Best strategy behind moving country subdirectory to dedicated TTLD wo/ loosing organic search volume?

[tomypro]

Community,

We are about to move one of our most popular country sub directories from brandname.com/de/.. to brandname.de . We have just purchased the domain so while the domain has been registered in 2009 the URL has zero domain authority.

What is the best strategy to execute the move while being cautious about loosing too much organic search volume the subdirectory is receiving right now?

Obviously it will take some time to build up DA on the TTLD so maybe it is a good idea to keep the country directory for a little longer and start on the TTLD with just a static landing page, place some links, wait until it receives some DA builds up and then perform the move.

Thoughts?

/TomyPro

[RyanKent]

Best strategy behind moving country subdirectory to dedicated TTLD wo/ loosing organic search volume?

Best strategy would be not to move it.

I'll make my prediction.  You will move the site. You will lose ranking. You wont easily recapture your old ranking. You will then either move the site back or really wonder what you were thinking when you had this idea.

Your present DA is collected between your brandname.com site as a whole and the /de site. When you split the site, both domains will lose DA. That is one of the primary reasons the current best SEO practice is to condense sites into a single domain. There are also the cost and time benefits of maintaining a single site vs multiple sites. You are moving in the wrong direction. You may have good reasons, but I would recommend rethinking them.

[tomypro]

Ryan,

Thanks for your thoughts - I appreciate them, however I think this makes for a great SEO discussion.

The reason for moving to a CCTLD is mainly to increase search volume. We expect the search volume to go down in the intermediary but hope that it is a wise investment in the future. These are our reasons:

• Using a CCTLD will allow more SEO power in local search results for local keywords
• Using a CCTLD will allow us to host the site on a local physical server and separate IP
• Using a CCTLD should increase CTR in local markets
• Non-SEO Using a CCTLD should allow charging higher CPM rates

The reason for us doing this move is that over the years we have observed us being constantly outranked in local searches (e.g. Brazil) by sites that have

• less DA and mozRank
• local CCTLD (e.g. com.br)
• local server hosting

Their backlink profile was very similar to ours in a sense that both would get local backlinks from within the market yet we were not able to outrank them.

Do you have any quantitative data that would imply your statement of consolidating properties under one umbrella is the way to go for a highly internationalized offering that relies on local organic search volume?

Cost and Time concerns do not apply given the way our infrastructure is setup.

Looking forward to your and other SEO gurus comments.

Best /Thomas

[RyanKent]

I will share the below articles. They address this exact topic and are presented very well. Review them and draw your own conclusions.

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/international-seo-where-to-host-and-how-to-target-whiteboard-friday

http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/folders-vs-subdomains-vs-cctld-in-international-seo-an-overview

http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/international-seo-part-2

[tomypro]

Thanks for those references Ryan, I appreciate it. I will have a look tonight.

/Thomas