Question: Country Targeting For Google

PROBLEM:

• We have a .com.au domain with backlink history. We'd like to preserve the authority and Australian rankings.
• We want to target other countries: UK, CA, and the rest of the world.
• We have a .com version of our domain, we'd like to make it our primary domain so our brand is not limited to a single country
• If we redirect the .com.au domain to our .com domain, then we risk losing the Australian rankings.

PROPOSED SOLUTION:

• Leave our .com.au website running live (so we can use to to add redirects)
• Create an identical physical website under the .com domain - this is our new default domain (with a neutral country targeting)
• For UK & Canada, duplicate site pages under /au/ and /ca/ respectively, and use HREFLANG to indicate language targeting to Google
• Add all domains to Google Search Console and set them to target the respective countries
• Redirect all the pages with backlinks from the .com.au domain to the equivalent new AU page - e.g. .com.au/page-with-backlinks/ to .com/au/page-with-backlinks/
• Carry on with a single domain with some locally personalised pages

 

Not an expert, but I'd redirect everything to a .com domain name. For several reasons: 1. Duplicate content is always frowned upon and may get your site(s) penalized. 2. You will pass the link juice of your .com.au domain name to your .com domain name. May not happen overnight, but over time it should happen. 3. You will be laser focused on just one site as opposed to several sites. 4. Redirecting domain names to one domain name is a common practice and most search engines will keep your rankings since the contents of your new site will remain pretty much the same.

Again, not an expert. Wait for other users to chime in.

 

Thanks for the thoughtful and detailed answer qwikad.com.