currently work for the UK arm of a Company with headquarters in Germany - The have outlets in half-a-dozen European countries, and up until now each country has had it's own website. The group has decided that from next year they will close all the individual country sites and then run new sites each from a central .location, I guess with a shared database of products. I see the sense in having central stock control etc, but I'm worried about the SEO impact. I have searched Q&A and the blog but could not find much to help me. What I would like to do is to provide some advice and pointers at to what they should be aiming for, both in terms website structure and on-going SEO for each country. Any advice welcome, thanks in advance.
International SEO | | cottamg0