One company, 3 countries, 3 sites - best solution?

[Bee159]

Hi all, I'm working with a company that has 3 x websites all on separate WordPress platforms.

One is at .com, the others .fr and .de - they are essentially very similar.

I have suggested that it is worth exploring setting all of these websites up on the .com domain with country-specific directories to combine their authority and help all 3 websites naturally rank due to combining incoming links, authority etc.

Quesitons:

To ensure each country has control of their site, would you maintain a separate install of WP at each directory, i.e: .com/fr/ and .com/de or would you put it all on the same WP?

Would you go down this route of combining all 3 sites onto one domain with country-specific directories? What are the pitfalls?

[GastonRiera]

Hello Bee,

As for internationalization purposes, leave them in their own ccTLD. Just add hreflangs to the other country websites and you'll be just fine.

If you choose to go down the road of having all under a .com/country/ configuration, I'd suggest you installing separate wordpress on each country. Also, if you plan on expanding on more countries and having an overall control, take a look at Wordpress Multisite Network Administration.

Also, just for clarifying, take a look at these articles:
Multi-regional and multilingual sites - Google Search Console
International checklist - Moz Blog
Using the correct hreglang tag - Moz Blog
Guide to international website expansion - Moz Blog
Tool for checking hreflang anotations - Moz Blog

Hope it helps.
Best Luck.
GR.

[gfiorelli1]

The answer offered by Gaston is correct, but it's not the only option available.

You can consolidate the three websites under the .com one and geo-target the /fr/ and /de/ subfolder via Google Search Console.

However, I wouldn't install 3 different WordPress, but only one and use the WPML plugin (https://wpml.org/documentation/getting-started-guide/), which works with no issues with all major WordPress plugins usually used for SEO (like Yoast SEO).

I don't pitfalls in a consolidation, but every international strategy really is unique and, not knowing the details of yours I cannot give you a firm positive (or negative) answer.

[gfiorelli1]

Gaston, your answer is correct (albeit not complete... see my answer below).

Plus: when linking to posts and guides, even if they are by Moz, always explain why they can be useful.