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 geotargeting strategy: Subdomains or subfolders or country specific domain
-
How have the relatively recent changes in how G perceives subdomains changed the best route to onsite geotargeting i.e. not building out new country specific sites on country specific and hosted domains and instead developing sub-domains or sub-folders and geo-targeting those via webmaster tools ?
In other words, given the recent change in G perception, are sub-domains now a better option than a sub-folder or is there not much in it ?
Also if client has a .co.uk and they want to geo-target say France, is the sub-domain/sub-folder route still an option or is the .co.uk still too UK specific, and these options would only work using a .com ?
In other words can sites on country specific domains (.co.uk , .fr, .de etc etc) use sub-folders or domains to geo-target other countries or do they have no option other than to develop new country specific (domains/hosting/language) websites ?
Any thoughts regarding current best practice in this regard much appreciated. I have seen last Febs WBF which covers geotargeting in depth but the way google perceives subdomains has changed since then
Many Thanks
Dan
-
That isn't a domain at all - it's a sub-domain - what you've purchased there is yourdomain.uk.com - so your site is actually on a sub-domain of the domain uk.com
I'm guessing that in theory you could geo-target via Webmaster Tools, however I think that in reality you might struggle to get the site to rank. It would also make for some pretty mixed up looking URLs - yourdomain.uk.com/fr/ - the UK in there might mean lower click through rates as the site looks primarily UK focused.
I hope this helps,
Hannah
-
Sorry 1 more question re my client with the .co.uk who wants to Geo-target content to france.
They do have the .com version of their domain too. If the site was new I would recommend changing this round so they can geotarget france via the sub-directory on the .com and would still like to but since the site is well established I fear changing from the .co.uk to the .com will lose alot of its existing history/authority/rankings etc etc.
Is this a valid concern or should swapping the site over to sit on the .com, rather than the existing .co.uk, and then 301'ing the .co.uk pages to the .com deal with this ?
Many Thanks
Dan
-
Many Thanks Hannah !
Cheers
Dan
-
Hi Dan,
uk.com is the domain - but your site is effectively sitting on a subdomain - i.e. yourdomain.uk.com
As such I'd expect that technically speaking you could geo-target something like yourdomain.uk.com/fr/ via webmaster tools, but I wouldn't recommend it.
Partially because I don't think it will actually work - overall you're giving off a really mixed signal, but also from a user experience perspective - I don't think French users will want to transact with a uk.com site - it just looks like a site for people in the UK.
Thanks
Hannah
-
Thank you all for your helpful comments !!
So to summarise - all fine to go sub-directory route for generic domains like .com, .net etc but if you have country specific domain such as .co.uk then forget it and start afresh with a domain/language/hosting for your target country.
Just to throw a cat amongst the pigeons - if you have a .uk.com domain is that considered as a genuine uk focused tld or a .com ? So for .uk.com domains can you geo-target using sub-directories since ultimately considered as .com, or not ?
All Best
Dan
-
I would go for subdirectory approach if the site has a generic TLD like .com. Link building becomes much easier. However if you have country TLD like .co.uk then I would not go for a subdirectory approach. www.xyz.co.uk/de may be perceived a UK site for a German user from a site conversion point of view.
-
Some time ago I struggled with the same problem, and after reading articles on the seomoz blog and questions posted here I went for subdirectories.
subdirectories still give you the ability to add those folders to Google Webmaster Tools and set regio for that folder. You can go with country specific domains as well, but you will have to build links for every domain, whereas you only have to do it once when you choose subfolders.
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
-
How can you promote a sub-domain ahead of a domain on the SERPs?
I have a new client that wants to promote their subdomain uk.imagemcs.com and have their main domain imagemcs.com fall off the SERPs. Objective? Get uk.imagemcs.com to rank first for UK 'brand' searches. Do a search for 'imagem creative services' and you should see the issue (it looks like rules have been applied to the robots.txt on the main domain to exclude any bots from crawling - but since they've been indexed previously I need to take action as it doesn't look great!). I think I can do this by applying a permanent redirect from the main domain to the subdomain at domain level and then no-indexing the site - and then resubmit the sitemap. My slight concern is that this no-indexing of the main domain may impact on the visibility of the subdomains (I'm dealing with uk.imagemcs.com, but there is us.imagemcs.com and de.imagemcs.com) and was looking for some assurance that this would not be the case. My understanding is that subdomains are completely distinct from domains and as such this action should have no impact on the subdomains. I asked the question on the Webmasters Forum but haven't really got anywhere
Technical SEO | | nathangdavidson2
https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!msg/webmasters/1Avupy3Uw_o/hu6oLQntCAAJ Can anyone suggest a course of action? many thanks, Nathan0 -
Robots.txt on subdomains
Hi guys! I keep reading conflicting information on this and it's left me a little unsure. Am I right in thinking that a website with a subdomain of shop.sitetitle.com will share the same robots.txt file as the root domain?
Technical SEO | | Whittie0 -
Should we move our documentation off subdomain?
Background: We have a popular open source e-commerce platform at http://spreecommerce.com. Right now the documentation is on http://guides.spreecommerce.com. We have "edge" documentation (for stuff that's not yet released) on http://edgeguides.spreecommerce.com but since it's largely duplicative we've told google not to index any of the edge stuff (via robots.txt). Question: Should we consider moving the guides under the main website under /docs or something like this? There's a ton of great content that people often read to learn more about the platform. Seems like we might be diluting our juice a bit to have it on a separate domain. WDYT?
Technical SEO | | schof0 -
How to increase your Domain Authority
Hi Guys, Can someone please provide some pointers on how to best increase your Domain Authority?? Thanks Gareth
Technical SEO | | GAZ090 -
Any way around buying hosting for an old domain to 301 redirect to a new domain?
Howdy. I have just read this QA thread, so I think I have my answer. But I'm going to ask anyway! Basically DomainA.com is being retired, and DomainB.com is going to be launched. We're going to have to redirect numerous URLs from DomainA.com to DomainB.com. I think the way to go about this is to continue paying for hosting for DomainA.com, serving a .htaccess from that hosting account, and then hosting DomainB.com separately. Anybody know of a way to avoid paying for hosting a .htaccess file on DomainA.com? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | SamTurri0 -
How to 301 multiple domain names to a single domain
Hey, I tried to find and answer to this seemingly simple question, but no luck. So, I have one domain name with a website attached to it. I also registered all the other domain names that are similar to it or have different extensions - I want to redirect all the other domain names to my one main domain name without getting penalised by the big G. It looks like this: www.mainsite.com - this is my main domain I also have www.mainsite.com.au, www.mainsite.org, and www.mainsite.org.au which I all want to just redirect to www.mainsite.com I have been told that the best way to do this is a 301 redirect, but to do that you need to make a CNAME for all the other domains that points to www.mainsite.com. My problem is that I cannot seem to create a CNAME record for http://mainsite.com - I have it working for http://www.mainsite.com but not the non www record. What should I be doing differently? Is it just my DNS provider is useless? Thanks, Anthony
Technical SEO | | Grenadi0 -
Delete old site but redirect domain to a new domain and site
I just have a quick query and I have a feeling about what the answer is so just wanted to see what you guys thought... Basically I am working on a client site. This client has a few other websites that are divisions of their company. However these divisions/websites are no longer used. They are wanting to delete the websites but redirect the domains to their name main website. They believe this will pass on SEO benefits as these old division sites are old and have a good PR and history. I'm unsure for DEFINITE, which way is correct?
Technical SEO | | Weerdboil0 -
How to Redirect only specific pages to new domain
My HTACCESS FILE IS AS FOLLOWS: rewriteengine on
Technical SEO | | askthetrainer
rewritecond %{HTTP_HOST} ^mydomain.com$
rewriterule ^mydomain/(.*)$ "http://www.mydomain.com/$1" [R=301,L] #4d864805b49b5 I want to move ONLY specific pages from this domain to a new domain How do I edit my HTACCESS (which redirects http:// to www.) to move specific pages from old domain (which I have to delete) to new domain.... I.e. http://mydomaon.com/move.html needs to move to http://mynewdomain.com/move.html Where i can delete the original domains0