Website in English targeting different countries - is it worth investing in .com?
-
Hi,
I was wondering...
Let's say there is a company in Norway and It sell tours in Norway. Website is only in english, content stays exactly the same for each country (as the website is for people looking for tours in Norway). The domain is registered with .no ccTLD. Main target is USA, Canada and Uk and couple of other countries in Europe. Would the website benefit from having .com instead of .no?
Thanks!
-
The structure is really going to be up to you. The differences in terms of what helps ranking are so very small today that it is better to choose based on user preference and your own.
For consistency, it would be best to get a .co.uk that is on brand, but that route takes a ton of work over time. My favorite route is a subfolder (/uk) off of a gTLD in most instances.
If your .com.au is already ranking well, expect that to keep happening until the UK subsite has had a chance to strengthen. And make sure your content is different!
-
Hi Kate - here's the results - essentially its suggesting a number of options for URL structure similar to ones I am tossing up between but still unsure which is the best option in short or long term?
Keep in Mind:
- The site content in each country must be different.
- Don't use IP detection for country targeting, but ask your customers to set a cookie.
- Only use people native to the country for outreach in order to minimize cultural differences.
Action Items:
- Pick the URL structure for your international growth and stick with it. Keep in mind that the structure needs to include both translations and geo-targeting. We recommend one of the following options:
- ccTLD and subfolder:
www.domain.co.uk/de/product - ccTLD and parameter:
www.domain.co.uk/product?lang=fr - Subdomain and parameter:
ca.domain.com/product?lang=fr - Subdomain and subfolder:
ca.domain.com/fr/product - Subfolder and parameter:
www.domain.com/ca/product?lang=fr
- ccTLD and subfolder:
- Translate your content. Don't machine translate; while manual translation is costly, it's the best for your brand and user experience.
- Put your HREFLANG in XML sitemaps.
- Use the Language Meta tag for Bing translation targeting.
- Set up Google Webmaster Tools Geo-Targeting.
- Set up Bing Webmaster Tools Geo-Targeting.
-
Did you visit that tool? Can you let me know the result?
-
Hey Kate
Really appreciate you taking the time to respond and help out!
So for a business that is currently operating in USA, Canada, Australia, NZ and opening in UK and Germany soon with further expansion on cards how would you tackle this scenario:
I already have a .com.au that ranks #3 on Page1 of Google for highest traffic keyword
I have a .co.nz that ranks #5 on Pg1 for highest traffic keywordNow looking to do do a .co.uk howver someone has pinched it. Do you suggest going for:
.com/uk/
uk.domainname.com (and keep reusing subdomains
Or a .co.uk domain?Just as an FYI and to throw futher spanner in the works.... my .com.au domain ranks on #2 for Page1 of Google UK for my target keyword as its currently not very competetive
Any feedback is helpful!
-
Thank you!
Have a lovely day
-
Yes, but that is if none of your competitors ever move to a gTLD. It's one of many factors. The right thing to do is bite the bullet and move it now. But I would not expect much of a short term gain.
-
To sum up: preferably go with .com. Itself it wouldn't have a big impact but in long run and with good SEO strategy in place it should actually help with ranking.
On the other hand if i go with .no and do the same work, the effect should be generally the same, right?
-
In theory, all else being equal in terms of relevance, page quality, and ranking page strength (which it never is), yes. Your page would be from a site that is not targeting a specific country, so it should be marginally more relevant. However, as stated above, it won't MAKE you rank better for sure. There are a host of other factors.
And yes, it is lack of knowledge and geo-centricity. You all see .no more often, so that is the go to in the other business owners heads. Lack of knowledge is the primary problem though.
-
So lets have this example of another nordic country: Iceland
If you type "tours in iceland" - 90% pages that will come up will have .is ending. Yet they are still ranking internationally. If we were to launch a .com in Iceland, would it have an advantage over the other ones(assuming that everything else is equal)?
Why they are all using ccTLD? Is it lack of knowledge?
-
Actually, if the page is the most relevant to the users query, any TLD can rank well in Google.com, Google.co.uk, etc.
This is not a matter of user preference. It is a matter of indicating the the search engines what your target market is. A ccTLD indicates that you want to only target one country. That is not the case here. But they can rank with a .no to users in the other countries, it is just harder.
-
You can't geo-target a ccTLD to another country outside of the ccTLD's country, so depending on your business needs, you might need a gTLD like .com. Check out this strategy tool and let me know what result you get. I can recommend further from there. http://outspokenmedia.com/international-seo-strategy/
-
Hm, actually no. It's an interesting dilemma, but I would still prefer the .com.
You are too focused on your product - and not enough on your target audience. They are not from Norway - therefore the .no is wasted.
-
Hi Leszek,
Your target markets/audience will not come to google.no or any other search engine with .no extensions to search. Search engines they will be searching on will be with .com, .ca and .co.uk etc. so it certainly makes sense for you to invest in .com or some other generic domains like .tour etc. if available for your industry.
-
Hi LSlversen,
thank you for your response.
But don't you think that people looking to book tours in Norway expect to do it on the website located in Norway (domain-wise)?
-
Thank you Kate for response.
-
I would definitely use the .com domain.
Honestly, in your situation a .no doesn't make that much sense. The site is about Norway, sure, but your language is English and you're targeting basically every other country than Norway. If you're using a ccTLD, it's fair for a consumer to expect the language on the website to match the cc - which is not the case here.
So a .com would absolutely be the way to go, in my opinion.
-
Hey Kate
What would you suggest for a .com.au domain that is now looking to expand into UK?
Would you suggest uk.domainname.com.au or www.domainname.com.au/uk/ ?
Is there a best practise for this?
-
Yes. Simply put, all else being equal, if you are targeting an multiple country international audience in which your offerings do not change, you should have a general TLD rather than a ccTLD. I can't say that you will start ranking better for sure, but it'll help in the long run.
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
-
Entire website is duplicated on 2 domains - what to do?
My client's website has 1000+ pages and a Domain Authority of 23. I have just discovered that the entire site is duplicated on a second domain (main URL = companyname.com - duplicate site URL = company-name.com). The home page of the duplicate domain has a 301 redirect going to the main domain. However, none of the 1000+ other pages have any redirect set up, so Google is indexing the entire duplicate site. I'm assuming this is a bad thing for SEO. Duplicate site has a domain Authority of 4, so I'd like to transfer whatever link juice it has, towards the main site. What's the best thing to do? Ultimately I think it would be best to delete the duplicate site. So would it be a case of adding a redirect to the htaccess file along the lines of: redirect company-name.com/?slug? to https://companyname.com/?slug? (I realise this isn't the correct syntax - but is the concept correct?) Has anyone ever dealt with this successfully?
Technical SEO | | BottleGreenWebsites0 -
US and UK Websites of Same Business with Same Content
Hello Community, I need your help to understand, whether I can use the US website's content on my UK website or not? US Website's domain: https://www.fortresssecuritystore.com UK Website's domain: https://www.fortresssecuritystore.co.uk Both websites are having same content on all the pages, including testimonials/reviews. I am trying to gain business from Adwords and Organic SEO marketing. Thanks.
Technical SEO | | CommercePundit1 -
Ranking in .com .fr .de but not in my target .cz serp?
Hello, our website is targeted for the Czech Republic. When I monitor our rankings, we have very high rankings in all of the other SERPs like .com and .fr .de but we are in the very end of CZ serp. Not CZ is the only SERP where we have two languages (Czech which is on subdomain cs.domain.com and domain.com which is for english). Now i am concerned about the example.com. Why is it not ranking at all (very low in czech serp like 130 vs 10-15 in other serps) We have used href lang tags to specify the language I think Can it be because of my cs. domain is optimized for a keyword which is not the example.com keyword ? (I think this is not the reason) - my example.com domain optimization is for "Kids clothes in Czech Republic" but cs domain for "Used clothes in Czech Republic" is it a linking issue? Should I have more local Czech links? Im out of ideas.
Technical SEO | | advertisingtech0 -
Website indexed but not ranking for anything
hello everyone, It seems my website http://www.scribidocampus.com/ is indexed by google but it si not ranking anywhere, even wehn i google scribidocampus. If i search any of the text on my website in " " no results come up. can someone tell me the reason?
Technical SEO | | themesh0 -
Setting up a site with different extensions (.co.uk and .com)
hi i am setting up a new site but have bought two domains to cover those who may type the wrong version. So i have: regionwithchildren.co.uk and regionwithchildren.com i am just setting up both on my wordpress host with a coming soon page (to include social links and sign up form). but had a few questions: as the main site is .co.uk should i just set up a redirect from the .com to the .co.uk as the root folders on the two will be the same (regionwithchildren) i need to change one as host cant have two identical - what should i change the .com one to? any other considerations for this kind of set up would be much appreciated? thanks neil
Technical SEO | | neilhenderson0 -
How to target long tail keywords
Apologies if this is already answered, I'm a newbie. I'm looking to determine how to target long tail keywords. I'm supporting a site that is new and with very small budgets in the very competitive life insurance market. If we devise a list of long tail keywords, should we then add those to the page titles, meta descriptions etc rather than the short tail ones that the site will never rank for anyway?
Technical SEO | | aoifep0 -
Website is not indexed in Google
Hi Guys, I have a problem with a website from a customer. His website is not indexed in Google (except for the homepage). I could not find anything that can possibly be the cause. I already checked the robots.txt, sitemap, and plugins on the website. In the HTML code i also couldn't find anything which makes indexing harder than usual. This is the website i am talking about: http://www.xxxx.nl/ (Dutch) The only thing that i am guessing now is the Google sandbox, but even that is quite unlikely. I hope you guys discover something i could not find! Thanks in advance 🙂
Technical SEO | | B.Great0 -
301 redirect to new website
We are migrating to a new website that will be using entirely new URLs under the same domain as the old website. The old website is a custom PHP script and the new website uses Drupal. I know that I should use individual 301 redirects to the corresponding new pages. My question is just how to set up the hundreds of 301 redirects from the old website to the new one? Here is the process I've come up with. Please let me know if there is an easier and better way for this. Before actually changing to the new website: download an advanced report with all pages on this domain from OSE. Find corresponding pages on the new website Make the hundreds of 301 redirect lines in an .htaccess file with the following code: redirect 301 /oldurl.html http://domain.com/the-full-url Thanks in advance for your help!
Technical SEO | | qbeeker0