Best strategy behind moving country subdirectory to dedicated TTLD wo/ loosing organic search volume?
-
Community,
We are about to move one of our most popular country sub directories from brandname.com/de/.. to brandname.de . We have just purchased the domain so while the domain has been registered in 2009 the URL has zero domain authority.
What is the best strategy to execute the move while being cautious about loosing too much organic search volume the subdirectory is receiving right now?
Obviously it will take some time to build up DA on the TTLD so maybe it is a good idea to keep the country directory for a little longer and start on the TTLD with just a static landing page, place some links, wait until it receives some DA builds up and then perform the move.
Thoughts?
/TomyPro
-
Thanks for those references Ryan, I appreciate it. I will have a look tonight.
/Thomas
-
I will share the below articles. They address this exact topic and are presented very well. Review them and draw your own conclusions.
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/international-seo-where-to-host-and-how-to-target-whiteboard-friday
http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/folders-vs-subdomains-vs-cctld-in-international-seo-an-overview
-
Ryan,
Thanks for your thoughts - I appreciate them, however I think this makes for a great SEO discussion.
The reason for moving to a CCTLD is mainly to increase search volume. We expect the search volume to go down in the intermediary but hope that it is a wise investment in the future. These are our reasons:
- Using a CCTLD will allow more SEO power in local search results for local keywords
- Using a CCTLD will allow us to host the site on a local physical server and separate IP
- Using a CCTLD should increase CTR in local markets
- Non-SEO Using a CCTLD should allow charging higher CPM rates
The reason for us doing this move is that over the years we have observed us being constantly outranked in local searches (e.g. Brazil) by sites that have
- less DA and mozRank
- local CCTLD (e.g. com.br)
- local server hosting
Their backlink profile was very similar to ours in a sense that both would get local backlinks from within the market yet we were not able to outrank them.
Do you have any quantitative data that would imply your statement of consolidating properties under one umbrella is the way to go for a highly internationalized offering that relies on local organic search volume?
Cost and Time concerns do not apply given the way our infrastructure is setup.
Looking forward to your and other SEO gurus comments.
Best /Thomas
-
Best strategy behind moving country subdirectory to dedicated TTLD wo/ loosing organic search volume?
Best strategy would be not to move it.
I'll make my prediction. You will move the site. You will lose ranking. You wont easily recapture your old ranking. You will then either move the site back or really wonder what you were thinking when you had this idea.
Your present DA is collected between your brandname.com site as a whole and the /de site. When you split the site, both domains will lose DA. That is one of the primary reasons the current best SEO practice is to condense sites into a single domain. There are also the cost and time benefits of maintaining a single site vs multiple sites. You are moving in the wrong direction. You may have good reasons, but I would recommend rethinking them.
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
-
Disallow: /jobs/? is this stopping the SERPs from indexing job posts
Hi,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JamesHancocks1
I was wondering what this would be used for as it's in the Robots.exe of a recruitment agency website that posts jobs. Should it be removed? Disallow: /jobs/?
Disallow: /jobs/page/*/ Thanks in advance.
James0 -
Putting my content under domain.com/content, or under related categories: domain.com/bikes/content ?
Hello This questions plays on what Joe Hall talked about during this years' MozCon: Rethinking Information Architecture for SEO and Content Marketing. My Case:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Inevo
So.. we're working out guidelines and templates for a costumer (sporting goods store) on how to publish content (articles, videos, guides) on their category pages, product pages, and other pages. At this moment I have 2 choices:
1. Use a url-structure/information architecture where all the content is placed in one subfolder, for example domain.com/content. Although it's placed here, there's gonna be extensive internal linking from /content to the related category pages, so the content about bikes (even if it's placed under domain.com/bikes) will be just as visible on the pages related to bikes. 2. Place the content about bikes on a subdirectory under the bike category, **for example domain.com/bikes/content. ** The UX/interface for these two scenarios will be identical, but the directories/folder-hierarchy/url structure will be different. According to Joe Hall, the latter scenario will build up more topical authority and relevance towards the category/topic, and should be the overall most ideal setup. Any thoughts on which of the two solutions is the most ideal? PS: There is one critical caveat her: my costumer uses many url-slugs subdirectories for their categories, for example domain.com/activity/summer/bikes/, which means the content in the first scenario will be 4 steps away from the home page. Is this gonna be a problem? Looking forward to your thoughts 🙂 Sigurd, INEVO0 -
URL Parameters Settings in WMT/Search Console
On an large ecommerce site the main navigation links to URLs that include a legacy parameter. The parameter doesn’t actually seem to do anything to change content - it doesn’t narrow or specify content, nor does it currently track sessions. We’ve set the canonical for these URLs to be without the parameter. (We did this when we started seeing that Google was stripping out the parameter in the majority of SERP results themselves.) We’re trying to best strategize on how to set the parameters in WMT (search console). Our options are to set to: 1. No: Doesn’t affect page content’ - and then the Crawl field in WMT is auto-set to ‘Representative URL’. (Note, that it's unclear what ‘Representative URL’ is defined as. Google’s documentation suggests that a representative URL is a canonical URL, and we've specifically set canonicals to be without the parameter so does this contradict? ) OR 2. ‘Yes: Changes, reorders, or narrows page content’ And then it’s a question of how to instruct Googlebot to crawl these pages: 'Let Googlebot decide' OR 'No URLs'. The fundamental issue is whether the parameter settings are an index signal or crawl signal. Google documents them as crawl signals, but if we instruct Google not to crawl our navigation how will it find and pass equity to the canonical URLs? Thoughts? Posted by Susan Schwartz, Kahena Digital staff member
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AriNahmani0 -
Google Search Analytics How to Get Search Keywords for a Page?
How do I get the keywords coming into a page on the new Google Webmaster Tools Search Analytics? Used to be there in the old version. You would just view your most popular urls and when you expanded the urls you would see the terms driving the traffic. How do I see the most popular keyword queries for a given page in the new tool? Alternatively can I still use the old tool somehow?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | K-WINTER0 -
Multilingual SEO subdirectories structure
Hi, I have to optimize a domain for Google for 3 languages (.com with subdirectories)(Dutch, German and English) content is only served on domain.com/nl, .com/de and .com/en NO CONTENT is served on domain.com.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bmcinternetmarketing
How do I exclude domain.com from getting in Google? Because there is no content on the top level only on subdirectories. Is there a rule we have to add to htaccess? Or Robots.txt by disallow all and next lines allow /nl, allow /de and allow /en? Thanks a lot! Kind regards, Alain Nijholt0 -
Which is better /section/ or section/index.php?
I have noticed that Google has started to simply link to /section/ as opposed to /section/index.php and I haven't changed any canonical tags etc. I have looked at my pages moz authority for the two /section/ = 28/100
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TimHolmes
/section/index.php = 42/100 How would I go about transferring the authority to /section/ from /section/index.php to hopefully help me in my organic serp positions etc. Any insight would be great 🐵0 -
What is the best way to optimize/setup a teaser "coming soon" page for a new product launch?
Within the context of a physical product launch what are some ideas around creating a /coming-soon page that "teases" the launch. Ideally I'd like to optimize a page around the product, but the client wants to try build consumer anticipation without giving too many details away. Any thoughts?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GSI0 -
SEO consultant/expert
I am looking to hire an SEO expert that can not only make suggestions/perform audit, but also execute changes. Of course lots of companies are available, but I am ideally looking for an individual with a nice track record. No offense to SEO firms, but I am not interested in paying for overhead, etc. Curious to know if others have gone this route and what the experience has been like. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MNKid150