Does a country specific TLD implicitly influence the full country name for keyword matching?
-
[Hypothetical situation - domain, country and industry changed]
Let's say I have registered http://mybrandname.hk (i.e. Hong Kong) and my goal is to reach people in all global locations searching for Hong Kong hotels. The target audience will almost always put "Hong Kong" into their query, e.g. they might search for "Marriott Hotel Hong Kong". Does the .hk TLD implicitly give me a match for "Hong Kong" or would I structure my URLs such that all hotel info pages fall under a top level subdirectory "hong-kong".
i.e. is it enough to have a structure like:
Or should I have it like:
It is safe to assume that other on- and off-page best practices will be followed, e.g. links from other Hong Kong sites, some backlinks anchor text including "hong kong", etc.
Of course Marriott is just one example, there would be hundreds of hotels in this example.
-
I'm going to leave this as status "Unanswered", as I don't think we are much closer to any substantial conclusions on to what extent a non-generic ccTLD influences keyword matching for the country name itself.
Based on my own non-scientific searches for various countries and terms like "hotels", "conference venues", "events" and so on, I've found > 50% of first page results from the relevant ccTLD without those sites keyword stuffing the country name into their URLs, so I am going to omit the country name from the website structure itself and stick with a structure of http://mybrandname.ccTLD/service/
-
And here's a Matt Cutt's video on ccTLDs from July of last year http://youtu.be/yJqZIH_0Ars
He also references how they handle those "cool" ones like .ly, .io, .it and so on.
-
Thanks, good point. I'm sure Google are struggling with this a little but begrudgingly treating the .co's, .io's, .ly's as global where applicable. In my particular case though it's a ccTLD which is essentially never appropriated for "cool" domain names and the only purpose for having the extension is to do business in or about the country itself.
-
Thanks, Mike. I've searched extensively on this before now and have been unable to find any definitive answer. I agree that a ccTLD increases visibility for searchers from within that country, as it should. It seems it's still unknown how much the ccTLD increases visibility for people outside the country but who include the full country name in their keyword query. There's no reason why having a ccTLD shouldn't achieve both ends, and I would expect that in a perfect world it should do so too, as that would most benefit searchers.
The challenge I have with my target and niche is that it's a relatively mature one but with little SEO optimization from the big players, so the results I see are fairly well correlated with the size and quality of the websites, regardless of .com or ccTLD. I suppose I should try to think up some more countries and niches to study to try to draw a conclusion.
FYI currently for a query of <country niche="">from an overseas location and not logged in, I see 6 of the 10 first page results use the country ccTLD. Out of those 6, only 1 has the country name embedded in the URL (all are branded, none have the country name in the domain itself).</country>
Right now I still feel the best is brandname.ccTLD instead of country-brand.com, as word of mouth will be as important as organic search, and the more brand-able the better.
-
Agree with Mike.
However, I'd like to add that in the last few years, as .com are almost impossible to get, people started to use ccTLDs for sites not targeted to a specific Country, and Google (and I am guessing other engines too), had to "learn" to recognize these sites in order to rank them for other Countries as well.
-
Typically a ccTLD is suited for that specific country/region. So having a .co.uk will make you more relevant to searchers in the UK but not for searches from say the US looking for something in the United Kingdom (unless they happen to be searching through Google.co.uk). This is not 100% always the case though but generally so. If you're attempting to globally reach people searching for that term, you'd probably be better off with a generic TLD.
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
-
Should I write the keywords in the post, with ou without prepositions
Hi, I have heard from many sources about the semantic and grammatical evaluation of google, this raised a question: when I put a keyword in my text should I put it with or without the prepositions? For example "doctor in Miami" or "doctor miami".
Technical SEO | | droliverulson0 -
Keyword Phrase in URL structure
Wondered the best URL structure, to include a major keyword phrase. Our clients' case is that their domain name is not the main keyword. So should we include the keyword phrase in the URL structure to list all their office locations: A - www.website.com/anxiety-treatment/denver/1001
Technical SEO | | ErnieB
or
B - www.website.com/denver/1001 Would this be considered keyword stuffing? We'd like "A" above to rank for keyword phrases related to "anxiety treatment denver", etc.0 -
Are keyword focused pages actually hurting me?
Is the practice of having keyword focused pages a thing of the past? Here is what I am seeing. My biggest competitor ranks #1 or #2 in most of my relevant keyword phrases (about 20 that I consider most important). They DO NOT have keyword focused pages. They have a PA of 42.5 and a DA of 33.8. They have 72 root domains that link to them. Their home page is fairly lite for content. Only 1 paragraph of text really... and a few reviews local to their page (not TA or anything). Socially, we we have the same FB following... but I also have blog, G+, twitter, pinterest, flickr, instagram, youtube, and linkedin. My keyword pages will rank #8 or #9. My home page hardly ever ranks. My home page has a PA of 40.3 and a DA of 29.1. I have 60 root domains that link to me. BUT... my keyword pages fall much lower. For instance, one has a PA of 16.1 and only 1 root domain link. So, my question is... are my keyword pages actually hurting me? Meaning... is google seeing my keyword page as more relevant content wise (because they are perfect for keyword placement, % of keyword to text, etc), but they rank them lower because of PA and back-links? Should I take down my keyword focused pages (one at a time maybe???) and work on building my home page?
Technical SEO | | CalicoKitty20001 -
What is the best strategy for a company in various countries?
Hello I have to make yt SEO marketing strategy for a company that provides services in Spain, Colombia and Mexico
Technical SEO | | interficto
I'm looking at two options: Buy different domains (TLD): This option seems feasible but very expensive and manage each domain position it would have to have different content in each (plus you would not know that because it is put exactly the same domain) Place each service and country folders eg
www.dominio.com / mexico / training-financiero.html
www.dominio.com / espana / training-financiero.html I have understood that option 1 is no longer necessary since you can use html tags within the code to tell Google that you try to target content to customers from a different country.
In principle we would use the same content would change only a few words and of course the currency to suit the local currency of each country. However I believe that customers could rely more on a domain if their country. Plus I'm afraid I google indexed as duplicate content is another matter What country would main that could confuse the visitor?0 -
GWMT -- Top URLs for keyword is not the homepage
Hi Everyone - In google webmaster tools, in the Content Keywords section, when I click on a link of all of my top keywords they display a single "Top URLs". The URL which they display is not my homepage but a random category landing page of our e-commerce website. Should I be worried about this? Does this suggest that google is ranking this one URL ahead of our homepage?
Technical SEO | | Santaur0 -
Watermarking Keywords
I've been viewing an seo companies website that claims to get small business websites to Google Page 1 for free or starting at $150/mo. I'v noticed that on all the website this company has done work on they include in the footer (usually as a watermark) all the keyword phrases. There don't apprear to be any sites that have been penalized. Isn't this poor SEO practice? I've included a screen shot of what I'm talking about. I just want to be clear. Thank you for your input. XnQUc.png
Technical SEO | | JulB0 -
Keyword cooccurence
Is there any truth to keyword cooccurence being a ranking factor in google or any other search engines. Meaning that they not only look at the words you are targeting but the other words on the page to see if those words have a close relationship to the main theme ( the words being supposedly targeted) I heard that keyword coocurrence does not scale well over the billions of pages that are on the internet however, some waterdowned approached of keyword cooccurence is possible. what do you guys think?
Technical SEO | | mickey110 -
Keywords
Hi All, If I had a site about a cartoon character (for example). When I add keywords to the 'keywords' meta tag, would I be best to put specific phrases such as Cartoon Character, Cartoon Character on TV, Cartoon Character on Television or would the following have the same effect: Cartoon Character, Tv, Movie, Television I was wondering if having the above instance might be less effective as the search engines might read TV, Movie, Television as less relevant to Cartoon Character. Hope that makes sense! 🙂
Technical SEO | | wedmonds0