A Short Guide to International SEO
In this article (and following on from previous articles) I was refreshing my notes on international SEO and thought I would summarise the main points for this article, if you are thinking about expanding internationally and aren’t sure which options are available or to use, the information could help guide you in the right direction and explains the considerations, general advice, and main options for effective international SEO targeting.
As always, ensure that it is as easy as possible for Google to assess the information on the site and the target audience. It is essentially a unique user experience for each country.
What is the best option for your business?
The following options are the most popular:
Which option you choose depends on your target audience, competitors (what others in your market are using) and the resources available.
Using a different TLD per target country means a lot more resources to create the different sites, host, populate, update, and maintain them. If you have the resource and budget, this can be a very effective method, but it is time consuming and needs a good implementation strategy.
Also bear in mind that each different TLD used will be a fresh website and therefore will need marketing from scratch which can take time and of course, resources.
Sub Folders are much more resource efficient and with subfolders and subdirectories you can specifically geo-target them using the Google Search Console (this allows the user to specify an area, region or country for a particular folder or subdomain)
NB you can’t specify the country or GEO target a CCTLD (Country code top-level domain (example - .co.uk)) as they are already by default geo-targeted to the specific country that the TLD refers to.
Subdomains, although search technology has changed, can be treated as a completely different site to the main domain – Google tries to attribute the subdomains to the main domain if appropriate, but it can’t always ‘understand’ the connection plus it is technically possible to have a completely different website on a subdomain, therefore, you wouldn’t always want the connection.
Generally speaking, a subdomain is treated as a different domain.
In summary:
Country Specific Domains:
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Pros:
Cons:
Subdomains:
Pros:
Cons:
Sub Directories/folders:
Pros:
Cons:
I hope this has helped, again a bit of a whistle-stop tour of international SEO but at least you can make an informed choice as to which option to explore when considering expanding into different regions and countries.
More on this: Google Developers
If you would like to discuss international SEO or indeed any other aspect of online marketing, please DM me on LinkedIn or contact the team here.