Best SEO Option for Multi-site Set-up

[DigitalCRO]

Hi Guys,

We have a Business to Business Software Website. We are Global business but mainly operate in Ireland, UK and USA. I would like your input on best practice for domain set-up for best SEO results in local markets.

Currently we have: example.com (no market specified) and now we are creating:

example.com/ie (Ireland)

example.com/uk (united kingdom)

example.com/us (united states)

My question is mainly based on the example.com/us website - should we create example.com/us for the US market OR just use example.com for the US the market?

If the decision is example.com/us should we build links to the directory or the main .com website.

To summarize there is two questions:

1. Advise on domain set-up

2. Which site to build links to if example.com/us is the decision.

Thank you in advance,

Glen.

[benesmartin]

Hey Glen,

I'd leave the example.com for the US version as it is. If you would do example.com/us,then you would need to redirect the .com version anyway to avoid the duplicates.

Then, you would need to do the hreflang setup for the diferent locations, since you have the same language for all the versions.

Regarding the backlinks, if the website has .co.uk, it should point to the relevant page, such as ._com/uk_and so on.

Hope it helps. Cheers, Martin