Copying a Website For Better Rankings in a Specific Country

[sbrault74]

I've got a blog with some tools and business directories (https://www.webhostinghero.com). Actually my website is in English and is hosted in the US since its biggest source of traffic is from there. My second biggest traffic source is India. The issue is that while my website is really well optimized (in terms of speed), it is still slow for visitors from India.

So my question is: Would it be possible to have a copy of my website on a web server located in India and use a sub-domain (ie.: in.webhostinghero.com) to access it without being penalized by Google? Would that be considered duplicate content? What would be the HREF LANG tag set to for India (EN-US, EN-GB... EN-IN??)

I thought that having a sub-domain for a specific country could also help its rankings.

Thanks in advance for your inputs.

P.S. Sorry my english sucks.

[Andy.Drinkwater]

Hi Stephane,

If all you are looking for is a speed boost, you could always use a CDN like Cloudflare to deliver content to your India visitors. No need to create another site

https://blog.cloudflare.com/cloudflare-launches-in-india-with-data-centers-in-mumbai-chennai-and-new-delhi/

-Andy

[sbrault74]

Thank you but I'm not looking for help on how to make my current website faster. Like I've said, the website is really well optimized in terms of speed. Cloudflare is not an option. I tried it and it causes lots of issues with the site and it actually made it way slower than it actually is. I use Amazon Cloudfront as my CDN.

I want to make my website faster in India AND improve its ranking in this specific country. Using a CDN or Cloudflare won't do that.

[Andy.Drinkwater]

Ahh OK you didn't say that - you only talked about speed.

One thing I can tell you is that a subdomain isn't going to help rankings - in fact, research has shown that a folder structure has been the best way to go, but doesn't sound like it might work as well.

At the end of the day, as long as you setup your HREF LANG correctly across domains, you will be fine and you won't get penalised.

Here is some required reading for international SEO:

https://moz.com/blog/hreflang-behaviour-insights
https://sites.google.com/site/webmasterhelpforum/en/faq-internationalisation https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/182192 https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/189077

-Andy

[sbrault74]

Sorry the title was indeed misleading. I assumed that by making my website faster in India, it would help its ranking.

That said, what about using a country-based TLD domain instead of a subdomain? I do own webhostinghero.in

Would that help my rankings even though 95% of the content would be the same on the .com and .in with the appropriate href lang tags set?

[Andy.Drinkwater]

As long as you use cross-domain rules, you will be absolutely fine - you are far from the only person who has a need or desire to do this

-Andy