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OK. This problem is doing my head in. And I don't know if there even IS a definitive answer.
We have a website, lets call it mycompany.com. It's a UK-based site, with UK based content. Google knows about it, and we have done a load of SEO on it. All is well.
Except, we are about to relaunch my company, the GLOBAL brand, so we now need mycompany.com/uk, mycompany.com/us, and mycompany.com/au, for the various countries local content. We are using GEOIP, so if someone from the US loads mycompany.com, they get redirected to mycompany.com/us etc.
If someone isn't in one of those three countries (US, Australia, or UK) they get the UK site.
This is all well and good, but we dont want to lose the rather large amount of Google juice we have on mycompany.com! And worse, the Google bot appears to be 100% based in the US, so the US site (which is pretty much out LEAST important one of the three) will appear to be the main one.
We have thought about detecting the bot, and serving UK content, but it appears Google may smack us for that.
Has anyone else come across this situation, and have a solution?
As long as Google can find mycompany.com/uk and mycompany.com/au, it'll index all three versions of the site. Your domain's Google juice should apply to all three URLs just fine if they're on the same domain.
Have you thought about including links for different sites on the homepage? Google could follow those and index their content as well - in turn indexing the UK content.
If you instead using uk.mycompany.com, us. mycompany.com etc, then you can
register them with google webmaster tools and specifically tell google which country they are from.
This might still work with folders rather than subdomains, but I haven't tried it.
One way to get round that, thinking about it, would be to 301 redirect uk.mycompany.com to mycompany.com/uk, then you'd be telling Google, as well as keeping your existing structure.
#ross: yes, we have links between the sites. It' just the home page, and which one comes up when someone searches for "my company" in google.
Thanks!
google alerts just brought me to this thread.
The domain name that was previously used in your question is my blog and the domain name is not for sale.
Are you just using this as an example domain - for the purpose of this discussion only? The convention is to use example.com as it is reserved for this exact purpose.
Some clarification would be appreciated.
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I have searched but not really found anything clear on the matter from what I have read so far, what impact does having your domain name across multiple tlds (e.g. mycompany.com and mycompany.fr and mycompany.es) have on your rankings?? I'm being told having them point to the same content is likely to get the site shot down by google.
Google doesn't have a parked domain detector according to Matt Cutts, so if the domain names simply all point to one location it won't hurt you.
However, if you have duplicate content that's another story. In your example it sounds like you might have multiple sites that all have the same content, but are different domain names.
Matt Cutts, the head of Google's Webspam team, claims that duplicate content will not hurt your ranking. You can watch that video here
He gives the disclaimer that it can hurt if it's "spammy" without going into very specific detail what that actually means. In my experience (I've had about 5-6 clients that did this) Google would typically look at one of their domains and ignore the duplicates, but not hurt their main site. The only exception to this is if one of the sites that isn't your main one starts getting more backlinks or traffic and then Google sees it as more relevant and then ignores your main site's content... Google's going to favor the duplicate that appears the most relevant.
I'm pretty cautious about duplicate content though because it has the possibility of hurting your site if Google thinks it's "spamy" and they change their algorithm so frequently now that its hard to keep up.
My recommendation is set up the other domain names as parked domains instead of duplicating the site. As you build up any backlinks focus on linking to just one domain name too.
Yes, if these serve the same content, it will sooner or later trigger a content issue or some kind of manually penalty. If Google finds out you own all those domain names (or they belong to a small network of owners), then they will take action for sure. The penalty will sink you in SERPs.
It is not natural to have many domain names sharing the same content. It does not happen by accident and there is no good reason one would need to achieve this.
I would never recommend using different ccTLDs for the same content in the same languages.
However, if the websites are localized, you can use hreflang and "connect" each version of a page with appropriate language. Check this link: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/189077?hl=en
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I heard something about Google has some priority for .us or .name domain names for assigning page rank to them.
For example, with the same situation for both a .at and .us domain name, the .us domain name will have higher page rank that .at.
I want to know is that correct or not?
No. Matt Cutts, head of the Google Web Spam team, explained a lot about TLDs in this video:
http://domainate.wordpress.com/2011/11/10/matt-cutts-discusses-new-top-level-domains-and-google/
There is no bias against TLDs, or as the article quotes:
Google will not have predisposed bias against new TLDs
Matt makes it clear multiple times that Google strives to return good
relevant results regardless of the TLD of the domain. He even made a
point to indicate that Google has no bias against the recently
released .XXX.
Although the writer does add:
What I think: Matt has said before they do not take TLD into account,
but many studies have shown that to not be true. The truth is, they
may not directly bias against TLDs, but factors like domain and site
age are factored into their algorithm. New TLDs have disadvantages in
both compared to established sites/domains in other extensions.
Some people later thought that Google would artifically favor new TLDs to make up for that, but here's more on that:
http://domainate.wordpress.com/2012/03/15/matt-cutts-confirms-new-tlds-will-not-get-seo-preference/
Google has a lot of experience in returning relevant web pages,
regardless of the top-level domain (TLD). Google will attempt to rank
new TLDs appropriately, but I don’t expect a new TLD to get any kind
of initial preference over .com, and I wouldn’t bet on that happening
in the long-term either.
I don't think so. Logically, Google has to consider tld as the same. Otherwise, all webmasters would buy .us tld unlike others even if they work on sites out of the United States. Moreover, I don't think Google gives more PageRank to .us tld than others. A website is a website despite of its tld.
In my opinion, no priority by logic.
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I am taking SEO of our website to another level. I read a lot about it and study all aspects of how to properly handle multiple domains and languages. For now we use three domain names www.myurl.eu, www.myurl.de and www.myotherurl.com.
All sites were pointed to the same content and I soon learned out that having multiple domains is not a good practice (good reading regarding this: http://www.seo.com/blog/multiple-domains-seo/). OK I solved this as suggested by SEO and Google experts, to pick one primary domain and do a 301 permanent redirect from other domains! OK solved!
BUT! Then I attended on an technical SEO brief in UK, where a SEO guy was speaking something about local search and how UK Google search will prefer .co.uk domains. And it turns out he was correct. Also the link I have posted above there is also a paragraph regarding this:
Country Specific Domains
This is less of a tactic, and more of a “must do,” and is therefore my
exception to multiple domains. It’s an exception because all of the
problems above do not apply when you get into other countries. In
fact, in order to have the best results in international SEO, you’ll
need to have a country specific TLD (or top level domain). For
example, if you’re doing business in England, you will have a hard
time ranking without a .co.uk domain. You can still rank without a
country level TLD, but it’s an uphill battle. And by uphill, I mean
Rocky Mountains-type uphill.
Q1:
So OK, to rank high for my business in UK I will need a www.myurl.co.uk. I have bought one. Now question that arises from this. Is a www.myurl.co.uk again a 301 redirect to my primary domain or not? How should I handle this?
Q2:
Then there is a multilingual aspect of all this. My site is build in a way so Language sites are altered with an /lang/ code in url. Example:
www.myurl.eu/en/products -> english products site
www.myurl.eu/de/products -> same site in german
www.myotherurl.com/en/products -> 301 redirect to
www.myurl.eu/en/products
So now what to do with my country specific domains www.myurl.co.uk and www.myurl.de? Should these be 301 redirects to main domains like www.myurl.co.uk -> www.myurl.eu/en/ and www.myurl.de -> www.myurl.eu/de/? Is this the right way to go with?
Q3: should I really go this way having separate country level domains in countries where I do business? I haven't seen let's say Apple having an apple.co.uk and so on? How important is this really?
Q1. In my opinion you should use 301 end redirect it to
www.myurl.eu/en.
Q2. Yes, you should point country specific domain into that
country language version of your site. eg. www.myurl.co.uk should
be redirected to www.myurl.eu/en
Q3. Country domain is only one of dozens of things which makes
certain page to be connected with that or another
country/region. I think you shouldn't take so much care about
that. There are much more important things connected with pages
internationalization than country domain, eg. links from
country-local pages, diversity of that links, content value, etc.
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Recently there has been a lot of hype about URL Shortening. I guess some URL Shortening services even offer tracking stats. But, doesn't adding one more level of look-up to the original URL affect page ranking in any way? Just curious to know.
IT depends upon the implementation from the URL shortener service. If they use HTTP 301 and/ or HTTP 302 in their redirects then Google are quite good in interpreting these correctly in accordance to Page Rank. However other parameters might be affected by URL shortening.
Most Search Engines uses anchor text and URL texts as a parameter to what to give hits for for a specific URL. And if the URL changes from http://example.com/some-article-about-C to http://example.com/234432 then obviously the first one carries more information for the search engine which will make it perform better for "article" and "c"...
It might, right now, but I wouldn't expect that to last for too long. SEO and PageRank are subjects where a lot of guesswork is passed off as wisdom.
If you're that obsessively worried about your PageRank, here's what you do. Take that energy, and put it into creating content that people want to link to. You'll get better results.
People buy stuff. Robots don't.
Well, I can tell you one thing that won't affect your PageRank - URL shorteners using DNS.
The vast majority of URL shorteners use clientside redirection - either via scripting/meta-refresh, or via frames. Those might affect your ranking as they change what Google sees - you never know. Examples are anything from Dot.tk to PopNIC, Smartdots, JoyNIC, HomeNIC, EuropNIC, Tipdots, DuoNIC, UnoNIC, Cydots, FreeNIC, Mediadots, Ulimit, kurzURL, co.nr and de.be/de.vu/ch.vu.
A few services are using proper DNS for forwarding, though. Those include Afraid.org, co.cc, No-ip and Da.ru. This is fully transparent to visitors and spiders, so you can be sure it doesn't affect your rank.
The criticisms of URL shortening have reached near hysteria. Combine this with SEO guidance that borders on superstition if not outright voodoo and you'll find a lot of (mis)information out there. URL shortening is a storm in a teacup. Don't expect it to make any difference to search engines.
No it does not affect page ranking. But the url should not link to a bad neighbour hood like porn, viagara etc. URL shortening is mean to shorten and place it instead of placing huge url. You can try zxc9.com and also its API for your services.
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In SEO people talk a lot about Google PageRank. It's kind of a catch 22 because until your site is actually big and you don't really need search engines as much, it's unlikely that big sites will link to you and increase your PageRank!
I've been told that it's easiest to simply get a couple high quality links to point to a site to raise it's PageRank. I've also been told that there are certain Open Directories like dmoz.org that Google pays special attention to (since they're human managed links). Can anyone speak to the validity of this or suggest another site/technique to increase a site's PageRank?
Have great content
Nothing helps your google rank more than having content or offering a service people are interested in. If your web site is better than the competition and solves a real need you will naturally generate more traffic and inbound links.
Keep your content fresh
Use friendly url's that contain keywords
Good: http://cars.com/products/cars/ford/focus/
Bad: http://cars.com/p?id=1232
Make sure the page title is relevant and well constructed
For example: Buy A House In France :. Property Purchasing in France
Use a domain name that describes your site
Good: http://cars.com/
Bad: http://somerandomunrelateddomainname.com/
Example
Type car into Google, out of the top 5 links all 4 have car in the domain: http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=car
Make it accessible
Make sure people can read your content. This includes a variety of different audiences
People with disabilities: Sight, motor, cognitive disabilities etc..
Search bots
In particular make sure search bots can read every single relevant page on your site. Quite often search bots get blocked by the use of javascript to link between pages or the use of frames / flash / silverlight. One easy way to do this is have a site map page that gives access to the whole site, dividing it into categories / sub categories etc..
Down level browsers
Submit your site map automatically
Most search engines allow you to submit a list of pages on your site including when they were last updated.
Google: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/docs/en/about.html
Inbound links
Generate as much buzz about your website as possible, to increase the likely hood of people linking to you. Blog / podcast about your website if appropriate. List it in online directories (if appropriate).
References
Google Search Engine Ranking Factors, by an SEO company
Creating a Google-friendly site: Best practices
Wikipedia - Search engine optimization
Good content.
Update it often.
Read and digest everything at Creating a Google-friendly site: Best practices.
Be active on the web. Comment in blogs, correspond genuinely with people, in email, im, twitter.
I'm not too sure about the domain name. Wikipedia? What does that mean? Mozilla? What word is that? Google? Was a typo. Yahoo? Sounds like that chocolate drink Yoohoo.
Trying to keyword the domain name shoehorns you anyway. And it can be construed as a SEO technique in the future (if it isn't already!)
Answer all email. Answer blog comments. Be nice and helpful.
Go watch garyvee's Better Than Zero. That'll motivate you.
If it's appropriate, having a blog is a good way of keeping content fresh, especially if you post often. A CMS would be handy too, as it reduces the friction of updating. The best way would be user-generated content, as other people make your site bigger and updated, and they may well link to their content from their other sites.
Google doesn't want you to have to engineer your site specifically to get a good PageRank. Having popular content and a well designed website should naturally get you the results you want.
A easy trick is to use
Google webmaster tool https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools
And you can generate a sitemap using http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/
Then, don't miss to use www.google.com/analytics/
And be careful, most SEO guides are not correct, playing fair is not always the good approach. For example,everyone says that spamming .edu sites is bad and ineffective but it is effective.