Subdomain or New Domain or Directory path?

[Ideas-Money-Art]

Hi Mozzers,

I have a dilemma here. I have one of my clients that has its American website and would like to promote its business in canada(2 locations only vs more than 40 in the u.s).

What would be the best SEO decision here for the 2 Canadian locations:

1. should i go for a new root domain? if yes why (www.example.ca)
2. a new subdomain? if yes why (ca.example.com)
3. or just following a directory path solution under the american site? (www.example.com/canadiancity)

Thanks

Ty

[JustinTaylor88]

Personally I would go for option 3, creating a /directory for the Canadian site, as the search weighting your root domain has will in part get passed onto the /directory as it is seen as another page on your root domain.

By going for a root domain or even a sub-domain you will effectively be starting your SEO efforts from scratch.

That said, there is some argument that a local domain would potentially rank better on local searches, however if you set up the directory route correctly by ensuring you have the localised address and phone number on the landing page, get inbound links to point to this page, social mentions etc that should to large degree counter that argument.

One other thing to consider is that all your SEO efforts on the /directory will help your domain authority and search weighting for the parent domain.

Rand did an great whiteboard friday a while back which explains the pro's and con's of the above options, so I would definitely check that out for a more in-depth explanation
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/international-seo-where-to-host-and-how-to-target-whiteboard-friday

Hope that helps

[ThompsonPaul]

Agree with Justin, and would add a twist.

Consider buying the example.ca for the 2 Canadian cities and use them in your Canadian marketing. Just make sure they're 301-redirected to the appropriate directories on the main site. We Canadians do like to know that US-based companies actually have info that's specifically for us Also means that the call-to-action can be example.ca instead of example.com/city which might get a little cumbersome.

Google Webmaster Tools will let you geo-target a directory, so helpful to do that as well.. Getting links from other .ca sites is also a bit of a signal to SEs that the destination page is for the Canadian market.. Getting Canadian user reviews citing the Canadian directory would also likely help the localization process

Paul