4 replies to this topic

[Sydneydude]

Hey there,

we are planning to build several pages overseas and have a few questions when it comes to SEO.

HOSTING:
Is it better to host directly in the target market e.g. Germany or is good enough to host in your operating country e.g. Australia/USA?

URL ITSELF:
If you target market is Germany would it be best to have a domain name ending with .de or is a .com/de Also sufficient?
If having a .de we could have a full URL name in German while a .com/de URL would be the main domain in English followed by a subdomain in German e.g. www.sample.com/de/german-wording-domain....

URL ITSELF 2:
Also, if having different sales markets e.g. Australia & USA is it better to have the country name directly in the URL e.g. www.sample-australia.com www.sample-usa.com or better as subdomains www.sample.com/australia www.sample.com/usa

I appreciate any helps in this - thanks

[chrishirst]

HOSTING:
Is it better to host directly in the target market e.g. Germany or is good enough to host in your operating country e.g. Australia/USA?

Well supposedly it is "better" to be using a "local IP".

HOWEVER, as country lookups for IPs always resolve to the country that the hosting company's headquarters is located, which may or may not be the same country as the servers are located.

URL ITSELF 2:
Also, if having different sales markets e.g. Australia & USA is it better to have the country name directly in the URL e.g. www.sample-australia.com www.sample-usa.com or better as subdomains www.sample.com/australia www.sample.com/usa

Not especially useful, unless of course your system uses the URL to determine the language of the delivered content.

URL ITSELF:
If you target market is Germany would it be best to have a domain name ending with .de

Yes and of course with the pages being in the German language.


It seems that in common with so many, you are giving keyworded URL far more importance than search engines actually do.

The simple premise is;

Do what is best for your users and your own site management procedures first and search engines last. Because you don't really know what IS "best" for SEs.

[Jill]

Google recently came out with some new geotargeting tags which may come in handy for you as well.

This Search Engine Land article provides the low down.

[piskie]

I know things are changing with geo factors, but I have found the most important factor is the domain suffix plus Server Location combination.
The classic in my case for UK targeting a .co.uk will perform equally well if hosted in the USA or UK.
However a .com targeted at the UK but hosted in the USA will not perform as well as it would if hosted on a UK Server.

Geo targeting via G tools and Tags comes somewhere towards redressing this, but I find a Geo Specific domain suffix or a say a .com hosted in the target country is the way to go.

[Sydneydude]

Thank you guys for your feedback - highly appreciated!