I am going to create a network with one domain, e.g. example.com then going to manage my websites in folders. Look below for example:
www.example.com/market
www.example.com/freebies
www.example.com/personalblog
www.example.com/shop
Consider that all four websites have different design and codes.From seo perspective, is it recommended or I should use subdomains or buy four domains for each website?
Do not use subdirectories to serve different, non-related websites. Sub domains can be considered if the websites have 'some' relation. Separate domains are preferable if the websites have nothing in common.
Well, that a good question.
In SEO, it's great to work with Silo's technique. the "market" silo's should deals with one subjet, the "freebies" silo's should deals with another, etc...
Nevertheless, Google needs to qualified the subject of the global site. The qualification of homepage is important for a great SEO strategy.
According to Abondance (famous seo french agency), working on subfolder isn't a bad solution, even if working on subdomain seems to be better (even more if different parts of your site is in different languages).
To conclude, i think that your solution isn't so bad, but some are thinking that subdomains are better, even more if subjects of every parts are really really differents in their content, as said by thaJeztah
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I have both .ca and .com domains of my website. The website is meant for international audience, but it is important to be associated with Canada though. (the website is about Canadian immigration)
So the question is should I use .ca domain and 301 redirect .com visitors to .ca or vice versa and why?
In other words would it be harder to rank higher internationally with .ca domain?
I suppose it doesn't really matter which one you promote and do link building with.
So the question is should I use .ca domain and 301 redirect .com
visitors to .ca or vice versa and why?
It's the same thing, depends on audience targeting. If you are targeting the outside from Canada, then .com is prefered. It's common logic. If you are targeting my country (Croatia) it would be prefered / good to put .hr domain up.
In other words would it be harder to rank higher internationally with
.ca domain?
Well, this is a tricky part. It depends on amount of SEO effort that you are going to put on page this page. But yes, it's true. It would be harder to rank higher with .ca domain.
I suppose it doesn't really matter which one you promote and do link
building with.
It's true, it doesn't really matter which one you promote and do link building with, however... if your site is going for international audience, then .com is prefered. But, it's ok to use 301 redirect to your .com domain.
In seo , many factor is responsible for rank a website like Quality content,high and relevant back links,social signals. It doesn't really matter which one you promote but quality of submission is matter.
I think i would keep both toplevel-domains and use the hreflang tag in the header to show google which domain belongs to which location. That should fix the duplicate content issue and you should rank a little bit better (maybe, who knows). it's described here: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/189077?hl=en
Usually the country domains get preferred within the country, so you would get a boost within Canada if you go with .CA. However in your case your audience is mostly from abroad, so perhaps if you do 3xx redirect from CA to COM would do you better service.
P.S.
Keep in mind that sometimes people who view the search results may prefer or trust domains associated with the country. But this has to be tested with your audience.
As you mentioned in your question the the website is meant for an international audience. SEO ranking aside the international audience will be much more used to the .com domain than the .ca TLD.
COM vs CA
As of today the TLD does not matter much as long as you are not using free TLDs that are often associated with scams (suck as .tk for example). In fact Google has explicitly mentioned that the TLD is often ignored and making a website about a museum using the .museum domain (yes it exists http://about.museum/) will not help you at all.
Search engines are actively trying to incorporate localization - the Russian search engine Yandex for example offers different results depending on the neighbourhood of the user. With this in mind it is important to decide whether local Canadians or the international audience is your primary target in order to future-proof your website.
Link Building & Promotion of a 301 Redirect
Another important question which you asked is whether it matters which website you promote (co or com). Technically there is almost no difference when it comes to the power of the accumulated links (which boost your search ranking), however you must have in mind that this could change any day.
Currently many black-hat SEOs link to short domain redirects and point these links to the websites that they want to rank. Google will inevitably find a way to penalize them, so I advice promoting the main website not the redirect.
Permanent (301) vs Temporary Redirect (302)
Additionally make sure to use a 301 redirect not a 302 or javascript redirect as they are completely different in the eyes of search engines.
I would make the .ca and .com point to the same site, but promote the .com domain as it's for a wide range of users. So the canonical address will be the .com but canadians will probably get the .ca one as google is prefering local content.
If your services are limited to Canada and you have multiple local stores in various cities, then .ca domain will help you to rank better in Canada search results.
If your customers spread across the globe then using .com is advisable. You are serving international customers and have just .ca domain doesn't make sense to the users as well search engines.
So if you are specific to one country, use country specific domains like .CA other wise use .COM for a global presence.
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Okay, I know this question have been asked plenty of times already, but I haven't found any actual answer.
Considering SEO, what is the best way to construct the URL for multiple languages? One top-level domain for each language would feel unnecessary, so I'm thinking about different subdomains or sub-folders. And in that case, which would be better - en.mydomain.com or english.mydomain.com? And if eg. the english version is more viewed than the swedish version, how do I tell the search engines that they actually are the same page?
Pretty everything is answered in this Google Webmasters article: Multi-regional and multilingual sites.
Here's a summary of relevance:
URL structures
Consider using a URL structure that makes it easy to geotarget parts of your site to different regions. The following table outlines your options:
ccTLDs (country-code top-level domain names)
Example: example.de
Pros:
Clear geotargeting
Server location irrelevant
Easy separation of sites
Cons:
Expensive (and may have limited availability)
Requires more infrastructure
Strict ccTLD requirements (sometimes)
Subdomains with gTLDS (generic top-level domain name)
Example: de.example.com
Pros:
Easy to set up
Can use Webmaster Tools geotargeting
Allows different server locations
Easy separation of sites
Cons:
Users might not recognize geotargeting from the URL alone (is "de" the language or country?)
Subdirectories with gTLDs
Example: example.com/de/
Pros:
Easy to set up
Can use Webmaster Tools geotargeting
Low maintenance (same host)
Cons:
Users might not recognize geotargeting from the URL alone
Single server location
Separation of sites harder
URL parameters
Example: example.com?loc=de
Pros:
Not recommended.
Cons:
URL-based segmentation difficult
Users might not recognize geotargeting from the URL alone
Geotargeting in Webmaster Tools is not possible
Duplicate content and international sites
Websites that provide content for different regions and in different languages sometimes create content that is the same or similar but available on different URLs. This is generally not a problem as long as the content is for different users in different countries. While we strongly recommend that you provide unique content for each different group of users, we understand that this may not always be possible. There is generally no need to "hide" the duplicates by disallowing crawling in a robots.txt file or by using a "noindex" robots meta tag. However, if you're providing the same content to the same users on different URLs (for instance, if both example.de/ and example.com/de/ show German language content for users in Germany), you should pick a preferred version and redirect (or use the rel=canonical link element) appropriately.
Google's guidelines are:
Make sure the page language is obvious
Make sure each language version is easily discoverable
This point specifically references URLs as needing to be kept separate. The example they provide is:
For example, the following .ca URLs use fr as a subdomain or subdirectory to clearly indicate French content: http:// example.ca/fr/vélo-de-montagne.html and http:// fr.example.ca/vélo-de-montagne.html.
They also state:
It’s fine to translate words in the URL, or to use an Internationalized Domain Name (IDN). Make sure to use UTF-8 encoding in the URL (in fact, we recommend using UTF-8 wherever possible) and remember to escape the URLs properly when linking to them.
Targeting the site content to a specific country
This is done through CCTLDs, Geotargetting settings in Search Console, Server Location and 'other signals'.
If you're worried about duplicate content, they state:
Websites that provide content for different regions and in different languages sometimes create content that is the same or similar but available on different URLs. This is generally not a problem as long as the content is for different users in different countries. While we strongly recommend that you provide unique content for each different group of users, we understand that this might not always be possible.
If you do re-use the same content across the same website (but in a different language then:
There is generally no need to "hide" the duplicates by disallowing crawling in a robots.txt file or by using a "noindex" robots meta tag.
But!
However, if you're providing the same content to the same users on different URLs (for instance, if both example.de/ and example.com/de/ show German language content for users in Germany), you should pick a preferred version and redirect (or use the rel=canonical link element) appropriately. In addition, you should follow the guidelines on rel-alternate-hreflang to make sure that the correct language or regional URL is served to searchers.
So, be sure to declare the relationship between different languages using hreflang.
Example below:
<link rel="alternate" href="http://example.com" hreflang="en-us" />
You can use this in a number of places including your page markup, HTTP headers, or even the sitemap.
Here's a link to a hreflang generator which you might find useful.
Hope this helps.
I plan to provide content/services across multiple (similar and related) subcategories. In general, users will only be interested in the one subcategory related to their needs.
Users will be searching for the term that would be part of the domain, subdomain or URL.
There's three possible strategies:
primary-domain.tld, with subdomains:
keyword-one.primary-domain.tld
keyword-two.primary-domain.tld
primary-domain.tld, with directories:
primary-domain.tld/keyword-one
primary-domain.tld/keyword-two
or each keyword gets its own domain:
keyword-one-foo.tld
keyword-two-foo.tld
From an SEO point of view, which is the best approach to take? I gather that having one overall domain would mean any links to any of the subdomains or directories weight for the whole site, helping the ranking of each subdomain/directory. However, supposedly if the domain, keywords and title all match nicely with the content, that would rank highly as well. So I'm unsure as to the best approach to take.
The only answer I think anyone could give you here, is that you can't know. Modern search engine algorithms are pretty sophisticated, and to know which marginally different naming methodology is better is impossible to know without inside knowledge.
Also even if you did know, it could change in the future. Or perhaps it doesn't even come to the eqation at all, as it is open for abuse.
99% of the time it comes down to content. Originality, quality etc etc.
As long as you provide the best Quality Content and Make your website more SEO friendly, later domain names doesnot matter,
I personally prefer create several domains and maintain that, when the content grows, you can map it, this may help when you think of content Delivery networks.
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In SEO there are a few techniques that have been flagged that need to avoided at all costs. These are all techniques that used to be perfectly acceptable but are now taboo. Number 1: Spammy guest blogging: Blowing up a page with guest comments is no longer a benefit. Number 2: Optimized Anchors: These have become counterproductive, instead use safe anchors. Number 3: Low Quality Links: Often sites will be flooded with hyperlinks that take you to low quality Q&A sites, don’t do this. Number 4: Keyword Heavy Content: Try and avoid too many of these, use longer well written sections more liberally. Number 5: Link-Back Overuse: Back links can be a great way to redirect to your site but over saturation will make people feel trapped
Content, Content, CONTENT! Create worthwhile content that other people will want to link to from their sites.
Google has the best tools for webmasters, but remember that they aren't the only search engine around. You should also look into Bing and Yahoo!'s webmaster tool offerings (here are the tools for Bing; here for Yahoo). Both of them also accept sitemap.xml files, so if you're going to make one for Google, then you may as well submit it elsewhere as well.
Google Analytics is very useful for helping you tweak this sort of thing. It makes it easy to see the effect that your changes are having.
Google and Bing both have very useful SEO blogs. Here is Google's. Here is Bing's. Read through them--they have a lot of useful information.
Meta keywords and meta descriptions may or may not be useful these days. I don't see the harm in including them if they are applicable.
If your page might be reached by more than one URL (i.e., www.mysite.com/default.aspx versus mysite.com/default.aspx versus www.mysite.com/), then be aware that that sort of thing sometimes confuses search engines, and they may penalize you for what they perceive as duplicated content. Use the link rel="canoncial" element to help avoid this problem.
Adjust your site's layout so that the main content comes as early as possible in the HTML source.
Understand and utilize your robots.txt and meta robots tags.
When you register your domain name, go ahead and claim it for as long of a period of time as you can. If your domain name registration is set to expire ten years from now rather than one year from now, search engines will take you more seriously.
As you probably know already, having other reputable sites that link to your site is a good thing (as long as those links are legitimate).
I'm sure there are many more tips as well. Good luck!
In addition to having quality content, content should be added/updated regularly. I believe that Google (an likely others) will have some bias toward the general "freshness" of content on your site.
Also, try to make sure that the content that the crawler sees is as close as possible to what the user will see (can be tricky for localized pages). If you're careless, your site may be be blacklisted for "bait-and-switch" tactics.
Don't implement important text-based
sections in Flash - Google will
probably not see them and if it does,
it'll screw it up.
Google can Index Flash. I don't know how well but it can. :)
A well organized, easy to navigate, hierarchical site.
There are many SEO practices that all work and that people should take into consideration. But fundamentally, I think it's important to remember that Google doesn't necessarily want people to be using SEO. More and more, google is striving to create a search engine that is capable of ranking websites based on how good the content is, and solely on that. It wants to be able to see what good content is in ways in which we can't trick it. Think about, at the very beginning of search engines, a site which had the same keyword on the same webpage repeated 200 times was sure to rank for that keyword, just like a site with any number of backlinks, regardless of the quality or PR of the sites they come from, was assured Google popularity. We're past that now, but is SEO is still , in a certain way, tricking a search engine into making it believe that your site has good content, because you buy backlinks, or comments, or such things.
I'm not saying that SEO is a bad practice, far from that. But Google is taking more and more measures to make its search results independant of the regular SEO practices we use today. That is way I can't stress this enough: write good content. Content, content, content. Make it unique, make it new, add it as often as you can. A lot of it. That's what matters. Google will always rank a site if it sees that there is a lot of new content, and even more so if it sees content coming onto the site in other ways, especially through commenting.
Common sense is uncommon. Things that appear obvious to me or you wouldn't be so obvious to someone else.
SEO is the process of effectively creating and promoting valuable content or tools, ensuring either is totally accessible to people and robots (search engine robots).
The SEO process includes and is far from being limited to such uncommon sense principles as:
Improving page load time (through minification, including a trailing slash in URLs, eliminating unnecessary code or db calls, etc.)
Canonicalization and redirection of broken links (organizing information and ensuring people/robots find what they're looking for)
Coherent, semantic use of language (from inclusion and emphasis of targeted keywords where they semantically make sense [and earn a rankings boost from SE's] all the way through semantic permalink architecture)
Mining search data to determine what people are going to be searching for before they do, and preparing awesome tools/content to serve their needs
SEO matters when you want your content to be found/accessed by people -- especially for topics/industries where many players compete for attention.
SEO does not matter if you do not want your content to be found/accessed, and there are times when SEO is inappropriate. Motives for not wanting your content found -- the only instances when SEO doesn't matter -- might vary, and include:
Privacy
When you want to hide content from the general public for some reason, you have no incentive to optimize a site for search engines.
Exclusivity
If you're offering something you don't want the general public to have, you need not necessarily optimize that.
Security
For example, say, you're an SEO looking to improve your domain's page load time, so you serve static content through a cookieless domain. Although the cookieless domain is used to improve the SEO of another domain, the cookieless domain need not be optimized itself for search engines.
Testing In Isolation
Let's say you want to measure how many people link to a site within a year which is completely promoted with AdWords, and through no other medium.
When One's Business Doesn't Rely On The Web For Traffic, Nor Would They Want To
Many local businesses or businesses which rely on point-of-sale or earning their traffic through some other mechanism than digital marketing may not want to even consider optimizing their site for search engines because they've already optimized it for some other system, perhaps like people walking down a street after emptying out of bars or an amusement park.
When Competing Differently In An A Saturated Market
Let's say you want to market entirely through social media, or internet cred & reputation here on SE. In such instances, you don't have to worry much about SEO.
Go real and do for user not for robots you will reach the success!!
Thanks!
If you're selling widgets, we all know that having "Bob's Widgets" in the title and the H1 gives you a better ranking in Google when people search for "widgets".
But what if, as someone explained to me the other day, their product is known by different names in different parts of the world?
In the US, it's called a Widget. In Canada, it's called a Flidget. In Australia, it's called a Zidget. There's really no official name for it, just informal names.
Meta-tags are no problem, but apart from that, what's the best way to cope with that situation? Just make separate pages? You can't have 3 H1s on the page. One H1 which says "Widgets, (aka Flidgets, Zidgets)"?
Or do I just trust that Google is smart enough and some magical taxonomy database groups those three words together as the same thing?
EDIT: This question got downvoted simply because it's about SEO? How bizarre. If you even bother to read the question, you can see I'm not trying to game the system or get away with anything. I have a genuinely interesting question and a valid client need.
Please note also, that I always use semantic HTML, I am well aware of how search engine rankings work, and I'm not trying to get away with anything shady.
If my client was selling beer, I would simply use semantic HTML to put the word "beer" first and foremost. If I was selling beer to French people, I would make another page in French and do the same with "biere". But imagine for a second that beer isn't called "beer" in other English-speaking nations. Imagine it's called "reeb". How do I correctly, semantically code an English-language page when different English-language users will be searching using a different string, but searching for the same thing.
HTML meta-tags were originally created for the purpose of embedding exactly such metadata into a webpage. But because of the SEO industry and the commercialization of the web, meta-tags like 'keywords' are no longer used by major search engines.
With all of the advances in page ranking algorithms and intelligent search robots over the years, there's really not much to do in terms of active 'search engine optimization' for legitimate websites. In today's search environment, all you have to do is optimize your site for your visitors, and it will automatically be optimize for searching.
So you can passively optimize your site's ranking by doing any(or all) of the following:
Use good spelling and writing etiquette (like not writing your entire site in caps or text-message-speak)
Format your pages using proper markup. (Title your document, mark your headings with H1/H2/etc., delimit your paragraphs, and so on and so forth.)
Abide by established web standards and write well-formed code.
Weed out broken links and make sure your site works properly.
Don't use pop-ups, cover your site with banner ads, or otherwise bombard visitors with advertising
Don't link to disreputable websites
Simply put, make your site as user-friendly and as accessible as possible. If your site is useful to visitors and provides valuable content, most major search engines like Google or Yahoo! are smart enough to rank it fairly. Your ranking may be modest at first. But if you're genuinely supplying quality content then, as your site becomes better established on the web, other sites will start linking to you, increasing your search ranking.
And if other webpages linking to your site use the various names & nicknames your product is referred to by, then your site will also be associated with those names/keywords (that's how Google Bombing works). Google also tracks synonymous search terms and is even smart enough to recommend related/alternative search terms in some cases.
On the other hand, if you're creating a spam site or the 10 millionth affiliate marketing website with the same exact products and content as the other 9,999,999 sites of the same exact nature, then expect your search engine ranking to be reasonably poor.
It's generally only websites with no original content and that provide no legitimate value to visitors that require active (black hat) SEO techniques to gain a decent ranking--polluting search results in the process. Otherwise, if you're actually building a useful website, then just optimize it for your visitors and let Google/Yahoo! do their job.
The anchor text of your inbound links is a lot more important than the tags you use. So try getting links to your page with both "beer" and "reeb". As long as you'll get enough links with both terms, you'll do well in SERPs, no matter the keywords you use in it.
One option is to localize pages for the different target regions you are interested.
If you use a local domain, google will give it priority on default searches on that country. When I hit www.google.com, it redirects me to www.google.com.mx, and any search I do tends to display high results from mexico domains. I actually have to hit a couple options, when I don't want that behavior.
I also think google has an option to map parts of the site to a region, so you can keep the single domain.
Update: Regarding the beer example, you can localize per country (which is what I mention above). Actually its not that of a special need, since english british and english US have their differences.
The talk has been language agnostic, but consider how .net handle resources. Lets say the current request is being processed for en-GB, and you look for a resource (i.e. a text, image, etc). It will first try to find the resource for the specific culture: en-GB, if it isn't found it will look under the more general en (and then in the default resource file).
The previous allows you to selectively localize what you really need on the more specific resource files. If you only need to localize the resources with the key beerName, you can just configure that on the specific languages and leave the rest.