Redirecting International ccTLD affect SEO?

[TommyTan]

I've watched Rand's Whiteboard Friday video on How to Host and Where to Host for International Websites and read Gianluca's article on International SEO; however, I am still unable to find an answer or solution to this.

ABC Company is a US based company with the website www.abcexample.com and plans to target people in Hong Kong.  Therefore, they purchase .hk ccTLD.  However, with the time restraint and budget limit, ABC Company is unable to create a completely new website under .hk ccTLD.

Scenario 1: ABC Company plans to create different pages for each service offered in HK and 302 redirect .hk ccTLD blank service page to www.abcexample.com's same service page.

Quesiton 1: Will this have the same benefit of creating a .hk website?  Although ABC Company is redirecting, does the .hk ccTLD still tell Serach Engines that we are targeting people in Hong Kong?  Will this solution harm or help with SEO with other search engines in Hong Kong?

Scenario 2: ABC creates a /hk subdirectory under www.abcexample.com and have exactly same content in the same language as www.abcexample.com but use rel="alternate" hreflang="x" and use Webmaster to Geotarget Hong Kong.

Question 2: By using rel="alternate" hreflang="x" and geotarget, will this avoid duplicate content if ABC Company has exact content in the /hk folder?

Please let me know if my questions and scenarios are unclear.  I understand that these are not best practices.  Please advise the best way to work around this.

THANK YOU VERY MUCH!

[john4math]

Using rel="alternate" hreflang="x" and geotargeting should avoid all duplicate content issues.  You could set up the .hk site as a mirror of the .com site, make a few localization changes and add a few new pages, and put these tags on all pages that are on both sites so that Google knows which page to return in search results for different users.  You could do this with a /hk/ directory as well on the .com site as well, but using the .hk ccTLD tells search engines you're targeting people in Hong Kong more definitively than setting the geotargeting webmaster tools setting (and that will work for Bing too, otherwise you can do this). 302 redirecting between the two sites seems a bit strange to me... if I'm in Hong Kong browsing the .hk site, I'd be confused if I'm all of a sudden on the same site but .com.  I'd just mirror that page and use the hreflang markup.

The pros of using a directory like /hk/ is that it keeps everything together under one domain and one domain authority.  If you use the .hk ccTLD domain, that domain is starting from scratch, and you'll want to build some links to it to help it rank.  My guess would be that Hong Kong people are more likely to click results with .hk ccTLDs as compared to results with .com/hk, so that would be the benefit to doing this if you think you can get that domain to rank.

[TommyTan]

Thanks John for the answer.

I know that using 302 redirect seems strange but due to time and budget restraint, creating a new websinte on .hk will not be possible.

Therefore ABC Company plans to use 302 temporary redirect for now and direct people to .com website and hopefully create a new website later and remove the 302.  However, the thing I want to know is will the .hk domain with 302 redirect and no content be seen on HK search engines and will search engine see it as it is targeting people in Hong Kong like a real .hk website.

So you are saying that if ABC Company create an exact duplicate of the .com website (Same content) with the /hk subfolder/subdirectory and use rel="alternate" hreflang="x" and geotarget, then duplicate content is not an issue.  (I believe that is true based on few articles I've read but I was told that it doesn't so I want to make sure)

[john4math]

If all the pages on the .hk domain 302 redirect to the .com domain, it won't rank the .hk site for Hong Kong searchers.  There's pretty much no value to doing that unless you're going to start to market the .hk domain.  The .hk domain won't be showing up in search results.

Yes, if you set up a /hk subfolder with the hreflang markup on its pages, and your regular pages, you should be fine.

If you have the resources to set up a /hk subfolder with the hreflang markup, for most sites it wouldn't be much more work to set up a new ccTLD domain with that same content.  Things that would throw a wrench into that would be dealing with secure pages and a new SSL certificate, or if you have specific logic tied to your site being on a .com.

[TommyTan]

Thank you very much for the answer!