What would be the right website hosting solution for a global brand with multiple TLDs?

[webeeline]

Hello everyone,

we are preparing a global we strategy for our customer, who wants to focus on many local markets. They are present with their products in over 60 countries on all continents and they can cover 7 languages easily. They also own the TLDs in each main country. Our priority is to be not only found in Google, but also in all major local search engines, which are popular in each country.

Our main concerns with this strategy are:

1. How do we host the website locally for each country, so local search engines recognize the website as a local website? Also, is it that important?
2. Is cloud hosting the right solution for this? We would have different server locations for each TLD/language. Surrounding countries would at least get a fast connection and download rate, if the server is located nearby.
3. If yes, can you recommend any companies doing cloud hosting?
4. Is it also wise to additionally redirect the user to the local server based on his/her location?
5. Is there a risk of duplicate content or being recognized as a link spamming site (for having links to each other from different domains of the same site, the content will be in different languages, though) just by using this solution? We would, of course, keep the content separated by domain to avoid duplicate content.

Any comments and ideas would be highly appreciated.

Thanks,

Wojtek

[webeeline]

Hi Jeff,

thank you very much for your answer. Yes, your input/feedback helps definitely!

All the best,

Wojtek

[customerparadigm.com]

Wojtek-

Here are a few responses to your question:

1. How do we host the website locally for each country, so local search engines recognize the website as a local website? Also, is it that important?

If you really want the sites to be considered "local" for each of their markets, it's best to have them hosted in their home countries. For example, .de should be hosted in Germany, .fr in France, etc.

That said, that can be logistically challenging, especially if you have a common backend system for maintaining content.

This is the best practice, but not always easy to maintain.

2. Is cloud hosting the right solution for this? We would have different server locations for each TLD/language. Surrounding countries would at least get a fast connection and download rate, if the server is located nearby.

3. If yes, can you recommend any companies doing cloud hosting?

Cloud hosting could be a good way to go, and should make management much easier

4. Is it also wise to additionally redirect the user to the local server based on his/her location?

I think it's a great option to recognize that people are in a specific country, and redirect them to the proper place. Or, give them a choice to see what they'd prefer. You might have ex-pats from the US that speak English, however, that want to interact with the English version of the site, so give them a way to interact.

That said, I'd do an A-B split test to find out and see what converts better.

5. Is there a risk of duplicate content or being recognized as a link spamming site (for having links to each other from different domains of the same site, the content will be in different languages, though) just by using this solution? We would, of course, keep the content separated by domain to avoid duplicate content.

As long as the content is in different languages, you won't have issues with duplicate content. I previously managed a site that was in English, French, German and Italian, and while it had identical products (including SKUs), the content on the site was tailored to each market and the sites ranked well in each local domain.

Hope this helps!

• Jeff

[Felip3]

How about using a CDN solution like Cloud Flare? https://www.cloudflare.com/features-cdn