CcTLDs 301 redirected to subfolders

[nrv]

My client has an international website and currently has a mixture of ccTLDs, subdomains, and subfolders for the country specific pages. We are trying to change this however they want to have ccTLDS because of the SEO benefit but 301 redirect them to subfolders because of the simplicity of management that subfolders provide.

I believe that if they are really just working with subfolders, why don't they just use subfolders and use Google Webmaster Tools and XML Sitemaps to help Google understand each targeted country. My questions are:

1. Does having aht ccTLD example.ca 301 redirected to example.com/ca really benefit anything?

2. This client tends to spell out the name of the country even with country specific TLDs, and they can't change it, will this affect SEO? Ex: example.ca/canada.

3. What the best practice? example.ca/canada/en-ca/city or example.ca/canada/city/en-ca?

Thanks!

[Everett]

The example.ca ccTLD would definitely have an advantage over the example.com/ca directory.

I have not heard nor experienced that there is any benefit to the .com domain with regard to ranking in other countries just because a ccTLD for that country redirects to it. However, if the ccTLD has lots of country-specific links the 301 would be applying those links to the .com domain and in this way it could help the .com domain rank better in that country. Using cross-domain rel href lang tags should have about the same effect though (i.e. consolidating link signals).

It is not a best practice to have your home page exist in a sub directory (e.g. example.ca/canada) and I would instead put it in the root (i.e. example.ca/). However, if you are going to be 301 redirecting that domain to example.com/ca/canada/... it doesn't really matter.

Best practice would be to put the language directory first, before the file name, such as: example.ca/en-ca/filename.

Be sure to read up on recent rel href lang attribute implementation:
http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=189077

For "default" pages:
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2013/04/x-default-hreflang-for-international-pages.html

Specifiying the language in sitemaps:
http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=2620865

There are so many things to consider when choosing whether to go with separate ccTLDs or a single site that it is difficult to give a clear answer regarding which is best. For this client, given development preferences, scalability issues, cost, consolidation of page-rank, consistent branding, etc... it may very well be the best choice to consolidate the sites. For another business my advice might be different. To reiterate what I started with though: All other things being equal I think a ccTLD would outrank a .com site with a country-specific directory in that country. But all things are NEVER equal.

Good luck!