Multi Country website question for SEO best practice

[SEO Lady]

Good morning you 'orrible lot

I've been asked a question by a client and my initial response would be to leave as is, but before I respond can I please ask your opinions?

Unsure whether to double the SEO and apply to both sites, or just stay as we are concentrating on one website.

At moment we have the sites with geo location so if customer goes to [Irish domain .ie] from the UK they get GBP prices and [Irish domain .ie] in ROI get euro prices and so on

Is this good or not for seo, was considering just having [Irish domain .ie] euro for Ireland, [UK domain .co] GBP for UK etc

Looking in Google UK for the target keywords the site is ranking page 1 position 4 so there's UK traffic just as much as Irish, as in Google IE he's also on page 1 position 4

The .co UK domain isn't ranking at present as all SEO work has been implemented on the Irish domain.
Sidenote: There's no dupe content between the sites, only the structure is the same.

Thank you!
Nina

 

[SEOpie]

Hey,

Rather than a completely separate TLD, if you wanted to separate the sites, I would go for a sub-folder. Then, all the work you've done on the initial .ie domain would help give the /uk/ site some initial traction.

If you ever had to, you could avoid duplicate content by adding

<link rel="alternate" href="http://example.ie" hreflang="en-ie" /> and
<link rel="alternate" href="http://example.ie/uk/" hreflang="en-gb" />

...to the head.

I've been thinking about this a lot recently with a site I'm working on, and looking around at what international corporations do, it looks like a mix of sub-domains and sub-folders for different territories and languages (I mean one or the other; not both).
With that being said, if I am ever in the situation in the future where I get to choose right from the start, I would go for a .com/en-ie, .com/en-gb, etc. type format (i.e. sub-folders rather than TLDs or sub-domains).

With all that being said, it seems as though it is working well as it is, depending on how competitive the area is. I might be inclined to leave it for now and see how it responds, rather than risking the UK traffic.

Ben

 

[SEO Lady]

If you ever had to, you could avoid duplicate content by adding

<link rel="alternate" href="http://example.ie" hreflang="en-ie" /> and
<link rel="alternate" href="http://example.ie/uk/" hreflang="en-gb" />

...to the head.

Hi Ben

This code is really useful thank you, with regards to the sub folders I will check with the client now whether they are already in place as he's also got another site [URL . fr] for France and again another one [URL .org] for the education sector. They may already be in place.

I really appreciate your detailed reply.

 

[webgeek]

I'd go completely separate TLD, markup the location with structured markup and enjoy the local search benefits, plus the interlinking SEO benefits from separate domains. You insulate yourself against one site going down and taking out their entire enterprise, such as hacking/defacement/seo blunder/server offline/disgruntled staff/etc,etc,etc

 

[WhizzPeople]

Personally, I would recommend choosing separate domains for each website. However, please make sure your hreflang tag is set up correctly in case you are using similar text on both sites.
I have been working for some multination FMCG companies, and geotagging is a nightmare for most of them. Some of the companies has no clue how their own websites are hurting each other.
All the best.

 

[Zinc Digital]

Hi Nina

I think SEOpie and Webgeek have given great advice;

Should the marketing strategy focus on internationalisation then you it's likley that that a GTLD (like .net , com ) would be better than a TLD (like a co.uk). You'd then use the mark up to priortise indexing to relevant Google index.

Also, a consideration. If you use multiple domains you could be be diluting your link building efforts while increasing your marketing budget requirements.

Is link building part of the strategy?

cheers
Rob

 

[SEO Lady]

Hi all

The client found this article online and asked whether this post from 2011 is still the case as it says it's a large ranking factor.

https://moz.com/blog/international-seo-where-to-host-and-how-to-target-whiteboard-friday

Big thanks
Nina

 

[SEOpie]

Some quick research:

Use subfolders for different regions/languages or both:

· Apple
· Lenovo
· Samsung
· Tetra Pak
· LG
· BP

Use TLDs for different regions/languages or both:

· McDonalds
· Ford
· Coca Cola
· Honda
· Toshiba
· Unilever

P&G interestingly use a combination of TLDs, subdomains, and subfolders.

As I said, and as Moz suggest, unless the company has the international influence/budget/recognition to gain links (however it is done), then go for sub-folders.
Although, as they mention, if you are specifically targeting certain countries which prefer a TLD in search results, then you could go for that option (i.e. Fr, Ca, etc.) just with those regions (like P&G).

 

[SEO Lady]

Thanks.

Issue is content is linked to country not domain eg. If customer comes on from France and looks at [domain.ie - Ireland] it will come up in French and euro, if UK customer looks at [domain.fr - France] will come up in GBP and in English

 

[SEOpie]

So the content is dynamic and changes based on user IP?

See here: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/6144055?hl=en

Google recommends using separate pages for different regions.

 

[altonroot]

Based on what I understand, it seems you have one .ie website which is ranking good in UK and a separate UK website which isn't ranking. Now here are two scenarios. One you want to replace separate UK website with .ie website in UK region? If that's the case then I would suggest you to not do that. Passing on local signals won't pass link juice so it will not start ranking immediately so it will be bad deal. The other scenario (and my preference) is to change structure of .ie domain to sub-folders and then implement href lang tag which will help you to preserve ranking as well.

 

[justinaldridge]

We work on a lot of international sites and we always recommend folder structure using hreflang tags. We tried using separate TLD's but the problem is that hreflang does not make all other versions rank in their languages or locations and so you need to do additional link building and local search marketing in each country/language.

Using folders means that each language/country benefits from the strength of the main domain. It's a much easier route to take.

We use this successfully in various industries.