Redirects, 302 and geolocation for multi-regional .com website

[simon_realbuzz]

One of our sites utilizes a single .com domain but offers differentiated article page for users depending on their location.

For example:

example.com/articles/how-to-learn-seo-gb-en for UK

example.com/articles/how-to-learn-seo-us-en for US

example.com/articles/how-to-learn-seo-au-en for Aus

Currently we use example.com/articles/how-to-learn-seo as the relative link on the site and then the user is redirected by 302 to the correct article for them based on their location.

I've read countless pages about 302 redirects (and largely why you shouldn't use them because of link juice, indexing etc) but what alternative can we use since we don't want to permanently redirect to one URL but rather redirect to the relevant URL based on the users location.

All the stuff I've read talks about redirecting using 301s but this surely only works when you are redirecting from one URL to one permanent new URL as opposed to redirecting to one of many country specific URLs.

It's not really a solution for us to set up separate TLDs for each country so what is the best mechanism for redirecting user to the correct article for them and making sure that link juice is shared, pages are indexed etc?

I hope I've explained this well enough for any of you to offer advice. Many thanks in advance.

[TommyTan]

Hi Simon,

Setting up a ccTLD is definitely the best approach but it seems like it is anot a solution.  How about creating subdomains or subdirectories for each location and use rel="alternate" hreflang="x" tag and Google Webmaster Tool to Geo-target?  The tag and the tool will tell Search Engines that these content are for people in these location in these languages.  It should avoid duplicate content and you don't have to use 302 redirect.

Do you think that will be a possible solution for you?