Help! Choosing a domain for a European sub-brand when working as a partner in North America
-
Background:
Let's say there's a European company ABC.com, they have some presence in the US already for a lot of product brands in a certain space (let's say they make widgets). ABC Co gets 1,600 searches a month and all of that volume centers around the widgets they are known for.
ABC Co purchases a company that makes gears, let's call it Gears Inc (gears.com). Gears Inc. was known for making gears in Europe, but their brand is not known in the US (search volume 0).
Ideally, I would keep the Gears Inc. brand and build up the presence in the US, separating it from ABC Co. ABC Co wants to maintain their brand and eliminate Gears Inc. But we've received permission to keep the Gears brand for bringing that product to the US ... we will have an uphill battle building up the brand recognition, but at least it won't get lost in what ABC Co is already known for in the US. (ie: we don't want calls for widgets).
Domain Situation:
ABC Co. has redirected gears.com (DA 1) to a subdomain: {gearmakers}.abcco.com (DA 66) ... they have agreed to place a landing page under that 301 that links to the regional domains (theirs in the EU and ours in the US/North America). They are unwilling to let us use or purchase gears.com OR 301 gears.com directly to our domain.
What we're trying to do:
- build Gears Inc. as a recognizable brand
- when someone searches "gears inc", this domain would rank first
- create a simple "brand domain" that a less-tech-savvy users could easily navigate to
- needs to have recognition in US, Canada and Mexico
I don't know if this helps or provides anything more?
The question is what do we use as our domain name?
Any feedback is appreciated!
-
When selecting a domain for your European sub-brand while operating as a partner in North America, coherence and accessibility are paramount. Opt for a domain that reflects the essence of your European identity yet resonates with North American audiences. Consider incorporating elements like geographic indicators, industry-specific terms, or brand keywords to enhance visibility and relevance, like wiredale.com related to electronics or tools. Prioritize simplicity and memorability to facilitate easy recall for potential customers on both continents. Additionally, ensure the domain aligns with your brand's values and long-term objectives. Collaborate with your team to brainstorm and evaluate options meticulously, aiming for a choice that fosters unity and recognition across borders.
-
Your question is quite convoluted, so I hope to answer it correctly :-).
My first thought when reading your question was: "Why do they want to associate two so different set of products?".
I mean, I fully understand that you are moved by SEO consideration, but - honestly - SEO should not enslave business considerations and logic.
Widget and Gears are two totally different kinds of products and, especially, they have very different kind of buyer personas. In other words: the buyer personas targeted by the widgets website not necessarily are interested in gears.
Plus, also on an entity level, there's no connection between widgets and gears, hence also for Google would be hard to start understanding for what entity set is relevant the website if it is not presenting itself as a broader ecommerce store.
So, strategically, I would not start with SEO (bear with me...) as the main channel for the new gear website, but on branding, creating a dedicated website in a dedicated unique domain name.
Hence, I'd create campaigns to support the launching of the new website and line of products, so to create a solid backlink profile from the start, which will obviously help in rankings.
Said that, I would take advantage of the visibility of the Widget website for announcing the new Gear one (I suppose the widget site has a news section and an About Us section, under which you can create a landing page explaining what other "companies/websites" are part of the "Businesses company owning the Widget website".
-
I'm sure I didn't quit follow everything you mentioned on here but honestly a subdirectory (aka abcco.com/gears) would be what I would do. They are already pointing the domain to a subdomain, can they change it to a subdirectory? That directory could utilize the domain authority of abcco.com and when people go there it could look different than the main abcco.com brand or have a little of the ABC co brand to give gears some credibility but be unique enough to be it's own thing.
If you have to use a unique domain name you'd need to do some research on the gears they sell and keywords surrounding. I tend to look for domains with some brandability behind them (not sure brandability is a word).
GetGears.com or something like that.
Hope that helps.
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
-
Help with international targeting
Hi all! Okay, so we've got a site, let's say example.com - we sell training courses worldwide with a particular focus in just 8 countries.
International SEO | | JamieM1611
Historically, we've never targeted users in different countries effectively, we've just got the example.com that floats about ranking in different countries, but our content is dynamic (obviously a big SEO no-no - we pick up the IP of the user and show the content relevant for that country without the URL's changing)
This obviously presents an SEO flaw in that we can effectively target people in our key countries effectively. So, we're introducing the targeting as subfolders (/uk/, /ie/ etc) my questions are: 1. Would this be the correct implementation of hreflang AND canonical tags for the URL: https://www.example.com/es/ 2. The second thing I was wondering is the 'international targeting' in search console. We haven't (because of our current set up) set a target country for www.example.com (because of the lack of regional targeting and dynamic catch all) - would we be better leaving that untargeted and only specifying the regional targets for the new subfolder URLs (www.example.com/us/ /uk/ etc) or should we set the .com as the USA as default? We'd be a bit weary of doing this because most of our traffic comes from the UK and South Africa, so I'm assuming it would be best to leave this alone unless someone else has a different opinion? I know Googlebot almost always crawls .coms from US, which is why we were thinking of leaving the .com as the 'catch all' and specifying the US version. 3. Finally, we do have a lot pages which don't really change at all (like the about us page) would we give these any special directives to avoid duplicate content (as the content on these won't be changing at all?) or do we just keep the structure as shown above? I.E would the about us page (even though not changing) still be (with the canonical): URL: https://www.example.com/about-us/ (x-default) ? Thanks in advance!0 -
Google Search Console International Targeting - Works for Hungary, but not Ireland - Why?
company.com (root)
International SEO | | scottclark
USA - lang="en" | GSC target: USA (shows US site in SERPs for "companyname" search)
company.com/hungary
Hungary - lang="hu" | GSC target: Hungary (shows Hungarian site in SERPs for "companyname" search)
AWESOMENESS company.com/ireland
Ireland - lang="en" | GSC target: Ireland (shows US site (doh!) in SERPs "companyname" search)
NOT RIGHT! It is our theory [please weigh in!] that because we don't have a company.com/usa folder, the TLD targeting (EN) is overriding other English language sites in some manner. In other words, the reason it's not overriding Hungary is because it's a different language. What must we do to get the Irish site ranked for "companyname" searches and to show by default in Ireland?0 -
How i rank in Latin America and Spain?
Hi everyone! I need to rank my site with Spanish content in Latin America and Spain. Do I choose a neutral Spanish to try to rank in every country or make content for each country? If you choose a neutral Spanish, which is the most indicated (Spain, Colombia, Mexico, other)?
International SEO | | Ewerton.RD0 -
Best way to improve USA rankings on .co.uk domain?
I have a client with a .co.uk domain. They currently rank #1 in 13 our of 14 keywords for UK. They rank #1 for the majority of the terms in the USA but want to improve on them. What would be the best route?
International SEO | | TomKelly0 -
International advice.... can anyone help and check my site?
Hi ALL, I'm running 3 sites, internationally .com, com.au and co.nz Can anyone please look at my site and give me feedback about the hreflang tags, I ran a W3C and i have errors stating https://validator.nu/?doc=http%3A%2F%2Fzenory.co.nz for www.zenory.com and its relevant domains
International SEO | | edward-may0 -
High domain authority for shady link directories
Hi there, First of, I'm new to the moz community and I love it already! So much to learn and to do for getting better and better at SEO. Really helpful! Okay, my question. If I analyze (top 5) sites with the open site explorer some of them have a link profile consisting just of link directories. How come they rank so high with just link directories backing them up? The directories often are just ongoing lists of links without any form of content. But the authorities of the directories (page and domain) are often between 40-60 or even above! How come they get such high authority? And do I have to use them for my linking profile or will it hurt me? On moz I learned not to use those directories because it's quality > quantity these days. But it almost seems as if this is not true because only half of the top positions in my keyword-market actually make use of more then just link directories. I must say that I operate in the Dutch markets so maybe different rules apply in the Netherlands? Thanks in advance and kind regards, Luuk van Dongen
International SEO | | VanDongenOnline1 -
Country name displayed after domain name in google SERP
our online shop targets clients in the US and worldwide (same URL - no subdirectories - currency changes based on IP). when searching in google.ie or google.no for our site google displays in the SERPS "US" or "United States" after the URL for our site, but for most other US competitors it does not show the country in the SERPS. I deleted our google places listing 2 weeks ago, since I suspected it may be related, but no change so far. In google webmaster tools we have targeted the shop domain to United States, which may be another factor. Unfortunately we can not undo this setting since without it our google US ranking for the most relevant competitive keyword drops from position 8 to position 100+. Server location is in Germany which despite lots of US links and US contact info and USD currency appparently makes google think that the site is not targeting the US. Does anybody know what triggers the country name in the SERPS (google places or webmaster tools or other) and can give advice if there is any way to get rid of it.
International SEO | | lcourse0 -
.US VS .COM TLD Domains
Hi there! I have a spanish client who wants to enhance its online presence on the US. US is their most potential country. Its ok to create a .US website (and geolocalizate in GWT to the USA) and a .COM domain for the rest of ther word (without orientation) with the same content? Thank you so much. Jabi
International SEO | | overalia0