Should i switch from .com to .fr / .de etc

[Internet360]

Hi,

I have a seo question that I just cant seem to get an answer for.

Right now I have an international ecommerce shop selling to several european countries.
The setup is like this:
www.domain.com -> 301 -> www.domain.com/nl (dutch)
www.domain.com/uk (english)
www.domain.com/fr (french)
www.domain.com/de (german)

I also have the domainnames for the countries I sell to:
www.domain.nl / www.domain.fr / www.domain.co.uk / www.domain.fr

Its quite easy to switch to the later because I allready own the domains and can technically change this within an hour in our magento2 multistore.

I think the customers would trust their local tld more than the .com and my question is: Is it also better for SEO?
Or will the splitting of the backlinks hurt me.

Thanks for your insights.

[Martijn_Scheijbeler]

Hi,

The first thing that I would look at in any case is if you're able to use the HREF lang feature. If you aren't that making any of these changes won't help you too much, as the backlinks, in that case, would be spread across the different TLDs. Usually, that doesn't work in your favor too much.

In itself, I would advise a company to stick with the solution that they already have before considering a move to another TLD/folder structure. In this case, I'm having a hard time seeing the upside.

Martijn.

[Internet360]

Thank you for your answer.

Indeed all href lang settings are correct allready.