Two domains for different countries? or one big domain with folders?
-
I know this might sound as a newbie question or maybe not, here it goes.
I've had a client for the past 2 years, and we have accomplish many good things for his local website .com.ve (venezuela). It's been so good that he is opening a branch in Dominican republic .com.do.
The content, strategy and even the services are exactly the same, but the owner wants to have different site for each country. Of course he only wants to pay for one domain.
I do want to share our success ont the .com.ve with the other domains and he actually owns the "global" domain .com with his brand name.
So, what should I reccomend... Develop a second site and start from scratch? Migrate my blog from the .com.ve site to the .com site and give each country a separate folder? /ve /do?.
What it's the best scenario for me to have all the traffic we have earned transfer to the global brand and to have separate info for each country...
Thank you so much for your answer that I kno would be great.
Dan
-
I agree with you.
I think down here in venezuela people are not as aware as maybe other countries to figure out that the domain changed.
My main worry, as i told moosa is that the client does not have the resources to maintain both sites. I guess using the .com domain was the only way to combine both.
The Client it's offers several consulting services, business plans, financial planning, legal consulting etc.
thanks
-
Ok... thanks for your answer.... However the client does not have the manpower o resources to produce content for both sites.
What would you do in that case?
dan
-
Daniel,
I think it is more important to look at the UX instead of the SEO part.
You schould ask yourself the question what would the people prefer a .com site or a site from there own country. If the site is about information and such i think people will not mind. But if it's a E-commerce site than the visitors will be more likely to order at a national oriented site. ( talking from experience)
-
Daniel,
In my opinion this is very much depends upon what risks you are ready to take and how targeted people are going to react to it!
If you already have a stabled .com.ve website then my advice would be to go with separate domain that is .com.do instead of shifting to .com with country level sub folders!
Here the reasons why you should do that!
- Shifting from one domain to another will lose some of your page rank no matter if you do a proper 301 redirect!
- Shofting from .com.ve to .com/ve might hurt your rankings in search engines (no hard hit but still)
- You never know how .com.ve people will react to the new domain!
- Local domains build more trust!
Above are the reasons why i believe you should not switch to the .com versions. If this was the new website then i would have advised to go for single domain but in your case the %age of risk is greater!
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
-
My big and famous website is ranking worse than unknown sites, what to do?
I have a major, popular and well-established website in my niche (lil peep merch) (lilpeepmerch.net) in my country, known as the largest, or one of the largest. But even with 12 years and loads of quality content, my website ranks WAAY worse than unknown ones, most of the time not even showing up on the searches at all, or ranking like page 7 in Google, while my rival, who does the same thing I do (and sometimes worse than what I do, like just publishing news when I publish news, and information, in-depth articles) ranks page 1 in Goo. I use Yoast SEO, try to do everything I can (but I'm no developer and have no access to my site codes), but my only good result is for one specific keyword.
Branding | | FitBoyAwesome0 -
International SEO - Domains or Folders?
Hi, We have been approached by a potential client. They are a UK company whose website is hosted on a .com domain (the .co.uk forwards to the .com). They also have a German website hosted on a .de domain. Both the .com and the .de are hosted in the UK. We believe that the .de website should be hosted in Germany. You agree? Anyway, they now need to target the US market. They are planning on duplicating the UK (.com) website and creating a US version of the site on a .us domain. They would rewrite the content for the US site to avoid duplications, and add Href Lang attributes etc. They are also debating whether the new US site should be hosted in the US or the UK. We don't think this is the best strategy. Would it not be better to host both the UK and US website on the .com domain. using reginal folders? i.e. example.com/uk, and example.com/us. Obviously we would setup Href Lang accordingly and change the Google Search Console geo targeting options for each of the sub-sites (/uk and /us). Or we could suggest hosting the UK site on the .co.uk domain, and the US on the .com domain. So, what is the best strategy to target the US audience, whilst maintaining UK rankings? Many thanks for your time, hope to hear from you soon 🙂 Lee.
Branding | | Webpresence1 -
Experience/suggestions in redirecting old URLs (from an existing site) to new URLs under a new domain
Please share your experiences/suggestions in redirecting a set of pages (10,000 or more pages/URLs) from an existing domain to new URLs under a new domain. Thanks in advance!
Branding | | esiow20130 -
One writer, multiple brands - optimizing rel=author across several blogs
Our company has a few different brands, each with their own domain and site. These are not microsites intended to drive traffic to a main site; they all have independent e-commerce functions, full product lines, etc. Imagine we run Plumbing Widgets Inc, Kitchen Remodeling Company, and Springfield Countertops. It's not immediately obvious to surfers that one parent company operates all of these brands, and we're fine with that. Considering that it enables us to own a lot of SERP real estate for some money KWs, we're more than fine with it. We'd like to create a blog for each of these sites/brands. Here's where it gets tricky. After doing some reading, I am persuaded that using rel=author will help us with SERP CTR and possibly rankings themselves. I am going to be writing all of the blog content, at least to start. I don't think I want to rel=author myself on all of these discrete blogs, do I? And surface the fact that one person is the head writer for the blogs of all these brands? Creating blogging pseudonyms doesn't seem like a good idea, since part of the value of rel=author is genuine social engagement, and creating social personas that seem genuine is probably more trouble than it's worth. (Not to mention icky and dishonest.) Should I choose a customer service rep or manager for each brand and use their names and social identities (with their permission, obviously)? It seems like that would involve challenges of its own. I've ghostwritten for one business owner before, but this is on a larger, more complex scale. Any insights are appreciated!
Branding | | CMC-SD0 -
Trying to decide on best domain
I am trying to decide on a domain for a real estate site in Utah where the area code is 801. My choices are utahhomes801.com, the search term "utah homes" get 3600 exact matches, utahrealestate801.com with "utah real estate" getting 22,200 exact matches or forget the 801 and go for a shorter domain Utahnow.net or utahhomeboy.com. Is there any reason to stay away from 801 in the domain? Any thought or direction would be appreciated. Scott
Branding | | rozier0 -
How much would or have you pay for a domain name?
I wasn't asking the question from a complete lack of experience but I put this question on the forum here last week…How much would you pay for a key rich domain name with the correct extension? I'm setting up a new website to sell Whitby Jet and one of the members of this forum suggested I should buy the domain name www.whitbyjet.com it was for sale for $300 or £200 in UK money and they thought it was a bargain. I thought it was worth the cost even though I've never paid anywhere near that amount for a domain name.
Branding | | whitbycottages
.
There is a company offering www.whitby-jet.co.uk or £1500 ?!!!! I have bought key rich domain names before, which were very descriptive also but only paid the registration fee with no additional costs
.
I just wondered how much members of this forum have paid for domain names. And why they thought it was worth the cost... SEO Branding etc.? By the way the company that was acting as the intermediate for my new doaminis is an absolute pain. They didn't perform the transfer process quickly until I bombarded them with emails My new domain is still not working one week down the line. In the past I bought a domain cheap and it has been working within 24 hours directly.0 -
About domain names
Hello all. I am a new member of SEOmoz and liking it so far. This is my first post to you all (my new family). I have a client who is starting a new company. We know for sure that he needs a new domain name. The question is two part: Part One Should he buy (is it worth the money) a parked domain that has some age to it. For example, a 9 or 10 year old domain that is getting "0" traffic and has no PR? Or Should he just put that same say $1000 price tag back in his wallet and spend the money on a link building campaign to his new $9.95 domain name? Part Two We found a domain he really likes but only the ".co" ".net" and ".biz" are available. The .com belongs to a big company that has made a simple landing page from the .com domain name (that we really want) and will probably never let it go to us. So we will always be stuck without the .com portion of the domain registrations for this domain name if we go for it. Question: a. Will we have difficulty competing for our own name recognition since the "big company" owns the landing page (even though it is a "0" PR page? b. Can we live on only the .co extension or would we live to regret not getting all the extensions related to our domain name? thanks everyone! I look forward to contributing here as well.
Branding | | webindustry0 -
Google Displays Domain / URL Above Description?
I am seeing a new SERP format from Google. (new for me at least) In the past the title tag would display as the first line of a listing, followed by description and domain / URL. Today I see the domain / URL as the second line. This is placing an emphasis on "Who". If you have a big brand or a great URL this might be helpful to your CTR. Are you seeing this? What do you think of it?
Branding | | EGOL0