Hi guys, As you have read the title I am considering whether to choose a local country domain strategy or a global domain strategy for my newest project. My new project will be available in multiple countries and languages. I am planning to purchase local country domains e.g. .de, .nl, etc. when I choose to start a strategy to launch individual local sites, or I can go global and make 1 big .com site, but what is the best way to grow ranking for both global site (.com) and localized site with country domains ? By the way, my newest project will be a large travel site.
.com is the best, but if you want to go local, get a ccTLD...they're given preference in your local search engine.
i recommend to go for .com domain and tld too...what you can do is... create one .com site with all the information in english and create tld domain for each country in local language. now put country flash on .com site and give link to that particular language tld. it will definitely work..
There is a nice Matt Cutt's post in his blog. He says that best of all getting dedicated ccTLD in the corresponding countries: e.g. domain.fr If you can't do it - get subdomain - e.g. fr.domain.com And in worst case subfolder - www.domain/fr/ Anyway keep in mind that subfolder is part of the main domain, so the main domain gets ALL the power around. Subdomain is under same main domain name and also gets some juice. While dedicated domain has nothing to do with any other domain name...However it surely will rank better in that specific country. So it worth that. Also try getting DNS and Web Hosting services in the same region. This helps reduce DNS/Site response time. In exchange you'd get more respect from the visitor and lot of credit from the local search engine ;-) Hope this helps p.s. I agree that managing different DNS/Web-Hosting accounts is a real headache;-)
Thanks, I know the .com is always the best, but since I want to brand a global site AND a local site with dedicated ccTLD's for optimized SERPS results it's a bit complicated to use just a single .com domain.
So in fact I have to create 1 global .com site and beside that I should create multiple local sites for every country with each a ccTLD?
go for .com domain name and at the same time develop country specific sub-domain sites too and you will get much better exposure on search engines. additionally, you can go for .com domain and ccTLD too. both the methods are alright
Well, you know; I think it's a good idea, but there's one thing I don't know how to solve it: while using a .com domain for the global site (it will be an English name of course with one or two important keyword in the domain that is popular for SERPS purposes), how should I create the local sites with ccTLD's? For e.g. my company and brand name for the global .com site is TravelReviews.com and I want to make this my brandname, how should I use it in my local sites in Germany, France, Uk etc. ? Since people in Germany and France doesn't use the keywords "Travel" and/or "Reviews" in their country since they do not speak/use English words, but their own language. Since my project is still in the beginning process I would like to think about this strategy for SEO and I want to do it the right way from the beginning. Thanks for all the help, it's really appreciated.
If you are targeting several conutries .com works better and it is much easier to linkbuild. For the German and French URL - keep your brand name, this will help you in link building and from a user perspective it is much better to have the same name at all times. This way you will recieve natural links from each country - containing your main keywords.
Thanks for your reply, but the problem will still be there since people in Germany and France doesn't use the keywords "Travel" and/or "Reviews" in Google in their country since they do not speak/talk/use English words, but their own language.
If you ask me, I wouldn't base my SEO efforts on domain name. After all it's the reputation that should talk the most (quality of incoming links, posts, reviews and so further). Title and Snippet in SE results are way more important for the visitor than a domain name. Since your site is new on the planet, I would go with subdirs. So all the power (such as PR and incoming links) would belong to one (main) domain and its subdirs. Just don't forget to geo-target your sub folders in Google webmaster tools. And when the site grows up and receives enough organic traffic and PR, you can take it level up and split to subdomains or buy dedicated domains in each country. Hope this helps
Thanks for your reply, but I think the domainname is important as well as it will help me rank higher when one of the most targeted keyword is stuffed in the domainname, right?
You keep asking same question again and again ;-) So I'll give you the answer you want to hear - YES! However it ain't important factor like many people think about it. Check out this discussion: http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=1265054
i recommend to go for .com domain and tld for the other. As us SEO, the search terms and character set used will be SE specific to that country. Many of the non-USA SE will not take a English ".com" site. But to conduct a search in Germany with an "American" keyword doesn't work. They have special characters that make up some of the characters in the keyword.
I have several sites with de.domain.com, fr.domain.com and others ranking very high on competitive terms in regional SEs. ccTLD, local DNS and hosting may improve the rankings (a little) but not it's not 'must-to-have'. Geo-Targetting in webmaster tools does much more. Special characters are not used in URLs and it's suggested avoiding it.
why dont u buy a .com domain & use a translation bar for the users other than english language? but if ur content is not same for two countries & u want to concentrate on two different local issues u can buy ccTLDS instead.