SEO International Websites usage of sub domains and ccTLD domains
Is it better to have separate country specific domains (which costs more money) or sub domains which define the country, for better SEO?
e.g.
example.comexample.com.auexample.co.uk
vs
example.comau.example.comuk.example.com
Assumption: The search engine web master tools, each sub domain are associated to a country. Example au.example.com is associated to the country Australia.
Update #1
I understand that both methods do work, especially when i utilize the assumption, listed above. The question is about: Which method is better? Is there such a small SEO difference between them? Is the first method way way way better than the second with getting better SEO results?
Update #2
A number of folks have suggested that the following is a good/better approach:
example.com/example.com/auexample.com/uk
By adding a country specific ISO
code to the end of the url/the first
folder of the domain can be recognised
as the country.
But a number of SEO mates have suggested that this is a valuable waste of folder level space. Er.. how can I explain. OK, it's been suggested by some SEO experts that if the number of levels or folders in the domain exceeds 5 then the page drops dramatically in importance. Basically, you don't want to make it deep. As such, adding the country as the first level can be considered a waste, especially when it can be handled by the domain OR sub domain - hence the question :)
Purely from SEO point of view, it's better to have one single domain and move international versions into subfolders (not subdomains) like:
example.com/us/example.com/au/example.com/uk/
IBM is doing it this way.
Pure.Krone wrote
But a number of SEO mates have
suggested that this is a valuable
waste of folder level space. Er.. how
can i explain. Ok, it's been suggested
by some SEO experts that if the number
of levels or folders in the domain
exceeds 5 then the page drops
dramatically in importance.
It's possible that some search engines could lower page-rank for sites with deep structures because ultimately keyword in URL has likely more weight than keyword on the page. But unless Google or Yahoo confirms this, it's a pure guess by SEO people. Page-rank can drop for many reasons (especially if your site is optimized by SEO experts), maybe they are just wrongly attributing it to deep folder structures. But what's the problem anyway? Just make your folder hierarchy flat just in case.
One thing we know for sure because it was confirmed by Google a few years ago is that every single domain (no matter what level) is isolated site for page-rank purposes so having all resources under single domain will always improve your page-rank. That's why weblogs.asp.net host all their bloggers in subfolders, so their posts rank very high on Google no matter which blogger wrote them.
Google only associates top-level domains with geographic regions:
Sites with country-coded top-level domains (such as
.ie) are already associated with a geographic region, in this case Ireland.
— Geotargeting - Webmasters/Site owners HelpUse top-level domains whenever possible to handle country-specific content. We're more likely to know that .ie indicates Ireland-focused content, for instance, than
http://ie.example.com,http://www.example.com/ie, orhttp://www.example.com?country=ie. If you have a geographically neutral top-level domain (such as.com,.org, or.net), you can use Webmaster Tools to associate your site with a geographic location.
— Local businesses - Webmasters/Site owners Help
Microsoft’s Live Search does this as well:
Live Search uses information such as the website's IP address and the country or region code top-level domain to determine a website's market and country or region. You can alter this information to reflect the market that you want to target.
— About hosting your website in a different market
But I pefer the all-in-one, country neutral domain with a country specific URL path too.
There is a combining effect of all of the above. What really makes a difference is, ifwww.example.co.uk carries entirely different content to www.example.fr
If they are largely the same with just some subtle differences {regionalizations/ language etc
then using www.company.co/uk /fr
might be better in terms of
a css is one template for all 1 mod and all sites change look to suit
graphics/logos
shared content in say english can be loaded from one location to all english uri's as includes
ie say product page with regional variations in say recommended use/utility/uk/productx//us/productx//au/productx/
can all have their technical-details link linking to/en/productx/technical-description
to avoid duplicate content issues
From a SEO perspective most look at the tld & the hosting country so a .fr hosted in the US will never beat a .fr hosted in france for french market, but a .com/fr hosted in US will get in there if its content beats the other.
Content is king in SEO all the rest is just tweaking a minor amount and not really worthy of a lot of effort unless it does you or your users any good
the /uk /ie /de etc method is handiest for most users as they land maybe on a /uk and see that from a simple menue option/pulldown list they can flick to the region most suitable to themselves
obviously offering the folders and not letting users quickly flick from /uk/productx/ to /fr/productx/ is counterproductive and will make the entire point of folders moot though
From Google, “If no information is entered in Webmaster Tools, we'll rely largely on the site's country domain (.ca, .de, etc.). If an international domain (.com, .org, .eu, etc) has been used, we'll rely on the IP address.” So I recommend doing one or more of the following:
If the issue about seo, domains, subdomain, top-level-domains is resolved, there’s a good chance that your content will get indexed and you’ll start to show up in Google search results. This means a greater chance to drive organic search traffic to your site.
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