Large Global Site Structure

[SeoSheikh]

Hi, I have a question about the advised structure for a website that I'm currently building. It's a large international brand with it's main office in the UK. The main website is the .com but there is a growing international franchisee network.

I've built the .com site on Wordpress but I'm not sure if I the best way forward would be to create each international website on a separate hosted site or just include it in the .com Wordpress structure using the The WordPress Multilingual Plugin.

So to sum up... should I build the entire global network on one domain and then use WPML plugin or should I build separate websites for each International franchisee?

Hope some one can educate me on the best route to take.

Thanks Moz Community

[katemorris]

Hi! I built a tool just for this question. Can you go to the link below, answer the questions and let me know what your result is?

http://outspokenmedia.com/international-seo-strategy/

[SeoSheikh]

This post is deleted!

[SeoSheikh]

Hi Kate, many thanks for sharing that with me. I have completed the questions. I'm still a tad unsure of which direction to go in. The company is selling artificial grass and offers maybe 8 different grass products. The UK network is made up of about 30 cities/areas and each franchisee has their own web page within the main .com site. - so companyname.com/glasgow or companyname.com/belfast

I'm not sure if it's best to keep the international network on the same Wordpress site iecompanyname.com/ea/en for United Arab Emirates network in English or create a separate Wordpress website, hosted from a separate folder on the .com server and repeat site structure but change the content for the UAE etc..

Does that make sense? If you have any advice that would be great. By the way, your questions advise that I 'Take the Integrated Approach'

Many thanks

Alex

[SeoSheikh]

Any update on this?

[katemorris]

My deepest apologies. I don't know how I missed your response.

If each franchisee has their own section of the site that they can keep updated, then I would go down the route of geo-targeting. I doubt you would use multiple translations within any one specific section of the site per franchisee. Let me know if you think that would be needed. And what I mean specifically is a new franchisee in UAE wants their part of the site, their content, in Arabic and English. I don't even know if that would be an ask someday for those specific languages, so please forgive my ignorance, but I hope you get the idea. If that will not ever be needed, stick with just geo-targeting.

There are two options from here in terms of structure.

1 - Based on current UK setup - all on .com

You'd need to change URLs for current providers to get on a new setup that will allow geo-targeting. This might cause temporary organic traffic drops, but best in the long run in my opinion. The URL structure would be:

domain.com/uk/belfast
domain.com/uae/dubai

Now, this is assuming the same structure of franchisees and one per city. You would geo-target the first subfolder and leave the content to the franchisees. If needed, general content not specific to a city or location would be at the country level (first subfolder) and that is the geo-targeted part.

2 - Only one set of content for UAE - Change URLs

If you are not following the same UK structure and only want one set of content for the UAE and want to use the same domain, you need to change URLs like the above, but not add cities to the UAE section.

URL Examples:

domain.com/uk/belfast
domain.com/uae/

3 - Based on current UK setup - ccTLDs

Another option is to have a different site for each country. Go for the ccTLD in each country. Use the .com to geo-target to the UK if that is all that is targeted with that content. This is a heavier investment as each site would need its own dedicated marketing plan that includes outreach and link building.

4 - Only one set of content for UAE - UK on www subdomain

If you are not going to do the franchisee system per city like in the UK, it gets tricky. You can't, right now, geo-target by city. So to geo-target the current structure to the UK, you'd need to geo-target at least the subdomain www, if you use that. If not, see the option below. You could technically geo-target www.domain.com to the UK and uae.domain.com to the UAE. This allows you to use the same root domain, but many SEOs have different theories on how subdomains are treated in regards to domain authority pass down to subdomains that are not the root domain. This is an option, but I don't recommend it.

URL examples
www.domain.com/belfast
uae.domain.com

5 - Only one set of content for UAE - UK on root subdomain

If you are using the whole domain (domain.com) for the UK, you would need to geo-target the whole root domain to the UK to get the geo-targeting set up. That would mess with the UAE content being on that domain. You would need to purchase a ccTLD then. I doubt this is the route you want to take, but it's an option.

This is a lot but i hope you can see how things change based on your needs now and in the future. Sorry there isn't a direct answer, but it changes in every situation. Let me know if I can help with more clarification!

[SeoSheikh]

Great thanks for the responses Kate. I'll digest what you have sent me and decide there. Thanks again for the help, it's much appreciated

Alex