Using Hreflang Tags For Australian Domain Extension

[jayoliverwright]

Hi Guys,

We have a company with a Australian domain www.domain.com.au which has just launched in the US market.

The company is in the process of purchasing the .com version of the domain and then the plan is to have one single global .com site (like apple.com) on a new domain which would be domain.com and put both the (US version) and (Australian Version) on the new domain: domain.com (global). e.g. domain.com/us and domain.com/au

However the .com version won't be available till March 2016.

The company still wants to launch in the US market asap with it's current .com.au domain. which it has.

So basically the current set-up is like this:

http://www.domain.com.au/us/ (US homepage)

http://www.domain.com.au/ (Australian homepage)

I was wondering, does anyone know if hreflang tag can be used on a .com.au extension to target specific pages to the US.

e.g.

I was wondering will the hreflang tag override the fact that Google would automatically geo-target the .com.au extension to Australia? e.g. would the http://www.domain.com.au/us/ (US version) with the hreflang tag above be considered as the US version, even-though we it's on a .com.au domain extension?

Cheers.

[DirkC]

You could launch it on the .com.au extension - but I fear that the geotargeting resulting from the ccTLD is a much stronger signal for Google than the ahfref tag.

Not sure if this link is still valid but it states:

Q: Does “rel alternate hreflang” replace geotargeting?
A: No. This link-element provides a connection between individual URLs, and only allows Google to “swap out” the URLs from your site currently shown in the search results with ones that are more relevant to the user. It does not affect ranking, as geotargeting would.

Check this video from Matt Cutts (2013) on how Google deals with ccTLD's: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJqZIH_0Ars

If your dot.com domain is not available - try if some of these generic tld's is available for your domain - and redirect to the .com as soon as you can. It's not optimal - but I honestly think that the .com.au/us/ solution is not going to work.

Dirk