International SEO question domain.com vs domain.com/us/ , domain.com/uk etc.
-
Hi Mozzers,
I am expanding a website internationally. I own the .com for the domain. I need to accommodate multiple countries and I'm not sure if I should build a folder for /us/ for United States or just have the root domain .com
OPTION 1:
domain.com/page-url -- United States
domain.com/de/page-url -- Denmark
domain.com/jp/page-url -- JapanOPTION 2:
domain.com/us/page-url -- United States
domain.com/de/page-url -- Denmark
domain.com/jp/page-url -- JapanMy concern with option 2 is there will be some dilution and we wouldn't get the full benefit of inbound links compared to Option 1 as we would have geo ip redirection in place to redirect users etc. to the relative sub-folder.
Which option is better from an SEO perspective?
Cheers,
Jeremy
-
Thank you for all of your responses - they have given me a lot of very specific help and a clear direction to move forward!
-
The use of subfolder or ccTlds (or subdomain) should not be decided because of SEO, but because of business reasons.
For instance, if Jeremy does not have already a consistent organic traffic from Denmark, maybe is better starting with a subfolder, which inherits some of the overall domain authority via internal linking, hence can obtain a first boost in organic visibility.
Once the business started having recognition and consistent and continuous traffic, Jeremy will be able to consider to migrate to a ccTld solution (if really needed).
On the contrary, let's say that Jeremy's company has physical offices in Copenhagen and it is an already known brand. Then in that case it would surely better to go for the ccTld way.
-
I do not agree.
The root is for your main market, and the subfolders for your international ones. It is so since the dawn of international SEO and it always worked well.
In GWT (Search Console), Jeremy should have to geotarget the root domain to USA (or maintain it not geo-targeted, so to target all markets but Danish and Japanese), and geotarget the dk and jp subfolders to Denmark and Japan.
-
Hi Jeremy,
option 1 is surely better, because you are quitting a level (or click).
Regarding redirecting users, you can maintain the redirection via GeoIP even if you put the USA "site" under the root and not in a US subfolder.
Said that, I strongly suggest you to order the redirection just when a user come for the first time on your site, so:
- To give users the freedom to visit also the others versions, which is less dumb then you may believe. For me, living in Europe, is a real nightmare when I cannot visit the "Spanish" version of a site just because I am travelling and I am visiting it from another targeted country;
- To not always redirect googlebot to the USA version because of its American IP. Even if Googlebot started crawling from countries other than the USA, from the logs' analysis I still see how the highest percentages of visits Googlebot does are from Mountain View.
Finally, correct a mistake you are doing in your URLs:
DE is for Germany (DE = Deutschland) and not Denmark. The name of the Danish subfolder should be DK.
I warn you about this because this mistake would probably end being replicated in the hreflang implementation, with obvious geotargeting issues.
-
Hi there
If you are trying to COUNTRY target, you should go for a ccTLD, but if you are going after a LANGUAGE target, you should do a subdirectory. You can learn more here.
I would also make sure you read the following resources:
International SEO
Country Targeting (Google & Bing)
Language Targeting (Google & Bing)All of the above resources will help you have more success in your international efforts.
Hope this helps! Good luck!
-
Apologies I did misunderstand - Option 2 - I find it is more customer friendly as well.
-
Hi Jeremy,
I think that John has misunderstood the question a little as you aren't talking about different domains, just what to do with the US / Home.
I would suggest you take option 2. because you are targeting internationally from a .com, it is important to be able to differentiate where you are as soon as you hit the site. Each sub-folder is a country.
And remember to use HREFLANG to help identify language / country.
-Andy
-
Hi John
Thanks for the quick reply! I'm actually talking about having the same domain name for both situations, just not sure if I should have brand.com with the domain root targeted to US traffic or brand.com/us/ with US targeted to US traffic
cheers,
Jeremy -
You will get caveated answers. But for me Option 1 - by a long way.
Many articles on it, but you need to focus all resources on one domain - that gets optimum results. Two domains = twice as much work as one, three domains = 3 times.
Look at cottonon.com - if you want to monitor a very successful version.
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
-
Redirect to 'default' or English (/en) version of site?
Hi Moz Community! I'm trying to work through a thorny internationalization issue with the 'default' and English versions of our site. We have an international set-up of: www.domain.com (in english) www.domain.com/en www.domain.com/en-gb www.domain.com/fr-fr www.domain.com/de-de and so on... All the canonicals and HREFLANGs are set up, except the English language version is giving me pause. If you visit www.domain.com, all of the internal links on that page (due to the current way our cms works) point to www.domain.com/en/ versions of the pages. Content is identical between the two versions. The canonical on, say, www.domain.com/en/products points to www.domain.com/products. Feels like we're pulling in two different directions with our internationalization signals. Links go one way, canonical goes another. Three options I can see: Remove the /en/ version of the site. 301 all the /en versions of pages to /. Update the hreflangs to point the EN language users to the / version. **Redirect the / version of the site to /en. **The reverse of the above. **Keep both the /en and the / versions, update the links on / version. **Make it so that visitors to the / version of the site follow links that don't take them to the /en site. It feels like the /en version of the site is redundant and potentially sending confusing signals to search engines (it's currently a bit of a toss-up as to which version of a page ranks). I'm leaning toward removing the /en version and redirecting to the / version. It would be a big step as currently - due to the internal linking - about 40% of our traffic goes through the /en path. Anything to be aware of? Any recommendations or advice would be much appreciated.
International SEO | | MaxSydenham0 -
Choosing a domain name in 2016
Hello Everyone I am not new to SEO but new to the forum ! I am in the travel business selling high end bicycle trips to the US market. I am about to expand my business and sell cheaper bicycle trips to the European market. My company has a got a name in the industry as well as some amazing reviews on google + and other forums. My 1 st question, would you use a totally different domain name see that is a different market and different prices or would you use the same domain name ? If you were to use the same domain would you do fr.mydomain.com or www.mydomain.com/fr. In terms of web domain, is exact match domain still powerful ? My current domain name is not an exact match domain and surfing the web, I feel like it still gives you a major advantage in 2016 ? If I choose an exact match domain, I noticed I can get www.mydomain.travel or www.mydomain.bike or get a domain for the country I am targeting www.mydomain.co.uk. Do you have advice on which domain is easier to rank ? or doesn't it change anything ?
International SEO | | seoanalytics0 -
International SEO
Anyone have any good free resources for international SEO best practices? I've read through most of the common stuff and wondered if there's anything I'm missing. We are getting ready to launch a version of our website in the UK and I could use any hints or advice that could make my life easier. My biggest question is whether to keep the sites as 1 site (single domain with sub-folder for sharing incoming link profile) or to get a .UK domain and do everything from scratch. (it seems like a sub-domain is not the way to go?). I also wonder if any of you can share things to look out for, pitfalls, mistakes, etc...? TIA for any help/answers!
International SEO | | DownPour0 -
Ranking well internationally, usage of hreflang, duplicate country content
I'm trying to wrap my head around various options when it comes to international SEO, specifically how to rank well in countries that share a language, and the risk of duplicate content in these cases. We have a chance to start from scratch because we're switching to a new e-commerce platform, and we were looking into using hreflang. Let's assume an example of a .com webshop that targets both Austria and Germany. One option is to include both language and region in the URL, and mark these as such using hreflang: webshop.com/de-de/german-language-content (with hreflang de-de)
International SEO | | DocdataCommerce
webshop.com/de-at/german-language-content (with hreflang de-at) Another option would be to only include the language in the URL, not the region, and let Google figure out the rest: webshop.com/de/german-language-content (with hreflang de) Which would be better? The risk of inserting a country, of course, is that you're introducing duplicate content, especially since for webshops there are usually only minor differences in content (pricing, currency, a word here and there). If hreflang is an effective means to make sure that visitors from each country get the correct URL from the search engines, I don't see any reason not to use this way. But if search engines get it wrong, users will end up in the wrong page and will have to switch country, which could result in conversion loss. Also, if you only use language in the URL, is it useful at all to use hreflang? Aren't engines perfectly able to recognize language already? I don't mention ccTLDs here because most of the time we're required to use a .com domain owned by our customer. But if we did, would that be much better? And would it still be useful to use hreflang then? webshop.de/german-language-content (with hreflang de-de)
webshop.at/german-language-content (with hreflang de-at) Michel Hendriks
Docdata Commerce0 -
Local SEO - My Ranking depends on City of the user - Rank tracker is failing
Hello, The search results differ completly depending on the user location. The websites yoagbarcelona.org targets poeple from barcelona: Barcelona; User location Barcelona web is on the last position on first page: http://screencast.com/t/ZsIeiCeLRM User location New York 1st. http://screencast.com/t/PzaLbwWW4xx: Also SEO MOZ rank tracker is showing me that im no 1in google.es for yoga barcelona. The problem is that this is only true for users outside the region 😞 The site has very bad ranking in google places and you need to go down to page 10 until my yoga studio shows up in the maps results. I did some hardcore citation building and signed up in almost all local directories that google pulls data from within one month and optimised the google places / plus profile. Please give me some advice how I could overcome the problem.??? Especially on what part should i focus when optimising the page. ??? Are there any other good strategies for getting into google places ??? Do I need more links from local sites or how is this local serps working ???
International SEO | | stereo690 -
Does penguin update affect all sub-domains?
A UK sub-domain of a big US site got hit by Penguin last week. The two operations are completely separate apart from sharing a parent domain. The US site also run a multitude of other sub-domains in the same marketplace. Their link profile is not squeaky clean. The question is, could the actions of the US site, either in bad links, or poor on-site issues, have caused Penguin to hit the UK sub-domain? Unfortunately I have no access to the US Analytics or rankings data to know if they were hit by Penguin too. Thanks
International SEO | | BeattieGroup0 -
Use country-specific domains or stick to already strong .com domain?
We run an online store with the majority of our customers coming from 4 different European countries. The site is accessible through TLD's of all of these countries. However our .com domain currently has the most links pointing to it and the highest domain authority. Unfortunately, we are unable to tell through which TLD visitors reach our site. The niche is rather competetive, and therefore I am unsure whether it would be worth it to solely use our .com domain for the English language, and try to rank for each of the seperate languages with its own country-specific domain. **Question/discussion: **Will it be worth the costs and time to spent to build links for the country specific domains in these countries, or should we focus on making our .com domain stronger and use it for all countries? I'm aware of the benefits of ranking with a domain in the country the user is in. Note: We have major duplicate content issues at this moment, due the content being available in different languages, on a handful of domains. On each domain, users can view the site in different languages. In addition, the language indication in the url is not very clear (?lang=x) so I believe this should be improved to make it easier for search engines to tell which language is presented. If I choose to use a different language for each TLD, then the language flag in the navigation on the site will point to a different domain, so each language is hosted on 1 domain and there is no more duplicate content. However, I'm afraid this will lead to lower rankings, as the (strong) .com domain will no longer host the content in different languages.
International SEO | | 1200wd0 -
Does it matter whether you use /en vs /uk
I have a global site targeting many countries including the UK which is the only English language site. Does it matter whether I use /en or /uk for the UK sub-folder? If I already have /en in place, but my Google UK listings are struggling, will it benefit me to switch to /uk? I honestly don't think it matters too much, but given the choice would've gone for the /uk I'm trying to weigh up whether it is worth the effort of changing it.
International SEO | | Red_Mud_Rookie0