changing domains URL for international sites

[LOC]

Hi again,

sry, i seem to be asking more qtns than helping people lately..

We've recently set up an irish site with the end of the domain being .com/ie but we are now looking into setting up a uk link and a us link.

Our initial plan was to use the same site which is .com but then add the following url endings: .com/uk and .com/us but my fear is that google will think we're creating false backlinks or buying domains linking ot the same site.

The problem is it would be a waste of time creating 3 different sites as the only difference would be the currency and the prices.

Has anyone overcome this problem before and is the a way around it?

The domain name of the site would not change only the url extension.

Hope someone can help?

Thanks

L
CustomerMinds.com

 

[paul]

why not subdomains ?
us.customerminds.com
ie.customerminds.com
uk.customerminds.com


or even sub folders customerminds/us/
customerminds/ie/
customerminds/uk/

You can use the geo location option on google webmaster console, so say that certain sub-dirs or folders are for certain countries.

But if the only thing is different is the price, then why not display the 3 prices ?


Having 2 or more domains with almost the same content isn't advisable.

 

[LOC]

Hi Paul, thanks for your quick response.

We cant use subdomains as our product is an online platform and the platform's urls are the subdomains.

I would prefer to show all prices on the site or at least have a buttons where they can calculate the cost in their own currency however I am in a minority on that idea.

Your second idea sounds great, but not sure if its possible...

Our main domain is customerminds.com but is already redirected to customerminds.com/ie as it was originally created in a subfolder of the domain site. Hence my problem...

Basically what I need to do is keep one site but have a uk & us url extension such as: customerminds.com/us/; customerminds.com/uk/ but am afraid to do this in case it affects SEO..

Hope that makes sense...

L
CustomerMinds.com

 

[paul]

you're welcome L, read this from Matt Cutts, Solved: another common site review problem, he's a google SPAM engineer. He states that spiders have problems indexing drop downboxes.

So you could have a drop down box in the top right hand corner to get people to select their country, if it's different to Ireland.

btw. you can have sub-sub domains like
product1.us.customerminds.com
product2.us.customerminds.com
product1.ie.customerminds.com
product2.ie.customerminds.com


but that might start to get confusing

you could get penalized for SEO if you have three directories with 99% of the same content, although you could use the "noindex" attribute to keep them out of the index.

 

[LOC]

Hi and thanks again,

was thinking of sub-sub folders too but that really will get too confusing.

I think the best bet is to do as follows ( but dont know if its possible):
have one domain name so customerminds.com but then use /ie, /uk, /us as subfolders which will appear when in the relevant country of use - then I think we can get a java code to automatically change the pricing depending on which url link they arrive in on..

does that make sense?? - dont even know if its possible but if it is is that ok for SEs? It would avoid having 3 sites to optimise, 3 different urls and I think it would be seo freindly...

L
CustomerMinds.com

 

[paul]

let the person select their country, store a cookie, and read that when displaying the price. You shouldn't need to have 3 pages realistically. The default price can be in euros, if someone select to see it in dollars or sterling, then you can store that in a cookie for the other pages and the next time they visit.

 

[LOC]

Thanks Paul, thats exactly what I would prefer to do but others in the company would prefer for the url to change depending on which country the site is being accessed from and for the price to change accordingly too.

Basically I just want to use the easiest solution for having 1 site, 3 url extensions and 3 pricing pages which are automatically linked to the country url. I think this would be the best option for ease of use, seo and time.

Thanks again

L
CustomerMinds.com

 

[caminowebmaster]

If you can't use cookies to see where they come from and feed based on that - then none of the duplicate content ideas on the one site is a good idea.

The cost is nothing building three sites and having them hosted in those countries. Once that is done you build links to each site from other domains hosted within that country.

The only problem with this is if the site is in a highly competitive area.