Switch from CCTLD to .com - Am I missing anything?

[dennis.globalsign]

We currently have 14 international sites. (.co.uk, .fr, .es, .com.au, etc) and (language differences aside) the content is the same on all.

I want to move this content from example.co.uk to example.com/uk/ (and from example.com.sg to example.com/sg/) to consolidate our domain authority, for brand consistency, and to reduce the overhead of maintaining 14 different domains.  Our .com has by far the most domain authority (90) and often outcompetes newer smaller sites like .com.sg in local search) Other sites, however, (like .co.uk DA74) do quite well locally.

My goal is to improve the performance of those sites with a low DA, without hurting the larger sites, and also to avoid the disappearance of local content in local search. e.g. currently when a user searches for "widgets" they find example.co.uk/widgets/ but in future I want them to find example.com/uk/widgets

My plan is to redirect pages with 301 redirects, and use rel-alternate and hreflang metadata to manage indexing. So in the example above,  I'd 301 example.co.uk/widgets to example.com/uk/widgets, then use the following metatag on that new page to suggest that it is the UK english version (for users in the UK) of a canonical page in the .com:

(this is in accordance with the suggestion on this page http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=189077)

My question is: Am I going to severely damage the ranking of, e.g., UK pages in UK search engines by doing this? Is there a better way to do this?

Any input greatly appreciated. Thanks,

Dennis

[benjaminspak]

Any time you 301 content it's going to take search engine a while to catch up. You may run into issues with duplicate content for countries that speak all the same langue such as the UK and the USA.

However I had recently read the if you rel=canonical the old page to the new locations it speeds up the indexing process. I'll see if I can find the link for you when i get home later.

[Highland]

I wouldn't drop a ccTLD to move to a .com. There are several benefits you lose

• Most engines recognize ccTLDs as specific to a given country. This can help with ranking for those engines in that country
• Traffic from specific countries tends to gravitate towards a ccTLD (i.e. French are more likely to click on a .fr)
• Engines tend to give a pass on duplicate content to ccTLDs. See Matt Cutts on point.

You're going to lose a ton of ground doing this. Trying to make one site rank well for multiple countries is hard enough. Add in the lost rank from your ccTLDs (a 301 doesn't move all PR).

[dennis.globalsign]

It's hard to argue the contrary when Matt Cutts is saying "Go with CCTLDs", but I get the feeling that his point is an "all things being equal" explanation.

My problem is that all things are not equal. I have a mixed bag. I have an old strong .com (DA 90) and a long list of newer less strong domains (down to DA 27)

Re: one site ranking in multiple countries. Our .com already does this. As one example, the .com homepage ranks on the first page for one of our main head keywords in google.fr, whereas the highest ranking page on the .fr for the same keyword is at the top of page 3.

So "losing a ton of ground" doesn't make a lot of sense here, because traffic isn't going to gravitate towards local content if it's already lingering down around the third page.  Wouldn't it make more sense here, to have a french language version of the homepage on the .com and use hreflang to make sure that's the version that ends up in French search results?

I know that 301's don't pass all authority, but they pass some, my feeling is that 13 sites-worth of redirection will have a strong effect on an already strong .com.

Microsoft apply this exact model (one .com, multiple languages in subdirectories, relevant results in local search) and ok, they have a strong domain, but doesn't this show that this is possible?

It would be great to hear about actual experience of similar consolidation moves, successes or failures?

[gfiorelli1]

Actually the methodology you have described is correct.

Just two tips/reminders:

1. the correct use of the rel="alternate" previews that in the .com pages (for instance) you indicate the other 13 country targeting URLs of your site. That is needed to not seeing, for instance, your .com pages outranking your Spanish ones in Google.es because of a better link profile (or Page Authority);
2. for that reason I do really suggest you to implement the rel="alternate" hreflang="x" in your sitemaps.xml more than into the code of every single page of your site (you don't want to slow your page speed, don't you?).

About what bnspak write, the correct tip is this:

• create the new site, with the new country level subcarpet arquitecture;
• implement cross domain canonical tags in your old ccTld domains
• cancel your ccTlds sitemaps.xml files in GWT and resubmit them... doing so you are explicitly asking Google to recrawl them asap
• Googlebot crawls the ccTlds and discover the rel="canonical"
• Do the 301 page by page

Finally, ccTld or Subcarpet. The decision should be just based on SEO, but on business. Yes, you're going to loose the geotargeting strenght of the ccTlds, but you acquire a stronger domain authority for those sites which were maybe struggling alone. Then, if you plan a correct and effective Content Marketing/Link Building strategy, you can add links to those country targeting subcarpets, links which will benefits all the site as an all.