Variation on the subdomain/sub-directory question... Descriptive TLDs
-
Hi there, We have a variation on the subdomain/sub-directory question...
Our business has two monetising areas, a clinic and a shop. To market them, we do recipes, blogs and social media, rather than relying primarily on SEO, but we do want to up our SEO game.
Our primary site is www.example.co.uk This is Wordpress and where we market the clinic, host the recipes and blogs, and is our main email domain. Our second site is Woocommerce, at www.example.shop
Our shop market is primarily in the UK, but we seem to pick up a fair amount of international business, partly because the clinic does virtual consultations to many countries. The shop is online only. We have physical clinics across the UK.
Both sites cross link extensively, eg with blogs advertising products in the shop. The branding is intentionally related yet different, because they have very distinct functions, and eg. I don’t want to clutter the interface or distract people with blog or clinic once we have funnelled them to the shop checkout.
I would also like to separate the blog and recipe elements from the clinic, using a slightly different theme with different functions. We use a lot of plugins, and the more we aggregate functions on the same Wordpress instance, the more likely something is to go wrong.
I like the new TLDs because they are more “human”, and they identify where you are and what you are doing more clearly. We do email footers with links to example.clinic (redirected to www.example.co.uk) and example.shop. They are simple and explain what is going on.
Conversely, shop.example.co.uk is not so easy to write or read out. www.example.co.uk/shop looks like an afterthought, rather than a shop in its own right with its own home page. So there would have to be a really good SEO reason for me to merge the shop into the main site with reverse proxy or multisite. Do you think that there is such a good reason?
If not, by the same token, would it make sense to separate out example.blog or even naturedoc.recipes from example.clinic and use .co.uk as a single page portal to the three separate sites?
My instinct, for what it is worth is that Google is smart enough to have started thinking that domains linked by topic TLDs can be equivalent to subdomains, and to recognise that we are not trying to build links from spammy unrelated sites.
My last area is about human behaviour... Are people are as happy to click on or type in a new TLD like .clinic as a local .co.uk one? ...when (a) it is not a discredited TLD like .biz, and (b) it gives them more insight into what they will get when they arrive.
And since we have the .uk domain, should we switch to this shorter version at the same time? I already use it for custom shortcodes (eg. example.uk/fte6 for people to type in from printed material or instagram). I can’t help feeling .uk has been unsuccessful, and its use now looks bad, even if it is shorter.
Many thanks in advance.
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
-
Unsolved GMB Local SEO question
I am trying to diagnose how one particular competitor is smoking us in local rankings. I came across a text field “Service Details' within Google My Business Services. This allows me to put in a brief description of each service we offer. My thought is that this could be a good place for keywords. That said, the descriptions are not public facing (or to the best of my knowledge) so I am reluctant to do all the work for nothing. I am wondering if anyone has filled these out and if there were any noticeable results. Any insight is appreciated
Local SEO | | jorda0910 -
Is it okay to update Page Titles and Meta descriptions over a period of time?
Some of the page are not performing even after having good content, videos, images and faqs. I am planning to update the page titles and planning to use Long Tail keywords in it for example, Contact US - Brand name would be Contact US - Brand Keyword. Is it okay to do that for all the pages?
Local SEO | | Ravi_Rana0 -
Two websites or a sub domain or sub page?
Hi, Our company has three branches in Canada and opening a 4th in the United States soon. Our target market strategy will differ in the States and I would like to know your opinion if we should launch a second site under a slightly different brand or not. I don’t want to do anything that could negatively impact our site’s current organic ranks. I feel I have to give some history on our company so you understand the dilemma. It is a little complicated. So, in Canada, we rent large generators and all the equipment needed to distribute and transform that power. We don’t own the generators. We re-rent generators (broker) from our partners. What we own is all the distribution equipment that typically accompanies a generator rental. We make money on the generator also, but the real money is in the distribution portion. In terms of messaging, our current site is tuned to target the end-user, the same market that our re-rent partners target. As a result, our re-rent partners and our company will bid on the same project in many occurrences. Our strategy in the United States is to primarily target the re-rent market. That is a very small segment in comparison to the end-user. From a marketing perspective, all that is really needed to target that group is an outside sales team. There are maybe 40 re-rent partners we will target in our first U.S. GEO… Texas. In the States, we will not rent generators. We will not run ad campaigns that bid on any generator rental type terms. We will not offer the same level of turn-key solutions we offer in Canada. All of the equipment we manufacture will be very generic in appearance, think Acme. Branding will look completely different than what we have up in Canada. We want the re-rent companies we target in the States to feel comfortable we are there to support them not compete against them. Regarding website strategy, I see three options: 1. We create a sub domain or sub page of www.trinitypower.com that explains the services we offer in the States. This for me is the safest solution. 2. We launch a second domain www.trinitypowerrentals.com that has similar content in-terms of the type of equipment we rent, but speaks directly to re-rent partners. That may not be enough of a differentiator though and I fear two sites owned by the same company with similar content will have negative SEO implications, if not right away, a year down the road. 3. We launch a new website under a completely different company name. This still carries some risk as I understand it, even if we have different phone numbers, company registration info, etc…
Local SEO | | TrinityPower
Would love to know your thoughts. Thanks everyone. J0 -
Is CTR that important? SERP Questions (ADVICES for a case study)
My website is gabseo.ca Lately I have been following keywords my town in Canada from Mexico and I have the impression that the Google updates the SERP almost every hours for my target keyword. It is possible that the CTR on the SERP can be that powerful? Sometimes I am number 1 for "SEO Gatineau" for example and overnight I am #9 or #10, the next day I am #3... Is there another way that I can test the search result? Whn you try this query, what do you see? It started happening this week and coincidentally I didn't publish any blog articles this week... is it related? I am stressing out right now because my agency is a startup. So how can I beat the other agencies if I don't have a good CTR? I know that I will do a casestudy about this! Any comments, ideas?
Local SEO | | Gab-SEO0 -
We are adding an ecommerce feature to our site. noindex the order. subdomain?
our site currently consists of directory listings for different stores but we will now be adding an ecommerce feature to our site. people from the main site will be able to click a button that will direct you to the orders. subdomain. we are thinking about noindexing the subdomain as i can't find any use cases in organic searches for this new orders. subdomain. What is the current best practice for this type of situation and will noindexing the orders. subdomain harm us in anyway?
Local SEO | | imjonny1230 -
Attacking Doorway/Thin Content pages?
What's the best way to approach fixing thin "city+services" pages? Would recommend doing one page at a time? Or doing a little on a bunch of pages at a time? For example, rewrite one page with 1,000 words of unique content, adding city specific images/videos of services rendered and local testimonials over the course of a week? Then go to the next page the following week? Or, one week add city specific images/videos to all the pages you can? Then, the next week add something else to all the pages? I'm trying to figure out the best way to scale this, and also which way google/search engines would prefer/look more kindly at? Thanks, Ruben
Local SEO | | KempRugeLawGroup0 -
SEO: Directory Listing Help with Two business locations in different states
Hello! I am in the process of building my second location, and will be moving to Nashville TN. My first location is located in ohio, and I am changing my primary location to nashville, but still want to keep my clients in Ohio... At least for the first year. As for directory building, what is the best option? 1.) Should I create two separate directory listings for each location and then direct www.domain.com to Nashville directory, and then www.domain.com/ohio-wedding-photographer/ to the Ohio listing in the directory? Or do you create one directory and mention I have offices in both Ohio and nashville? Is it bad to have two listings for each location if they have different addresses and phone numbers? Thank you!
Local SEO | | jean78780 -
Has anyone any experience of Google pulling through random meta descriptions.
If you search "venn digital" then the correct meta description is pulled through, but if you search "venndigital" then it pulls through our twitter feed from the bottom of the page. My only suggestion is that it is doing it because there is no mention of " Venn Digital" in the body of the copy, so it is going to the twitter feed at the bottom of the page where Venn Digital is mentioned to pull this info through.
Local SEO | | AndrewAkesson0