Switch from CCTLD to .com - Am I missing anything?
-
We currently have 14 international sites. (.co.uk, .fr, .es, .com.au, etc) and (language differences aside) the content is the same on all.
I want to move this content from example.co.uk to example.com/uk/ (and from example.com.sg to example.com/sg/) to consolidate our domain authority, for brand consistency, and to reduce the overhead of maintaining 14 different domains. Our .com has by far the most domain authority (90) and often outcompetes newer smaller sites like .com.sg in local search) Other sites, however, (like .co.uk DA74) do quite well locally.
My goal is to improve the performance of those sites with a low DA, without hurting the larger sites, and also to avoid the disappearance of local content in local search. e.g. currently when a user searches for "widgets" they find example.co.uk/widgets/ but in future I want them to find example.com/uk/widgets
My plan is to redirect pages with 301 redirects, and use rel-alternate and hreflang metadata to manage indexing. So in the example above, I'd 301 example.co.uk/widgets to example.com/uk/widgets, then use the following metatag on that new page to suggest that it is the UK english version (for users in the UK) of a canonical page in the .com:
(this is in accordance with the suggestion on this page http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=189077)
My question is: Am I going to severely damage the ranking of, e.g., UK pages in UK search engines by doing this? Is there a better way to do this?
Any input greatly appreciated. Thanks,
Dennis
-
Actually the methodology you have described is correct.
Just two tips/reminders:
- the correct use of the rel="alternate" previews that in the .com pages (for instance) you indicate the other 13 country targeting URLs of your site. That is needed to not seeing, for instance, your .com pages outranking your Spanish ones in Google.es because of a better link profile (or Page Authority);
- for that reason I do really suggest you to implement the rel="alternate" hreflang="x" in your sitemaps.xml more than into the code of every single page of your site (you don't want to slow your page speed, don't you?).
About what bnspak write, the correct tip is this:
- create the new site, with the new country level subcarpet arquitecture;
- implement cross domain canonical tags in your old ccTld domains
- cancel your ccTlds sitemaps.xml files in GWT and resubmit them... doing so you are explicitly asking Google to recrawl them asap
- Googlebot crawls the ccTlds and discover the rel="canonical"
- Do the 301 page by page
Finally, ccTld or Subcarpet. The decision should be just based on SEO, but on business. Yes, you're going to loose the geotargeting strenght of the ccTlds, but you acquire a stronger domain authority for those sites which were maybe struggling alone. Then, if you plan a correct and effective Content Marketing/Link Building strategy, you can add links to those country targeting subcarpets, links which will benefits all the site as an all.
-
It's hard to argue the contrary when Matt Cutts is saying "Go with CCTLDs", but I get the feeling that his point is an "all things being equal" explanation.
My problem is that all things are not equal. I have a mixed bag. I have an old strong .com (DA 90) and a long list of newer less strong domains (down to DA 27)
Re: one site ranking in multiple countries. Our .com already does this. As one example, the .com homepage ranks on the first page for one of our main head keywords in google.fr, whereas the highest ranking page on the .fr for the same keyword is at the top of page 3.
So "losing a ton of ground" doesn't make a lot of sense here, because traffic isn't going to gravitate towards local content if it's already lingering down around the third page. Wouldn't it make more sense here, to have a french language version of the homepage on the .com and use hreflang to make sure that's the version that ends up in French search results?
I know that 301's don't pass all authority, but they pass some, my feeling is that 13 sites-worth of redirection will have a strong effect on an already strong .com.
Microsoft apply this exact model (one .com, multiple languages in subdirectories, relevant results in local search) and ok, they have a strong domain, but doesn't this show that this is possible?
It would be great to hear about actual experience of similar consolidation moves, successes or failures?
-
I wouldn't drop a ccTLD to move to a .com. There are several benefits you lose
- Most engines recognize ccTLDs as specific to a given country. This can help with ranking for those engines in that country
- Traffic from specific countries tends to gravitate towards a ccTLD (i.e. French are more likely to click on a .fr)
- Engines tend to give a pass on duplicate content to ccTLDs. See Matt Cutts on point.
You're going to lose a ton of ground doing this. Trying to make one site rank well for multiple countries is hard enough. Add in the lost rank from your ccTLDs (a 301 doesn't move all PR).
-
Any time you 301 content it's going to take search engine a while to catch up. You may run into issues with duplicate content for countries that speak all the same langue such as the UK and the USA.
However I had recently read the if you rel=canonical the old page to the new locations it speeds up the indexing process. I'll see if I can find the link for you when i get home later.
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
-
Validated pages on GSC displays 5x more pages than when performing site:domain.com?
Hi mozzers, When checking the coverage report on GSC I am seeing over 649,000 valid pages https://cl.ly/ae46ec25f494 but when performing site:domain.com I am only seeing 130,000 pages. Which one is more the source of truth especially I have checked some of these "valid" pages and noticed they're not even indexed?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ty19860 -
Is it possible to find out where traffic is comming from on someone elses website?
Is it possible to find out where traffic is coming from on someone else website? I want to know where the new buyers are coming from who are interested in outsourcing. Attached are some of the pages they would be looking at. Who are visiting these pages and where are they coming from: https://www.upwork.com/blog/ https://www.upwork.com/hiring/ https://www.upwork.com/i/howitworks/client/ https://www.upwork.com/signup/create-account/client_direct https://www.upwork.com/o/profiles/browse/ https://www.upwork.com/press/ https://www.freelancer.com/ https://www.freelancer.com/about https://www.freelancer.com/info/how-it-works.php https://www.freelancer.com/showcase https://www.freelancer.com/community https://www.freelancer.com/hire/ https://www.freelancer.com/contest/ https://www.freelancer.com/feesandcharges/ https://www.freelancer.com/freelancers/ http://www.guru.com/ http://www.guru.com/howitworks.aspx http://www.guru.com/about/ http://www.guru.com/help/ http://www.guru.com/blog/ http://www.guru.com/blog/category/hiring-advice/ http://www.guru.com/d/freelancers/ http://www.guru.com/directory http://www.guru.com/answers/
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Hall.Michael0 -
.co.uk and com: Independent sites, but owned buy us , sharing some product information
We have two sites .com and .co.uk. Both are selling sites and the .com sells in $ and .co.uk in £s.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BruceA
75% of the text is from the .co.uk site and used on the .com site. Each site has 6000+ pages, 4000+ contain product descriptions that are identical. We have looked at canonical and hreflang, but neither seem to fix the problem of duplication issues. We can add into the product detail master page rel alternative, but this will not fix the other potential clashes on the other pages. Can anyone advise if we can add a site wide html to each site or one that will fix this. Many thanks0 -
.com ranked where .co.uk site should After Manual Penalty Revoked - Help!!!
Hi All, I wondered if some could help me as I am at my wits end. Our website www.domain.co.uk was hit with a manual penalty back in April 26th 2012 for over optomizing our inbound links and after 9 reconciliation request later and over a year and many links removed the penalty was revoked. Yay I hear you cry! During the year .co.uk was banned we built .com yet did not build any links to it. The purpose of the .com site was to attract an American audience for our products. .com was hosted on a US server and Geo Targeting set to United States in WMT. So here is my problem after the ban was revoke we expected .co.uk to spring back to some reasonable positions. Nope that is not the case Google now is ranking our .com site where our .co.uk should be for powerdull keywords in position 1st to 10th .com has Zero link equity and .co.uk is very reasonable, So how can I rectify this balls ups and get co.uk listed back where it should be…. I am not bothered where .com ranks. Note: To the best of my knowledge there are NO cross domain 301 or the like only an image link between the two sites. I have posted this on WMT forum and it has fallen on deaf ears! ....help me MOZ members you’re my only hope! Thanks in advance Richard PS: If anyone would like the URL’s in question PM me and I will let you know.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Tricky-400 -
Our website www.turbocupones.com dropped drastically in ranking today
Our website www.turbocupones.com dropped drastically in ranking today. I have no idea why this happened as we have not outsourced any SEO and sticked to google´s guidelines. Can you please check the web and give me Ideas why this happened? Our traffic dropped by 1000%. All our content is unique. I have years of experience in SEO and never had a problem like this. The rankings dropped drastically for everything. As said all SEO done is white hat. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | sebastiankoch0 -
What SEO Experts say about Pagination on PakWheels.com?
Hi SEOmozers... I need your expert feedback regarding SEO of listing pages with pagination. Crawl following links and write down your advice: Used Cars Car Reviews Listing New Honda Cars Actually these are the search listing pages with pagination. Please provide specialized recommendations for On page enhancements. Looking forward to see answers with pagination best practices.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | razasaeed0 -
Http://blogsearch.google.com/ping
Is there any reason why a website would submit all their content (videos, photo galleries, articles) to this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MargaritaS0 -
Factors that affect Google.com vs .ca
Though my company is based in Canada, we have a .com URL, we're hosted on servers in the U.S., and most of our customers are in the U.S. Our marketing efforts are focused on the U.S. Heck, we even drop the "u" in "colour" and "favour"! 🙂 Nonetheless we rank very well in Google.ca, and rather poorly on Google.com. One hypothesis is that we have more backlinks from .ca domains than .com, but I don't believe that to be true. For sure, the highest quality links we have come from .coms like NYTimes.com. Any suggestions on how we can improve the .com rankings, other than keeping on with the link building?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RobM4161