Country sites - TLD's or sub directories?
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Dear All,
We have several brands which operate a several languages and currently have a set up like this:
www.[BRAND].com/ = English global
www.[BRAND].com/de = German
www.[BRAND].com/fr = French
…
Each subdirectory is a completely different site so I was wondering would it be better to use TLD’s for each country site in order to hold more equity in the search engine if we used:
www.[BRAND].com/ = English global
www.[BRAND].de = German
www.[BRAND].fr = French
Are country top level domains the way to go? If we wanted to change language within a country site should we use the following?
www.[BRAND].be = Belgium English
www.[BRAND].be/nl-NL/ = Belgium Dutch
If you could let me know what to do I would be most grateful.
Thanks guy's
Ian Leggett
UI Developer
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Thank you very much for such a prompt response. This is a lot of help.
Thanks
Ian
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Hi there,
First off this sounds perfect for what you want to know - https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/189077?hl=en
Now as for TLD's etc. its preference - the bonus of having it on one site is all link juice accumulated goes to one domain rather then trying to optimize 3-4 different sites. You can always secure the TLD and if you need to move the site across at a later date. Whilst a regional TLD does give a minor boost it wouldn't mean much if you've spread yourself too thin across a few sites to really help the site rank.
My recommendation would be get your main site working with the rel=alternative tag in place for sub folders then you can work on moving one language to a new site (e.g. .de) get that site working really well then move onto another site etc. if you want to do that.
Hope that helps.
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