Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Best URL structure for SEO for Malaysian/Singapore site on .com.au domain
-
Hi there
I know ideally i need a .my or .sg domain, however i dont have time to do this in the interim so what would be the best way to host Malaysian content on a www.domainname.com.au website?
www.domainname.com.au/en-MY
www.domainname.com.au/MY
domainname.com.au/malaysia
malaysia.domainname.com.au
my.domainname.com.auIm assuming this cant make the .com.au site look spammy but thought I'd ask just to be safe?
Thanks in advance!
-
Google has stated they are better now at relating subdomain content to the TLD domain, but you're probably still better off using a subfolder. If you do go with a subdomain, make sure to link them in your GA code for better reporting.
There are so many languages spoken in Malaysia that this domain issue is really not going to help visitors on your site. If you're going for consistency, you'd need subfolders or subdomains for all supported languages. If you're only using English, then I wouldn't even consider this change. Simply use www.domainname.com.au/malaysia/ to host content relevant to this market until you can get your TLD. This would send the strongest signal to both search engines and site visitors that your content is targeted for Malaysia.
-
I'd choose one of the top 3 options listed as subdirectories are going to better associated with the root domain than subdomains. Moz has done several tests of this with one of their latest recaps here: http://moz.com/blog/subdomains-vs-subfolders-rel-canonical-vs-301-how-to-structure-links-optimally-for-seo-whiteboard-friday. From Rand's WBF:
You're asking, "Should I put my content on a subdomain, or should I put it in a subfolder?" Subdomains can be kind of interesting sometimes because there's a lot less technical hurdles a lot of the time. You don't need to get your engineering staff or development staff involved in putting those on there. From a technical operations perspective, some things might be easier, but from an SEO perspective this can be very dangerous. I'll show you what I mean.
So let's say you've got blog.yoursite.com or you've got www.yoursite.com/blog. Now engines may indeed consider content that's on this separate subdomain to be the same as the content that's on here, and so all of the links, all of the user and usage data signals, all of the ranking signals as an entirety that point here may benefit this site as well as benefiting this subdomain. The keyword there is "may."
Cheers!
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
-
Do we lose Backlinks and Domain Authority of URL when we change domain Name?
Have 1 performing domain (Monthly - 4M visitor ) now we want to change domain name ( Brand name like SEOMOZ to Moz ). I have general knowledge about domain changing prevention tips like 301 redirection and other thing. My concern is about backlinks and DA. How can I prevent any lose from SEO Point of view. (backlink lose) Do I need to change all backlink form source or redirection is enough to get all reference traffic from that backlinks?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | HuptechWebseo0 -
Why to add a product id in the url
Hello ! shop.com/en/2628-buy-key-origin-the-sims-4-seasons/ Why will people use a product id in the link? Is there any advantage like better ranking or else?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | kh-priyam0 -
Negative SEO - Spammy Backlinks By Competitor
Hi Everyone, Someone has generated more than 22k spam backlinks (on bad keywords) for my domain.Will it hurt on my website (SEO Ranking)? Because it is already in the top ranking. How could I remove all the spammy backlinks? How could I know particular competitior who have done this?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | HuptechWebseo0 -
Is domain redirection a good method for SEO?
I have a question and need suggestion from you guys. I’ve searched for my question on Google but don’t get exact information what I need. Maybe I can’t search perfectly.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | kamishah
Let me explain my confusion:
I’ve checked backlink profile of a website. He is not using his main domain while doing comment backlink. He put his another domain while doing comment backlink. The another domain redirect to the main domain. Why he use another domain while doing comment backlink?
Is it helpful to get better rank on Google? For example: My Main Domain = solutionfall.com
Another Domain= xyz.com (It redirect to solutionfall.com)
He just uses xyz.com while doing comment backlink. Thank You so much1 -
Forcing Google to Crawl a Backlink URL
I was surprised that I couldn't find much info on this topic, considering that Googlebot must crawl a backlink url in order to process a disavow request (ie Penguin recovery and reconsideration requests). My trouble is that we recently received a great backlink from a buried page on a .gov domain and the page has yet to be crawled after 4 months. What is the best way to nudge Googlebot into crawling the url and discovering our link?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Choice0 -
Why does expired domains still work for SEO?
Hi everyone I’ve been doing an experiment during more than 1 year to try to see if its possible to buy expired domains. I know its considered black hat, but like I said, I wanted to experiment, that is what SEO is about. What I did was to buy domains that just expired, immediately added content on a WP setup, filled it with relevant content to the expired domain and then started building links to other relevant sites from these domains.( Here is a pretty good post on how to do, and I did it in a similar way. http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2297718/How-to-Build-Links-Using-Expired-Domains ) This is nothing new and SEO:s has been doing it for along time. There is a lot of rumors around the SEO world that the domains becomes worthless after they expire. But after trying it out during more than 1 year and with about 50 different expired domains I can conclude that it DOES work, 100% of the time. Some of the domains are of course better than others, but I cannot see any signs of the expired domains or the sites i link to has been punished by Google. The sites im liking to ranks great ONLY with those links 🙂 So to the question: WHY does Google allow this? They should be able to see that a domain has been expired right? And if its expired, why dont they just “delete” all the links to that domain after the expiry date? Google is well aware of this problem so what is stopping them? Is there any one here that know how this works technically?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Sir0 -
Recovering From Black Hat SEO Tactics
A client recently engaged my service to deliver foundational white hat SEO. Upon site audit, I discovered a tremendous amount of black hat SEO tactics employed by their former SEO company. I'm concerned that the efforts of the old company, including forum spamming, irrelevant backlink development, exploiting code vulnerabilities on BB's and other messy practices, could negatively influence the target site's campaigns for years to come. The site owner handed over hundreds of pages of paperwork from the old company detailing their black hat SEO efforts. The sheer amount of data is insurmountable. I took just one week of reports and tracked back the links to find that 10% of the accounts were banned, 20% tagged as abusive, some of the sites were shut down completely, WOT reports of abusive practices and mentions on BB control programs of blacklisting for the site. My question is simple. How does one mitigate the negative effects of old black hat SEO efforts and move forward with white hat solutions when faced with hundreds of hours of black gunk to clean up. Is there a clean way to eliminate the old efforts without contacting every site administrator and requesting removal of content/profiles? This seems daunting, but my client is a wonderful person who got in over her head, paying for a service that she did not understand. I'd really like to help her succeed. Craig Cook
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | SEOptPro
http://seoptimization.pro
info@seoptimization.pro0
