Buying a .IE domain and forward to .com domain?
-
Hi,
One of our clients currently owns a .com domain and they are interested in marketing into the Irish market.
They have asked us if they should buy a .IE domain name and then forward it onto their .com one.
I know that Google has been clamping down on people who use the 'Backdoor' method of buying 100's of keyword rich domains and forwarding them onto their website but would it really make a difference if they just bought one .IE domain?
Keen to know if anyone has done this sort of thing before and their experience.
Thanks
-
You're welcome.
Hreflang is the tag you should use. There are plenty of tutorials and articles about it. I'm on the phone now, as soon as I get a PC I'll update with some links.
----UPDATE---
Resources that I've promised:
The hreflang Tags Generator Tool - Aleyda Solis (Moz's associate)
Use hreflang for language and regional URLs - Search Console Help
Hreflang Attribute - MozHope it helps.
GR. -
Thanks Gaston,
The site doesn't have any different languages on it, just English.
When using the Google.ie search engine literally every time I search for a term related to our clients it comes back with a list of .ie domains in the results. Every so often there is a few ie.domainname.com results as well though.
We will be creating landing pages on the site to target Irish specific audiences are there any Href tags that we would use to tell Google that these are for an Irish market etc.?
Thanks for the help
-
Hi David.
I've tried that strategy and didn't work. I've came to realize that, as that domain was never indexed by google and it never recieved links and visits from, there was no leverage to gain.
In the case that your site has different languages of trying to target specific pages to the irish search engine, you might want to use hreglang tag.
Hope it helps.
GR.
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
-
Advice needed; Scrap mature .co.uk and move to .com, or run two separate domains?
Asked before, we have a .co.uk domain name and it has grown with rankings over many years with many quality links made to it. Since, we also have acquired the .com of our agency brand, and want to also focus on US market - something hard to do with a UK domain. However, we aren't sure which route to go from here... Should we keep the .co.uk active and allow that to focus on the UK market, and grow the .com from scratch with a site that looks the same with slightly different content and interlink the two with regional flags. Or move across to the .com totally and scrap the .co.uk. I know we could do a redirect and save a good number of the links made on the .co.uk, but is that worth even doing? And what would the risk be of having two sites the same with similar content? Since this isn't an area I've dealt with before, we are interested to get some real advice to understand which decision is right given the scenario.
Local SEO | | thewebpreneur0 -
What is the 2020 Google ranking weight for EMD (exact matching domains)
I know EMD's ranking factor have been significantly reduced in the past decade, but do you think it can help at all in 2020? Thanks, Ryan
Local SEO | | RyanMeighan0 -
Considering Switching Domain from .ca to .com for Service Area Business - What is the Risk / Reward?
Hello, Thank you to anyone who takes the time to share their thoughts on this. I will preface this by saying that I am very new to the community and have lots to learn, so please forgive any obvious errors on my part. That having been said am very happy to receive positive criticism and feedback 🙂 Quick Background: We are a high end mobile wellness business based in Toronto Canada offering in home/office servicing including: yoga, pilates, nutrition, meditation, chiropractors, etc... As we are expanding we are transitioning form new leads coming from business partners and word of mouth to driving new business online As such we have an new Squarespace site (which is the first site I ever built, so any feedback is welcome) and are venturing into social media, SEO, local citations etc... for the first time We have a significant content catalogue originally for client and instructor education that we are now repurposing for this new digital adventure but have not yet deployed While currently focused in Torotno, we have plans to expand to several other countries in the next two years. As the site is quite new and we have little content or incoming links I was thinking now is the time to switch to .com from .ca before we roll out Website: www.anahana.ca Risk Reward? & Other Issues? Both domains are currently verified with Squarespace, and it seems easy enough to switch. What could blow up by making this switch which I might not be aware of? Our emails and business card use the .ca, but I don't think this would matter too much 6-12 months out... is there something else I might be missing on this? .com and using subfolders or subdomains as opposed to country specific TLDs ? This is something I am still working on understanding, but from what I have learned thus far, if we are going to progressively roll out a large content library, is it not better from an SEO standpoint to have this all in one domain? Local SEO and legal considerations for TLDs when operating local Service Area Businesses. I am sure there are many other angles here that I am missing and am not really looking for any hard answer on much of this, but any general advice, suggested resources, and experienced insights would be extremely helpful. Thanks so much, cj
Local SEO | | CJ7770 -
Duplicate content on multiple domains
Dear all, I have bought 30 geo top level domains. This is for an ecommerce project that has not launcehd yet (and isn't indexed by Google). I am now at a point where I can change/consolidate all domains as sub domains or sub folders or keep things as they are. I just worry that link building would be scattered and not focused and that it might be better to concentrate the efforts on one domain. What are your views on this? Many thanks!
Local SEO | | UpMedio_SEO
Ami0 -
Domain Name Length "wiggle room"
So the general idea for domain names is around to keep it around 15 characters, but I'm considering getting a mycitywebdesign.com type domain specific to my location and it's 23 characters. No hyphens. The original site hasn't had any seo work on it, so the original won't lose any progress. What suggestions/experience do you have with this type of situation? Thanks in advance!
Local SEO | | blakewenloe0 -
Please help me choose which is the better brand name or domain name?
I am helping a friend and getting involved in looking at launching a taxi service in a major city. Now this is for one of the major cities of world. A big part of the branding of the company or service will be the unique and memorable telephone number this company owns. This company is not expected to be anything huge, just a good small local business. However, we are trying to utilise online marketing which I feel have not been utilised by this cector that much.. The telephone number is something as good as 100 1515, but slightly better. These numbers are hard to get hold of and even when there is one available it's often very expensive. So a big part of the company will be getting that number seen everywhere. As it's a regional business, just for that one city, and for taxi services having a good telephone number that people can easily remember is important. However, most people now use smart phones, and people will often search on their phones or ipads for "birmingham taxi" or "birmingham taxi service" and so on. I have the opportunity, as an example to either go with "getbirminghamtaxi.co.uk" or "getabirminghamtaxi". So the choice is between "Get Birmingham Taxi" or Get a Birmingham Taxi" - the difference being putting the "a" in the middle like a sentence. I also thought of exact match domain "birmingham taxi" or birminghamtaxi.co.uk but the owner wants between £3,000-£12,000 (so between $5,000-$20,000) for it. I feel with a domain purchased for just £3 ($5) I would be able to test the market, and if I found it was successful, we could then consider acquiring a more expensive EMD. I feel that services like private taxi hire firms are small tiny regional businesses, and they don't really do much on search and SEO. I feel if our one did, it would stand out, and I do think quite a few people search online for taxi's, and I know I do. I am also aware that there are now app's like Halo but there is room for a small business to thrive doing a lot online and offline marketing with a great number. This is not for Birmingham. I have just made that up. So I would welcome people's feedback in terms of which domain name would be best, with or without the "a"? If you have an alternative suggestion I would welcome that. Also if anyone has any other comments or feedback about this market, doing business, marketing, or any knowledge that you have that you would like to share with us - then that would be appreciated. Thank you.
Local SEO | | RyanShahed0 -
2 websites or one .ca and .com
Hi I have a client with a lighting business in Canada but ship to all US- they have ecommerce web site .ca and .com the .ca has always brought more traffic. (they have a store in Canada) they are now redoing the site and trying to decide should they have just one site and the other redirected to it or should they have two and which one the main one- they would like to sell to the us but are obviously stronger in Canada- don't want to lose on both sides.. Appreciate any help!
Local SEO | | maryk920 -
Using hreflang on multiple domains when one has been penalized
Hi, I have two sites. One is a new .co.uk site which contains duplicate information to a .ie site. Currently, if I do a search for the company name in Google.co.uk it returns the .ie site. The .co.uk site needs some localisation done and some links (really is brand new). I was going to place hreflang tags as follows on both sites:- The order would flip for the .co.uk site from the above order. However, just to make things interesting, the .ie site was hit by Penguin and it hasn't recovered yet (and won't recover for another few months while I fix the issues). So the question is, what should I do? Do I go ahead an let Google know for sure that these sites are linked despite one of them having been penalized? Or do I let Google think that there is a .co.uk site with duplicate content to another .ie site?
Local SEO | | Serpstone0