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I am taking SEO of our website to another level. I read a lot about it and study all aspects of how to properly handle multiple domains and languages. For now we use three domain names www.myurl.eu, www.myurl.de and www.myotherurl.com.

All sites were pointed to the same content and I soon learned out that having multiple domains is not a good practice (good reading regarding this: http://www.seo.com/blog/multiple-domains-seo/). OK I solved this as suggested by SEO and Google experts, to pick one primary domain and do a 301 permanent redirect from other domains! OK solved!

BUT! Then I attended on an technical SEO brief in UK, where a SEO guy was speaking something about local search and how UK Google search will prefer .co.uk domains. And it turns out he was correct. Also the link I have posted above there is also a paragraph regarding this:

Country Specific Domains

This is less of a tactic, and more of a “must do,” and is therefore my exception to multiple domains. It’s an exception because all of the problems above do not apply when you get into other countries. In fact, in order to have the best results in international SEO, you’ll need to have a country specific TLD (or top level domain). For example, if you’re doing business in England, you will have a hard time ranking without a .co.uk domain. You can still rank without a country level TLD, but it’s an uphill battle. And by uphill, I mean Rocky Mountains-type uphill.

Q1: So OK, to rank high for my business in UK I will need a www.myurl.co.uk. I have bought one. Now question that arises from this. Is a www.myurl.co.uk again a 301 redirect to my primary domain or not? How should I handle this?

Q2: Then there is a multilingual aspect of all this. My site is build in a way so Language sites are altered with an /lang/ code in url. Example:

  • www.myurl.eu/en/products -> english products site
  • www.myurl.eu/de/products -> same site in german
  • www.myotherurl.com/en/products -> 301 redirect to www.myurl.eu/en/products

So now what to do with my country specific domains www.myurl.co.uk and www.myurl.de? Should these be 301 redirects to main domains like www.myurl.co.uk -> www.myurl.eu/en/ and www.myurl.de -> www.myurl.eu/de/? Is this the right way to go with?

Q3: should I really go this way having separate country level domains in countries where I do business? I haven't seen let's say Apple having an apple.co.uk and so on? How important is this really?

Primoz Rome
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    I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it's about SEO, not programming. SEO questions may be asked on [webmasters.se], but read [their on-topic page](//webmasters.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic) first. Stack Overflow isn't for asking "How do I have [*some effect*] on how a 3rd party site interprets my site?" Once you've know *exactly* what you want to do (not the 2nd/3rd order *effect* you want) Stack Overflow *may* (read the [on-topic page](/help/on-topic)) be able to help. – Makyen Jan 01 '19 at 22:13
  • Stack Overflow is a site for programming and development questions. You should use another site on the [Stack Exchange network](https://stackexchange.com/sites) for this question. – jww Jan 01 '19 at 23:11

1 Answers1

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  • Q1. In my opinion you should use 301 end redirect it to www.myurl.eu/en.

  • Q2. Yes, you should point country specific domain into that country language version of your site. eg. www.myurl.co.uk should be redirected to www.myurl.eu/en

  • Q3. Country domain is only one of dozens of things which makes certain page to be connected with that or another country/region. I think you shouldn't take so much care about that. There are much more important things connected with pages internationalization than country domain, eg. links from
    country-local pages, diversity of that links, content value, etc.

MarcinJuraszek
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  • Thx Marcin! What do you mean by `There are much more important things connected with pages internationalization than country domain, eg. links from country-local pages, diversity of that links, content value, etc.` ? – Primoz Rome Feb 21 '12 at 20:55
  • It is much more important to have links from pages from country you are trying to position in than to have a country domain from there. – MarcinJuraszek Feb 21 '12 at 20:57
  • If I understand you right it's more important! to have back-links from other country sites pointed to my country site? For example `www.someuksite.co.uk` to link to my UK site...? Should this link point to my main domain `www.myurl.eu/uk/products` or to `www.myurl.co.uk/products` which will then do a 301 redirect to `www.myurl.eu/uk/products`? – Primoz Rome Feb 21 '12 at 21:04
  • There is a bit of PR loss through every 301 redirect so I think www.myurl.eu/uk/products would be better. But on the other hand users could remember myurl.co.uk easier (as co.uk is their default domain), so both have pros and cons. I would advice mixing that two destination links :) – MarcinJuraszek Feb 21 '12 at 21:07
  • Thanks I will take your comments into note. But then again here http://www.seoptimise.com/blog/2011/09/international-seo-strategy-domains-subdomains-or-subfolders.html states: `1) When to use local TLDs (top-level domains)?` In my opinion, having a local TLD is `still the number one way` of showing Google that a website is intended for a specific geographical target. And I can’t see that changing either, despite huge improvements in Google Webmaster Tools over geo-targeting settings." – Primoz Rome Feb 21 '12 at 21:15