Multi-lingual SEO: Country-specific TLD's, or migration to a huge .com site?
-
Dear SEOmoz team,
I’m an in-house SEO looking after a number of sites in a competitive vertical. Right now we have our core example.com site translated into over thirty different languages, with each one sitting on its own country-specific TLD (so example.de, example.jp, example.es, example.co.kr etc…).
Though we’re using a template system so that changes to the .com domain propagate across all languages, over the years things have become more complex in quite a few areas. For example, the level of analytics script hacks and filters we have created in order to channel users through to each language profile is now bordering on the epic.
For a number of reasons we’ve recently been discussing the cost/benefit of migrating all of these languages into the single example.com domain. On first look this would appear to simplify things greatly; however I’m nervous about what effect this would have on our organic SE traffic.
All these separate sites have cumulatively received years of on/off-site work, and even if we went through the process of setting up page-for-page redirects to their new home on example.com, I would hate to lose all this hard-work (and business) if we saw our rankings tank as a result of the move.
So I guess the question is, for an international business such as ours, which is the optimal site structure in the eyes of the search engines; Local sites on local TLD’s, or one mammoth site with language identifiers in the URL path (or subdomains)?
Is Google still so reliant on TLD for geo targeting search results, or is it less of a factor in today’s search engine environment?
Cheers!
-
http://www.seomoz.org/qa/view/11526/any-link-juice-love-from-wordpress-subdomain
This is answered by SEOmoz staff
-
Interesting, MWD. I would have thought that PR would flow through a redirect to a sub domain. Now you've got me concerned. By any chance, can you point me to a source that explains that in more detail?
-
If you redirect to a sub domain, the page rank (link juice) won't transfer.
If example.de 301s to example.com/de, then Pagerank flows through. In addition, your DA helps out too. So if you example.com has a PR 5, using example.com/de will be easier to rank because you are not starting off from scratch. You are using the PR power of the site. "IF" you create de.example.com, you are starting from complete scratch as if was a new website. subdomains are treated as almost like a completely separate site.
Geo Targeting works for me.
-
We have a similar setup but slightly different.
-
example.com (English)
-
example.de 301 redirects to example.com/de (German)
-
example.mx 301 redirects to example.com/mx (Spanish)
All of the regional websites are mini-sites in each language and reside in a subfolder of example.com. We're in the process of creating full in-language sites for each region and we're debating whether to host them on their own domain, example.de or to set them up as de.example.com. We would 301 redirect example.de to de.example.com. We don't want to lose our current rankings in each country so does it matter if we host them on example.de or de.example.com if we're using the 301 redirect?
-
-
I'm facing a similar situation. I recently asked Tiffany Oberoi (google) at the SMX Conference in Sydney whether she suggested taking our respective TLDs and moving into a subfolder format (ie. example.com/au, example.com/nz, example.com/uk etc).
Her response? Stick with the TLDs. I don't think the geotargetting option in GWT is as reliable as it's made out to be.
-
This is what I did.
-
example.com (English)
-
example.com/de (German)
-
example.com/mx (Spanish)
I went to Google Webmasters and did a Geo-Country in Germany for my German folder example.com/de. Since I translated example.com/mx into Spanish and wanted it to rank in Mexico, I geo-targeted for Mexico in Google Webmasters.
You can repeat the process for all the countries.
-
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 to not appear in incorrect country
Hi! I have a problem with the results in Google. My website ranks, but all countries appear in the search for example from Argentina.
International SEO | | SEO-Mediabros
I have the correct hreflang tags. How can I "block" the results of other countries? This is the site and this is the search example. Thank you! 🙂1 -
Country and Language Specific URL Paths
Wanted to ask everyone a questions: So our company is going to be doing a website that is going to be full of videos. The url path will be country.domain.com/language/slug/content-id. We redirect the user when they go to the different country. So if you're in spain on a train to france your URL will change from es.domain.com/es/slug/content-id to fr.domain.com/es/slug/content-id. Each country can listen to each video in all languages. My question is with hreflang tags and canonicals. Aside from targeting users in a certain country via Google Search Console, how do I eliminate duplication and tell Google which I'd like to show up via which country. In spain I would like es.domain.com/es/slug/content-id to show in Google and would have hreflang tags on each of the es.domain pages but what about fr.domain.com/es/slug/content-id since it would show the same content? I can't canonical to one of them since I need them to show in their respective country. How do I show the difference in language and country without showing duplication?
International SEO | | mattdinbrooklyn0 -
In the U.S., how can I stop the European version of my site from outranking the U.S. version?
I've got a site with two versions – a U.S. version and a European version. Users are directed to the appropriate version through a landing page that asks where they're located; both sites are on the same domain, except one is .com/us and the other is .com/eu. My issue is that for some keywords, the European version is outranking the U.S. version in Google's U.S. SERPs. Not only that, but when Google displays sitelinks in the U.S. SERPs, it's a combination of pages on the European site and the U.S. site. Does anyone know how I can stop the European site from outranking the U.S. site in the U.S.? Or how I can get Google to only display sitelinks for pages on the U.S. site in the U.S. SERPs? Thanks in advance for any light you can shed on this topic!
International SEO | | matt-145670 -
Naming URL for Russian version of the site
Hi, Our site has two languages: English and Russian. My question is that should I use Cyrillic letters in the URL structure and file naming of the Russian version of the site, as Russian users are searching for information by using Russian words not English words? Thanks in advance, Sam
International SEO | | Awaraman0 -
International SEO | URL Structure
I'm looking for advice/point of view for setting up international domains. I.e. sub-domains, ccTLD, etc. At the 10,000 ft. view - the client (international retail company) is trying to decide which type of URL structure to use in their new platform: Option 1: Root Domain ccTLD - www.brand.ca, www.brand.fr, etc. Option 2: Subdomains - fr.brand.com, ca.brand.com, au.brand.com Option 3: Subfolders - ]www.brand.com/ca/, ]www.brand.com/au/ Consider these scenarios/questions and use to help decide which URL structure makes sense: 1) I'm an Aussie in Australia and I do a Google search on Hank Myer Aron, which is a huge seller in the U.S. and also included at the Australia locale site. If we go with subfolders, am I likely to see the U.S. Aron page higher in my search results than the Australia Aron page? Or is the U.S. site not a factor in a search done outside the U.S.? If we use subfolders AND geo-detection, does this bump the ranking of the locale page? Do sites using ccTLDs always get ranked above those that don't? For example, if an Australian dealer selling Aron has URLs dealer.com.au/..., would their pages rank ahead of hankmyer.com/au/...? If we went the ccTLD route, would the Aron page at hankmyer.com.au take precedence over the U.S. page? (Again, assuming U.S. site is relevant in this scenario.) 2) I'm a Frenchman in France searching on Hank Myer Aron. If we use subfolders AND an alias URL that's translated to French (brand.com/fr/produits/sieges/sieges-aron), would we expect the page rank to be comparable to using the ccTLD and/or expect greater trust than just using subfolders without translated URLs? Do translated URLs have any mitigating affect on duplicate page content? Which URL strategy is best choice from a SEO standpont?
International SEO | | CrownPartners0 -
Does changing host server between countries affect SEO if there is no content change?
My website is currently hosted with Go-daddy and the hosting server is in the USA on a Linux platform. The problem is, the response time for my Australian Customers, is too slow, as a result, I decided to move to another Go Daddy Hosting server in the Asia Pacific Region. This has been completed successfully, however I think there may be some impact on my rankings. Can you advise if there are any specific things that I must do, when I move to a different hosting server with the same company or an alternative company. Note: We are not changing domain names or content, purely just moving to a hosting server closer to where our customers are based. Looking forward to your response.
International SEO | | fdep0 -
SEO and Cloud Hosting
Hello, Cant find any clear answers on my issue and hope someone can help. Rather than being worried about losing local rankings with a move to the cloud, we have the opposite issue. The site is a large, international reference site with millions of visits a month. We have the site on servers hosting in UK, Europe and US. If we move the site to Amazon cloud hosting (obvious benefits aside), is there a danger of losing rankings internationally (depending on where the cloud datacentre is located)? Are their any other possible pitfalls and counters? Would be grateful for some advice on this. Thanks
International SEO | | LoweProfero-AU0 -
International SEO - auto geo-targetting
I read with interest the recent post on international SEO and the top level domain architecture approaches to local content: http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/folders-vs-subdomains-vs-cctld-in-international-seo-an-overview#jtc135670 The issue I have is a little more complex: The business sells a wide variety of products (37) but one is by far and away the biggest and most popular. This means that due to the link profile of the various country sites and HQ site, search engines categorise the site according to this product (this is easily seen with the Google Adplanner) and the other product lines suffer as a result. The current architecture is to have a .com site and then individual ccTLD country sites, again with all products on each site. This creates an issue as in most countries the brand is not strong (compared to the keyword names and search volumes of the products) and so it is not that effective in generating organic traffic. The .com hogs much of the inbound links and the country sites themselves are not that well optimised for a number of reasons. A proposed solution has been to leverage the strength of the .com and the search volume for the product names, and to produce thematic sites based on each product: productA.brand.com
International SEO | | StevieCC
productB.brand.com
productC.brand.com In this way, the sites, content and link profiles are aligned around the more desirable products and we can expect improved organic search performance as a result (or at least ensure relevant traffic finds the relevant content fast). In terms of providing localised content, the plan was to use content mirroring and to then assign each content mirror to a specific geo-location using the webmaster tools console (and other SE equivilents). This is shown I think in one of Rand's videos. ProductA.brand.com/de/de Germany site for product A with unique German content
ProductA.brand.com/fr/fr French site for product A with unique French content This makes economic sense to me as to utilise the ccTLDs would result in hundreds of separate sites with all the licence and server considerations that entails. For example, for product A alone we would have to produce: productA.brand.de
productA.brand.fr
productA.brand.cn
productA.brand.jp
ect ect ect This just would not be sustainable in license/server costs alone across 37 products and 24 countries. However, I saw in a recent presentation at SES London that (auto) geo-targeting is risky, often doesn't work well for SEO and can even be seen as cloaking. I think the above strategy could still work, but perhaps we should avoid the use of auto-geotargetting altogether and hope the search engines alone do their job in getting users to the right content as we optimise the unique content for each country (and if they don't, ensure our desgn, UX and country selectors do the job instead). SEO guru consensus is to use the ccTLD if you own it, but as described above, in the real world that just isn't possible or practical given the company's strategic position. Which leads to the final question- we do own the brand ccTLDs- if they are directed back to the content mirror for the country on the .com, is there any SEO benefit in doing so aside from directing back any link juice associated with the domain)?0