Redirection based on country and impact on rankings
-
I have a website that ranks number 1 in google.co.uk for its main key term and ranks number 4 in google.com.au.
However i would rather that visitors in australia see domain.com.au rather than domain.co.uk.
Is there a way to achieve this using some clever 301s without impacting the rankings in australia and so that the .com.au starts to rank in place of the .co.uk
OR
Would you advise launching a .com.au version of the site hosted separately with unique / re-written content on it.?
-
Hi Hannah,
Thanks for this this was what i was looking for in terms of advice. I was only a bit skeptical about having an australian site that ranks as well as a uk site on page one. and if they are both giving out the same info how useful would this be.
The linkbuilding shouldnt be too difficult.
Thanks for your help!
Prav
-
Sorry! Misunderstood you
Yes, you could launch a .com.au but even if you have created Australian content I'd probably still be inclined to implement rel-alternate-hreflang annotations in your sitemaps; as the content will still likely be very similar.
The only issue with this is that your new domain won't have much in the way of link equity so it still might not rank without some link building effort on your part.
A further alternative would be to get yourself a generic domain like a .com and split into subfolders - /uk and /au. You'd then only have one site to build links to rather than two...
However the process of migrating from your .co.uk to your .com (and the potential to lose rankings whilst the search engines figure out what you're doing) might make this option unattractive.
I guess I'm saying launching the .com.au is probably quicker, cleaner and less risky but be aware you'll probably need to do some link building too.
I hope this helps,
Hannah
-
Thanks for this hanna, its the homepage ranking for the same term in both UK and Oz.
i have been told that when the Ozzzies see a .co.uk they are less likely to click on the result.
if i launched a .com.au version of the site with unique content but deliveroing the same info do you think this would be an issue?
-
Hello there,
I'd suggest that employing redirects is unlikely to result in the .com.au site ranking instead of the .co.uk version - essentially all you're doing is pushing any Australian visitors who come to you over to the Australian version of the site.
In order to try get the appropriate versions of the site ranking you might try implementing rel-alternate-hreflang annotations in your sitemaps - see http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=2620865
I'd also recommend including things like local bricks and mortar addresses, local telephone numbers, displaying local currency etc to help the search engines understand which locations you're trying to target.
I hope this helps,
Hannah
-
You could use IP re-directs, but they are notoriously innacurate especially if people are using proxies.
Obviously showing a .co.uk in Australia is not the best, but it is ranking high. One idea if the domains are the same and have the same content is to only target UK in webmaster tools with the uk domain and .com.au for Australia. This may not solve it though and may impact rankings.
Your best bet would be to do the Geo redirects. I wouldn't think there would be that many issues as you don't have hundreds of different countries.
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
-
404s on subfolder - how to redirect?
Hi all,
Technical SEO | | MFSMarketing
we have a lot of 404s to subfolders. Eg
www.website.com/blog-post-title/imagename/
www.website.com/blog-post-title/author/ We don't have these subfolders or blog posts anymore.
How do i redirect them? These links (404s) don't seem to have any value or backlinks. Thanks,
Stef0 -
Do you still loose 15% of value of inbound links when you redirect your site from http to https (so all inbound links to http are being redirected to https version)?
I know when you redesign your on website, you loose about 15% internally due to the 301 redirects (see moz article: https://moz.com/blog/accidental-seo-tests-how-301-redirects-are-likely-impacting-your-brand), but I'm wondering if that also applies to value of inbound links when you redirect your http://www.sitename.com to https://www.sitename.com. I appreciate your help!
Technical SEO | | JBMediaGroup0 -
Bing rankings question
Hi, We just wrapped up a website redesign about a month ago. The content stayed primarily the same. Once we launched the new site all of our rankings in Google stayed the same but we lost rank for all competitive keywords on Bing. I looked in Bing Webmaster tools and it doesn't show any penalties but it does show that we have too many H1 tags. I don't think the H1 tag thing is the issue but maybe. Do you know what could be causing this?
Technical SEO | | BT20090 -
150 products 301 redirect to HOME page, any impact?
If redirect 150 products to the home page, will I be penalize? It does not look like I can have access to cPanel on this platform, BigCommerce and i moves my old domain to this plateforme, the only option I might have his to redirect everythings to home page. Thank you, BigBlaze
Technical SEO | | BigBlaze2050 -
Google ranking downgraded
On Sept 29th our website 'keyword' rankings who totally destroy. We were always #1 to #2 for these keywords 1. listing presentation
Technical SEO | | RandyRoussie
2. real estate presentation Our website is: http://www.agentpresentations.com We asked Google through Webmaster Tools to reconsider the site and they replied back saying nothing was wrong. We run Google Adwords and we contacted them and they looked at the keywords and sent screenshots to us showing the ranking we still there. But they are not... as proven in Webmaster tools. So Adwords told us to ask Webmaster Tools to reconsider the site again. Nothing yet... What do you suggest?0 -
Not ranking well in Google
Hi, I am new to Seomoz,I have some little doubts regarding <title>tag.</p> <p>Can i target 3 words in the title tag. Currently i am on top for one keyword, and i cant get the rest two in top positions. Here is my website, can anyone review my site please.</p> <p>xxx(dot)ridpiles(dot)com with keyword hemorrhoids treatment</p> <p>I have good amount of backlinks, but still something i am missing. I have 100% unique content.</p> <p> </p> <p>Regards</p></title>
Technical SEO | | Dexter22387874870 -
My site ranking
Hello, I have a website and working more than 1 year ago,I worked hard last year and paid alot to make guys write articles from my website to other forums so my keywords rank high and got good visitors, then I get in much care in SEO and found SEOMoz with is very nice,when I downloaded the tool bar it was a shock to find my website is almost zero although the big effort I had, I can do more but I need to guide what I exactly need to improve my website,I almost read alot of the beginner PDF and got good information to work with and can hire people to help too. I did a real big work sharing my subjects and i can see them in top#5 google but for other sites and now i found I am still zero 😞 adding my links inside also didnt help or counted. attached the statistics of the website and the competitors site to let me know which important things to take care to jump over. would be very thankful for detailed help, Best Regards 1_01308477251.png 1_01308477465.png
Technical SEO | | nesr_20200 -
Domain Redirect Issues
Hi, I have a domain that is 10 years old, this is the old domain that used to be the website for the company. The company approximately 7 years ago was bought by another and purchased a new domain that is 7 years old. The company did not do a 301 redirect as they were not aware of the SEO implications. They continued building web applications on the old domain while using the new domain for all marketing and for business partner links. They just put in a server level redirect on the folders themselves to point to the new root. I am on Tomcat, I do not have the option of a 301 redirect as the web applications are all hard coded links (non-relative) (hundreds of thousands of dollars to recode) After beginning SEO; Google is seeing them as the same domain, and has replaced all results in Google with the old domain instead of the new one..... My questions is.... Is it better to take the hit and just put a robots.txt to disallow all robots on the old domain Or... Will that hurt my new domain as well since Google is seeing them as the same? Or.... Has Google already made the switch without a redirect to see these as the same and i should just continue on? (even the cache for the new site shows the old domain address) Old Domain= www.floridahealthcares.com New = www.fhcp.com *****Update after writing this I began changing index.htm to all non relative links so all links on the old domain homepage would point to fhcp.com fixing the issue of the entire site being replicated under the old domain. I think this might "Patch" my issue, but i would still love to get the opinion of others Thanks Shane
Technical SEO | | Jinx146780