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.
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
-
AMP vs Responsive Design? Mobile SEO
Hello !! We are developing a new website with responsive design. As is recommended, the idea would be to have a unique site for mobile and desktop, with same content and same url for both devices, using responsive design to adapt the layout depending on the device. My doubt in here is about the AMP pages? If my website has responsive design, perfectly optimized for mobile do I need somehow AMP pages? As far as I understand, these amp pages would be useful if I had different pages for mobile, but this is not the case. Am I correct or am I missing something? Thanks for your help :
Web Design | | AutoEurope1 -
SEO Consulting for HUGE Website. How Big Is TOO Big Of A Change?
SEO Consulting for a HUGE Website. Their h1 tags have instagram/twitter, h2 have their menu/what's trending and h3 is the article title. Here's what I want to do... MY MAIN QUESTION: This site has tens of thousands of pages, all articles beyond the few dozen category/tag pages they have. If I change the structure to the following, will it be too much of a system shock to Google? Will this actually HURT them? Currently on the site: - h1 tags point to Twitter/Instagram sidebar widgets
Web Design | | BrianGilmore
h2 tags point to the menu/what’s trending section (which is the same on every page)
h3 points to the Title of the Article I want to change it to this: - h1 tags should delineate the article's name. That's all they should really be used for.
h2-4 should be reserved for article subheadings to be used by the editorial staff. EDIT: 30% of their >11 million monthly uniques come from search. I don't want to eff with that, but the way that NONE of their pages have optimized words, they have no sitemap, webmaster tools and are still doing this well makes me think that even putting in minimal changes to tidy things up will help them bring it to 70% organic search.0 -
Is it bad to have /index.php at the end of a uri?
Is it bad for SEO if traffic is directed to "http://www.example.com/someuri/index.php" instead of "http://www.example.com/someuri/" and would it be works setting up a redirect rule at htaccess level?
Web Design | | NoisyLittleMonkey1 -
Responsive design or mobile website for SEO
Because domains with a mobile version have better rankings in Google then domains with only a deskop version we're considering a mobile website. My web developer says that a m.domain.com is duplicated with the domain.com, and he recommends a responsive design. What is better for SEO positions in mobiles devices. A m.domain mobile website or a responsive design. What are influential factors?
Web Design | | remkoallertz0 -
SEO Issues From Image Hotlinking?
I have a client who is hotlinking their images from one of their domains. I'm assuming the images were originally stored on the first domain (let's call it SiteA.com) and when they were putting together SiteB.com, they decided to just link to the images directly on SiteA.com instead of moving the images to Site B. Essentially hotlinking. Site A is not using the images in any way and in essence is just a gateway for their other sites and in this case a storage for their images. It doesn't use those images at all, so it really doesn't get any benefits of the images being referenced since I read that Google sometimes counts that hotlinking as a "vote" for the original image. But again, since ite A doesn't use the images that are being hotlinked at all, there's no benefit for Site A. My concern is that it's affecting their SEO for Site B because it makes it look like Site B is simply scraping data by hotlinking those images from Site A. Their programmer suggested creating a virtual directory so that it "looked" like it was coming from Site B. My guess is that Google can see this, so then not only will it look like Site B is scaping/hotlinking images, but also trying to hide it which may send up red flags to Google. My suggesstion to them was to just upload the images correctly into their own images directory on Site B. They own the images, so there's not any copyright issue, but that if they want proper SEO credit for that content, it all needs to be housed on the correct server and not hotlinked. Am I correct in this or will the virtual directory serve just as well?
Web Design | | GeorgiaSEOServices1 -
Home page redirect - will this cause an SEO problem
Hello, We are using Wordpress to build a wiki site. The wiki plugin we're using (Wordpress Wiki lite) can only be set up on an internal page like nlpwiki(dot)org/wiki Can we redirect the home page to the /wiki subdirectory and use nlpwiki(dot)org/wiki as our home page? I've never done that, just wondering if it will be indexed as the home page or if there are any connonical issues. Thanks!
Web Design | | BobGW0 -
SEO and Modal Windows
Hi all, My website has a Login and Join Us option on every page in the site. Each Login and Join Us window pops up as a modal window. In other words, the user must interact with it before they are taken somewhere else (whether they close it or fill it in). It has come to my attention that this is being counted as duplicate content. Is there any way around this? It's calling duplicate content on practically the whole website. Thanks in advance!
Web Design | | Info12340 -
SEO downsides to minimalist (copy-light) homepage?
Curious for your thoughts on this - are there any SEO downsides to not having any substantive content on the home page (big background design)? We would obviously have appropriate page titles and link structure, etc. Our guess is that if the home page doesn't have much copy, that odds are that other specific pages will tend to perform better for non-brand search terms, which seems OK. If people DO find the homepage, it would likely be a brand search or an ad referral, in which case the minimalist, non-copy design would be conversion-friendly. Does that theory hold any water? I suppose a middle ground might be a single H1 line unobtrusively on the page. Thanks in advance for any insight, guys! Sincerely, Stephen
Web Design | | PerfectPitchConcepts0