SEO international - ccTLD or Subdirectories / Hosting on 1 server (IP) in Netherlands

[RetailClicks]

Hi All,

I do mingle me in discussion if it's better to have an Ecommerce site of a Brand X on seperate ccTLD's (Brand.nl / Brand.de / Brand.com or use subdirectories (brand.com/nl, brand.com/de, brand.com/fr etc.

I see a lot of comments on this, but i am missing one (maybe) essential part.

We are using Magento with multi ccTLD support. BUT the environment is hosted in the Netherlands. Will we be "penalized" on hosting in NL when using www.brand.DE or other countries?

Or is it MUCH better to host those ccTLD in country of Origin?

Because if it is, maybe we can better use subdirs because then we can use our builded authority of the root domain.

Hope someone have an answer on this one!

Thanks!

Jeroen

[SEOKeith]

Hey Jeroen,

If you are going down the ccTLD route I would host each sites it's respected country, it's possible Google will apply some weight to the geo location of the IP address (you should also set the location in WMT).

But more importantly hosting in the same country is going to improve site load times which will help out (a tiny bit atm) with google and improve the user experience.

Hosting in another country is not going to get you "penalised" by Google but it's not going to send a signal (from the geo location of the IP address) that you are located in Germany - this may or may not affect your rankings.

I recommend you watch this video: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/international-seo-where-to-host-and-how-to-target-whiteboard-friday

Hope that helps...

Keith