New web design targeting UK & France

[Socialdude]

Hi I have a couple of topics I would like to clarify.

My existing website is on .ie & we are now expanding into France & UK

We have decided to take the route of

example.com with subfolders for example.com/ie example.com/uk & example.com/fr

just like thishttp://app.wistia.com/stats/278112 provided by SEOmoz

1. Should we 301 redirect our existing .ie site to the .com or the .com/ie?

2. When building links should links be built to .com or each .com .com/fr etc

Also are there any good resources out there about International SEO?

Thank you

[RobertFisher]

Excellent question Socialdude.

So, First we tackle 301 from example.ie to example.com or example.com/ie. My first inclination is to do the redirect to the .com/ie due to the likelihood of url to url content being more similar. The argument could be that since .com is domain you should redirect to root domain as opposed to sub directory. I am still inclined to go to .com/ie as I believe this will still ultimately impact the root domain.

Next, since you will want pages to rank in respective SE's in each country, I would want links going to sub directories as much as possible. So, to improve fr, I need links to fr pages, etc.

I look forward to others opinions on this.

Best