.edu or country TLD, which one would be better?
-
Hi,we are working right know with an Education Instutition located Outside the U.S. I think they would be in a possition where they could get de .edu TLD.
Right know they have good rankings in its own country cause they are working with their country specific TLD, and they rank well there. But, of course, a considerable percentage of their students are foreigners, so they are very interested in improving their interantional rankings (note that U.S is not a target market).
I was wondering if it would be ok to recommend them to change to the .edu TLD, because all their competitors have that tld too.
Whould that TLD increase their domain authority inmediatly? I know that .edu is well consider by google when it sends you a link, so it would be reasonable to think that having a .edu domain would be great, but as this domain is very related with the US and all their markets are outside the U.S, I am not sure about what recommend them.
What do you think??
Thank you!!!
-
The .edu TLD is only available to institutions in the US. Further, it's limited to US-affiliated higher education institutions. So if your client were to purchase a .edu domain then anybody coming to the site would expect them to be US-based. But different countries do have their own education-related second-level .ac domains. So here in the UK ours is -surprise, surprise - .ac.uk.
I've not seen any recent correlation data on whether having a .edu will improve rankings. I know there has been a lot of talk over the last few years about .edu/.ac and .org domains being inherently "more trustworthy" than other domain types, but my personal opinion is that's confusing correlation and causation: trustworthy institutions usually have .edu domains, it isn't the domain making them trustworthy. So changing to a .edu domain almost definitely won't help your rankings. It especially won't help your domain authority because this metric is concerned with measuring a range of things that you won't be changing, like your link profile..
Thinking about it, if changing to a .edu domain were to help your rankings in the US because that's a primarily US TLD then that same logic say that change would also harm rankings in your client's home country, which they definitely won't want!
-
.EDU and .gov etc. don't give any extra rank bonus
https://plus.google.com/+MattCutts/posts/4VaWg4TMM5F
I read a post by someone offering new top-level domain (TLDs). They made this claim: "Will a new TLD web address automatically be favoured by Google over a .com equivalent? Quite simply, yes it will."
Sorry, but that's just not true, and as an engineer in the search quality team at Google, I feel the need to debunk this misconception. Google has a lot of experience in returning relevant web pages, regardless of the top-level domain (TLD). Google will attempt to rank new TLDs appropriately, but I don't expect a new TLD to get any kind of initial preference over .com, and I wouldn't bet on that happening in the long-term either. If you want to register an entirely new TLD for other reasons, that's your choice, but you shouldn't register a TLD in the mistaken belief that you'll get some sort of boost in search engine rankings.more examples about too.
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
-
Advise on the right way to block country specific users but not block Googlebot - and not be seen to be cloaking. Help please!
Hi, I am working on the SEO of an online gaming platform - a platform that can only be accessed by people in certain countries, where the games and content are legally allowed.
International SEO | | MarkCanning
Example: The games are not allowed in the USA, but they are allowed in Canada. Present Situation:
Presently when a user from the USA visits the site they get directed to a restricted location page with the following message: RESTRICTED LOCATION
Due to licensing restrictions, we can't currently offer our services in your location. We're working hard to expand our reach, so stay tuned for updates! Because USA visitors are blocked Google which primarily (but not always) crawls from the USA is also blocked, so the company webpages are not being crawled and indexed. Objective / What we want to achieve: The website will have multiple region and language locations. Some of these will exist as standalone websites and others will exist as folders on the domain. Examples below:
domain.com/en-ca [English Canada]
domain.com/fr-ca [french Canada]
domain.com/es-mx [spanish mexico]
domain.com/pt-br [portugese brazil]
domain.co.in/hi [hindi India] If a user from USA or another restricted location tries to access our site they should not have access but should get a restricted access message.
However we still want google to be able to access, crawl and index our pages. Can i suggest how do we do this without getting done for cloaking etc? Would this approach be ok? (please see below) We continue to work as the present situation is presently doing, showing visitors from the USA a restricted message.
However rather than redirecting these visitors to a restricted location page, we just black out the page and show them a floating message as if it were a model window.
While Googlebot would be allowed to visit and crawl the website. I have also read that it would be good to put paywall schema on each webpage to let Google know that we are not cloaking and its a restricted paid page. All public pages are accessible but only if the visitor is from a location that is not restricted Any feedback and direction that can be given would be greatly appreciated as i am new to this angle of SEO. Sincere thanks,0 -
How to avoid duplication across multiple country domains
Here's the scenario: I have a client currently running one Shopify site (AU) They want to launch three more country domains (US, UK and EU) They want each to be a standalone site, primarily so the customers can purchase in their local currency, which is not possible from a single Shopify site The inventory is all from the same source The product desscriptions will all be the same as well Question: How do we avoid content duplication (ie. how will canonical tags work in this scenario)?
International SEO | | muzzmoz0 -
Interlinking 60 ccTLD country versions of website
We will be launching 60 new ccTLD country versions of an established core website.
International SEO | | lcourse
Quality, human translated content in 35 languages.
We have a CSS dropdown menu with the 60 country flags and country/language name as anchor text. Formatted as deeplinks to the corresponding pages in the 60 country versions, that we planned to add on each page. How would you recommend to implement the interlinking between these 60 ccTLD? My concerns are: won't we dillute the link value of our links in the main page content too much with links to 60ccTLD on each page? may we trigger a google penalty as the new ccTLD have no other links yet and each page will have the same anchor text and links from exactly the same 60 domains. would you place the country dropdown rather at the bottom of the page (e.g. footer) to avoid that google will not crawl all links in main content page. Any thoughts or suggestions are appreciated1 -
Country name displayed after domain name in google SERP
our online shop targets clients in the US and worldwide (same URL - no subdirectories - currency changes based on IP). when searching in google.ie or google.no for our site google displays in the SERPS "US" or "United States" after the URL for our site, but for most other US competitors it does not show the country in the SERPS. I deleted our google places listing 2 weeks ago, since I suspected it may be related, but no change so far. In google webmaster tools we have targeted the shop domain to United States, which may be another factor. Unfortunately we can not undo this setting since without it our google US ranking for the most relevant competitive keyword drops from position 8 to position 100+. Server location is in Germany which despite lots of US links and US contact info and USD currency appparently makes google think that the site is not targeting the US. Does anybody know what triggers the country name in the SERPS (google places or webmaster tools or other) and can give advice if there is any way to get rid of it.
International SEO | | lcourse0 -
Multiple domains for one site / satellite domains
Hi, I know this has been asked a few times before but I want to clarify everything my own head. We've recently relaunched a website for a client that combined three existing sites into one. The new site is http://www.gowerpensions.com/ I've added 301 rewrite rules to the three old domains to to point to the correct page on the new website, i.e the old contact page goes to the new one, the about page to the new about page etc, etc. The old domains are thehorizonplan.com, horizonqrops.com and horizonqnups.com. I've informed Google Webmaster Tools of the change. The client also has several other domains such as horizonpensions.com and qnupscheme.com. Am I correct in thinking I should not park these domains on top of the gowerpensions.com website as this will be seen as duplicate content? I don't think there is anything linking to these domains. They might not even be listed in Google. With the thehorizonplan.com, horizonqrops.com and horizonqnups.com domains there are existing links to them, but will parking these on top of gowerpensions.com cause a problem, or should I keep my 301 redirects forever? Would a better strategy be to make microsites on all of the satellite domains that link to the main one to create more relevant links? If this is the case then I'd need to fix any third party links to the old horizon domains. I hope that makes sense. Thanks Ric
International SEO | | BWIRic0 -
How to rank in Google for a specific country?
Hi, I've a relative good ranking for a specific keyword in google.com (english queries (hl=en)), but searching for the same keyword in google.com.br (Brazilian Portuguese (hl=pt-BR)), my rank for that keyword is far worst. The question is: I need to do something specific to rank in google.com.br (hl=pt-BR)? I'm doing the regular link building. Creating some blogs, blogging for 10 days before droping my links, and creating link wheels the same way. The blogs I create to make links are written in Brazilian Portuguese, also, the blog that I'm trying to rank higher, is also written in Brazilian Portuguese. Sorry for the english, it's not my native language. Thanks
International SEO | | izaiasalmeida0 -
What is the best way to make country specific IP redirect for only product pricng pages?
My website has 3 services and its price will be different for US/EU/Developed world and Asian/African countries.Apart from pricing page, all other things remain same. I want to use IP based redirect .I heard this thing is called cloaking and used by black-hat guys. What kind of instructions should I give to my web developer to look best to Google/Search bots and correctly show visitors the intended prices.Is there any caution to be taken care of. Thanks for your time
International SEO | | RyanSat0 -
Google results inverted in a different country
Hi My site and a rival site are bothl UK based. If I search google.co.uk for a keyword I'm above him, yet if I search the australian results, he's on top. How come? I'd really like to put this right and grind his face into the dirt -- if only as revenge for repeatedly stealing my web content. Thanks
International SEO | | Jeepster0