How to Use Additional Country Domains

[Zippy-Bungle]

Greetings Mozlings

We have a .co.uk address but mostly sell to South East Asia. Is there a benefit to getting .com.my, .com.sg, .co.id addresses

If we do how should we use them -

• a simple redirect to the .co.uk?
• A single page site with a link to the .co.uk
• Some other way

We're resource and time lite so we're looking to maximise the benefits with the minimum time investment

Cheers

Denis

[SamuelScott]

Hello! Thanks for the question. The simple answer is that you should have a different web property (root domain, subdomain, or subdirectory) for each of your target audiences. So, if your main website (home office, perhaps), is in the UK, then the main site should remain .co.uk (or wherever). Then, use a different property for each targeted country. There are three main methods:

**1. Separate root domains.**This would be creating and using example.co.uk and (for the Philippines) example.ph.

2. Separate subdirectory/subfolder. Put the Phillippines at example.co.uk/ph/

3. Separate subdomains. Put the Phillippines at ph.example.com

SEOs and digital marketers will argue forever over which one is best. I'll point out some general differences and points since I don't know your specific situation.

• Separate root domains and subdomains are essentially entirely-separate sites in Google's eyes. This is good to use when you have a lot of specialized content for each targeted country. It's also usually easier to use different design templates on different domains and subdomains. The bad side is that links pointing to one root domain or subdomain may not "benefit" the other root domain or subdomain.
• Keeping everything on one root domain in other subdirectories/subfolders can be a lot more simple to manage. Plus, all links to everywhere on the root domain generally "help" everything on the root domain. However, you will often be limited to using the same overall design template.

Regardless of what option you choose, you can configure the geographical targeting of each rootdomain, subdomain, or subdirectory in Google Webmaster Tools.

There are additional things you can do regarding language targeting (if you so choose -- sometimes more than one language is spoken in a given country). For more information on all of this, I would review this page of introductory guidelines and the related links. Some more detail from Google. A Webmaster Support question.

For an "international SEO checklist," I'd suggest this post by Moz Associate Aleyda Solís. Good luck!