CcTLD vs subfolder for international SEO
-
In what situations is subfolder better than ccTLD, and vice versa.
-
No problem, glad it was helpful.
Having a country specific IP isn't a deal breaker when it comes to ranking in specific countries. I've heard that it can have some effect i.e. if your website is hosted in the UK and your primary audience is the UK, then it may help a little. But I haven't seen this first hand.
I think the primary focus should be on getting solid hosting and uptime, regardless of where it's located. If I have a UK focused domain, I'd rather have a solid hosting company where my website is fast and based in the US, than a UK based IP address that is slow
-
Thank you for the helpful reply and the link.
I don't see anything info about whether a country specific IP address is a prerequisite for ranking in country specific search engines?
-
Hi there,
There are a bunch of ways to answer this question and things will change depending on your situation, but I'll give you an overview which will hopefully help your situation!
The first thing to say is that a ccTLD is only designed to help you target a location - not a language. For example, example.co.uk would naturally default to target users who are in the UK. Within this, you may target the English language or other languages, but it will generally only show to users in that location.
If you are looking to target multiple locations and want to use the ccTLD approach, then you will need a ccTLD for each location that you want to target. There can be advantages to this such as users being familiar with their "own" ccTLD and you can focus 100% on one domain and keep all of the content focused just on one location. There are disadvantages which include the maintenance, upkeep and marketing for several domains rather than one. Which leads into the subfolder question...
Subfolders are generally easier from a maintenance perspective because it's a single domain, often running off a single CMS and any equity or authority that you build up in one domain will help all subfolders for each country/language. Subfolders also make it easier to target variations of location + language.
For me, my advice is usually to go with a single domain + subfolders if you do not have the resources to build, maintain and promote several domains at once. If you have a team and expertise for each location and language who can each "own" a different domain, then ccTLDs or gTLDs make more sense.
It's also worth a read of this Moz post for more detail:
https://moz.com/blog/guide-to-international-seo
Hope that helps!
Paddy
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
-
International Market
Hello Moz friends, I am new to the tool and I was wondering if anybody has a best practice for international markets. I used to work with a different tool before and handling international markets has definitely been a challenge for it. What is the best way to set up campaigns/ keyword lists? By country? By topic? How helpful is the keyword explorer and reporting for international markets? I really appreciate your help.
International SEO | | LisaGerecht0 -
Targeting International Markets on the Web
Hello Moz community, I have a popular news website that we are looking to target multiple countries (all English first). So I know (1) a hosting provided (ip address) in that country and (2) a target extension (.co.uk) will help us. Am I missing anything else that can help when targeting international markets? What I'm struggling with is the duplicate content. I can't copy the content over to the extension because of the bad practice of duplicate content. Is it possible to have the same content on both websites and let Google know that it lives at the .com extension? If so, would those websites containing duplicate content still rank? And we would want to target different languages later (for example Spanish). This would be different content because it is in a different language, correct? Thanks for your help Moz community! Cole
International SEO | | ColeLusby0 -
International websites : hreflang
Hi, i'm looking for good examples with 'href lang' tag (rel="alternate" hreflang="x") Have you examples of websites with this tag? Thanks D.
International SEO | | android_lyon0 -
Same domain with different google effect seo ?
I have a domain www.abc.com for US market. Now i want to sell same services in Australia. I am thinking to buy www.abc.com.au . Because i think i will get rank more faster for .au in Australia because of .au . What do you guys suggest ?
International SEO | | afycon0 -
Country-specific SEO
Hi, my client offers courses that whilst based in Manchester, England are mainly attended by people in countries such as Georgia, Libya and Nigeria etc. The people that attend the courses are fluent in English. We're looking at performing country-specific SEO and I have a few queries. The plan so far: Obtain TLD's in each target country. These TLD's would be hosted on the same server as the core site based in England. Option 1: Each TLD would be a microsite with content specific to the country including geo-signals, in English. Option 2: Each TLD would 301 redirect to the core site, i.e. example.sa redirects to example.com/sa/ and this country-specific section would have relevant geo-signals. So I have 3 questions at this point: 1. Most-all of the tips I have seen about country-specific SEO assume that the content should be translated to the native tongue although in this case, the audience are fluent English speaks. Does this make a difference? Is it okay to use English and still be able to rank in country-specific search engines? 2. Between options 1 & option 2 - which would be the optimum setup? 3. Last question, if we obtain the TLD's I hear that it's not necessary to also host that TLD in the target country, is this right? Thanks.
International SEO | | lokito0 -
Pop-up to select country. Any negative SEO effect?
Hi there! We have similar websites in different countries (it's an ecommerce site). Some times, those websites share the same language and, for example, people from Mexico end up in a page from our website in Argentina. Therefore they see our products in their language buy in a foreign currency. We would like to show them a pop-up (like a shadowbox) depending on their IP to allow them to go to their local website. There wouldn't be any redirect. Would that affect our rankings in any way? Would Googlebots see that as well? Thanks!
International SEO | | jorgediaz0 -
SEO in the UK
Will soon be starting to do SEO for a client in the UK and wondered if there was anything I should do differently for what I do in the United States?
International SEO | | hwade0 -
Australia specific SEO tips?
For those who are conducting SEO here in Australia: A lot of the info I read, and there is a lot, is generally from the States or UK it seems. Are there any things in particular I should look out for when doing SEO in Australia? Are there any SEO tips that are particular to Australia only? What directories are a must in Australia?
International SEO | | iSenseWebSolutions0