223 replies to this topic

[RiYo]

Hi Ian,

First of all thank you very much for all the info you already wrote down, but the PARKING things is still confusing me (even after reading the excellent examples with the houses).

3 questions:

1) how can I check if a domain is redirected or parked?
2) can I check if it is a 301 or 302 redirect?
3) you say that you have to park a country specific domain on e.g. a country specific page. Do you mean that the .ca domainname should be linked to that specific page? In other words, what do I ask the hosting company to do?

Thanks

Richard

[mcanerin]

Ok, here are a few fast answers.

KKeith, the only way that should happen is if your site is not considered Canadian. You can make it Canadian by:

1) Hosting it on a Canadian IP address (check here) Remember to type in the IP of your website, not your home (surfing) address.
2) Getting lots of links from Canadian websites
3) registering a .ca domain, parking it on your .com, and getting at least 1 link to your site using it.

It's not that you are dropping down in rankings, it's that Canadian sites are moving up.

Which brings me to RiYo's questions

1) how can I check if a domain is redirected or parked?

Use this tool. If the site goes directly to a 200OK result, then it's parked. If it goes through a 302 or 301 first, it's redirected.

2) can I check if it is a 301 or 302 redirect?

See above.

3) you say that you have to park a country specific domain on e.g. a country specific page. Do you mean that the .ca domainname should be linked to that specific page? In other words, what do I ask the hosting company to do?

Have the hosting company point the .ca (or other ccTLD) domain to your account, so that your website shows up no matter which you type in. They will know how to do this - it happens all the time. Then, one of the fastest ways to become geolocated would be to change all of your internal links to fully qualified links (ie yourdomain.ca/page.htm instead of just page.htm).

Another option would be to create a site map linking to every page of your site using the .ca domain. Basically, you need to get at least 1 link using the .ca to each page you want to be seen as Canadian.

Ian

[RiYo]

Hi Ian, I am getting there ...

You say that "Then, one of the fastest ways to become geolocated would be to change all of your internal links to fully qualified links (ie yourdomain.ca/page.htm instead of just page.htm)."

What do you exactly mean with the term 'fully qualified links'? If I park a .ca domain and point it to a .com domain there are no links yet, or do I misunderstand you?

[Randy]

I think the term "fully qualified links" may be confusing you a bit RiYo. I suspect that by fully qualified Ian was referring to a Fully Qualified Domain Name or FQDN in geek-speak.

If I'm right, all he means is to set up your internal links so the html code has absolute links looking like

CODE

<a href="http://www.yourdomain.ca/page.htm">

instead of using referential internal links that look like

CODE

<a href="/page.htm">

Thus forcing the engines to recognize that the site is really a .ca domain, even if they arrive via a .com address.

[mcanerin]

Randy (as usual) is absolutely correct, and probably said it better than I could

Ian

[RiYo]

Hi Randy and Ian,

As a rather newbee I still am puzzled about what you mean.

Perhaps an example will help me to understand.

e.g. I have a site abc.com and a the pages are directly under this domain, so www.abc.com/page1 (etc).

What do you want me to do now? If I understand well you want me to make a www.abc.ca/page1?? But where should I do that? Or do you mean something completely different.

Richard

[torka]

Okay, I'm not Randy or Ian, but in the traditional tag-team moderating we tend to do around here, let me jump in and see if I can muddy the waters further...

Basically the physical pages -- the actual files that you've uploaded to your web server -- can be reached through both domain names.

So you can write the links on your pages to use either domain.com or domain.ca and they'll still go to the same physical file.

So, you set up some internal links on your site to use the full http://www.domain.ca/pagename.html type link, and the SEs will see that these pages are available through a Canadian TLD, and are therefore, presumably, Canadian-oriented pages.

With any luck, they'll then recognize the site as a Canadian site. Even though you still use the .com domain in the everyday course of business, and most (all?) of the external links still point to the .com domain name.

--Torka

[Jill]

OFFTOPIC:

Okay, I'm not Randy or Ian, I could have sworn you were Randy.

[Randy]

OFFTOPIC:

pffffttttt! I ain't wearing no dress Jill. I do however find it quite humorous that you just outted Torka as being randy.

[torka]

OFFTOPIC:

Sigh. And I was so trying to take the high road on this one... I get no respect. No respect, I tell ya. In any case, this is for you, Randy:

--Torka

[RiYo]

Hi Torka,

So, if I understand well, I have a link to for example a 'testimonials' page on my .com homepage. You want me to change this link into a .ca link. So I replace the .com into .ca.

Sorry for all the questions, but I want to be 100% sure what you guru's mean

Richard

[Randy]

That's the idea Richard.

Simply use the full URL address for your internal links and point them to the .ca version of your site.

[RiYo]

Thanks Randy!

[millie]

Hi all, sorry to keep this thread rumbling on and on ...

Fantastic advice; thanks! At the beginning of the thread mcanerin said something that makes me concerned that your solution might not work for me:

[I have not done any studies that would show how a site with multiple locals would show up, so be warned it *may* be an either/or switch. Either you are Canadian or UK, for example. I'm not certain - it's on my "to do" list for research.]

I have a .co.uk domain. My primary audience is UK. My site is well ranked in international and UK-only results.

Call me greedy if you like but I now want to target a number of European countries in addition to maintaining my existing situation.

I do not have a .com domain name.

From the advice given, it looks like the best way forward would be to:

Purchase ccTLDs eg .de, .fr, .it

Create good content for each of these regional audiences eg: mydomain.co.uk/de.asp (in my case I will probably do a single information page in the relevant language)

Park the ccTLD on the regional page of the .co.uk site.

Get links from good regional directories to the regional page on my site but using the ccTLD, eg: mydomain.de

Maybe include the ccTLDs in my copyright notice as this may help speed things up.

My questions are:

In this thread you talk about the SEs considering your site to be from Canada if you do the above for a .com / .ca situation. I absolutely don't want to remove the UK strength of my site but I want to be recognised in the regional searches for Germany etc AS WELL as what I've already got. So does your solution work in my situation?

Does the advice about using absolute links for internal links count in my situation bearing in mind that I don't want to get rid of the site's Britishness?

Are there any duplicate content problems with parking domains? Or any other possible pitfalls or negatives?

If your solution isn't right for my situation what other options do I have?

Thank you!
Millie

[millie]

Does the silence mean that nobody knows a good way for a .co.uk site to target European countries whilst preserving their strength in the UK marketplace?