Domain name change

[muzzmoz]

Here's the scenario... Client has two domain names:

• domain.com - targeting one country (Australia)
• otherdomain.com - targeting all other countries

Both have identical products, but different currencies (AU$ and US$).

The problem (as most of you will know) is that without using a sub-domain or country-code top-level domains, Google has no idea which domain should be served for which domain. Furthermore, because the root domain is different, Google doesn't see any connection between the two - other than the fact they have identical products!

My recommendation to the client is to change to:

• domain.com to domain.com.au
• otherdomain.com to domain.com

Arguably, we could leave the second one alone. But I think it's better for the brand to use the same root domain for each.

Obviously this means both will need to be redirected. Since NONE of the pages within the sites will change, do we need to redirect every page, or just the root domain?

Any other risks or concerns we should know about?

[LoganRay]

You don't necessarily need to change domains to ccTLDs. There are a number of ways to help Google differentiate the location targets of 2 different sites. 2 of the simplest ways to do this are by specifying a country in Google Search Console and using hreflang tags. You will likely run into some issues by having a single domain targeting "all other countries".

If you haven't already, I highly recommend checking out Moz's guide to international SEO. This should provide you with all the methods for country targeting and from there you can determine what would work best for your situation.

[muzzmoz]

Thanks Logan.

The 'all other countries' is the problem here. The client wants one domain for Australia, then another for 'all other countries'. The products are the same, the language is the same. the only difference is the currency.

And even though the Australian domain was specified in search console, it still appears alongside the other domain in Google searches for other countries.

[Roman-Delcarmen]

Have you ever try with schema, could help you point "Other countries" by region, define currencies and so on

http://schema.org/regionsAllowed
http://schema.org/docs/search_results.html#q=currencies

In your case I will check the regions/countries where the user are coming from and I put all my effores on the top 5

Example if we are talking about English

• USA
• CANADA
• UK

Another option is to force the redirect using some condition rule (regular expresions)

You have a webview-1 (Australia/ Australian Dolar)
You have a webview-2 (Rest of the wolrd/ American Dolar)

So if the user is from Australia show the webview-1 and if not show the webview-1. I think you should consult with your dev team abut how to set up htaccess file.

[muzzmoz]

Thanks Roman.

The site is run on Shopify, so no access to htaccess file.

The devs were looking at forcing one site or the other based on IP address. That sounds fine to me, but how does it stop Google indexing and ranking the two domains (domain.com and otherdomain.com) side by side in the same SERPs?

[muzzmoz]

To target:

• Australia
• All other countries

I'm proposing to use a combination of ccTLDs along with hreflang tags.

The developer is also keen to use IP forcing as well - just to be sure!

Anybody spot any potential issues or conflicts here?

[muzzmoz]

Hi Logan,

I've read the MOZ guide but it doesn't answer one question and I cannot find an answer anywhere else...

Can hreflang tags be used to specify just ONE country (eg. "en-au"), or does it only work as an alternative to another language/region variation?