International SEO - Domains or Folders?

[Webpresence]

Hi,

We have been approached by a potential client. They are a UK company whose website is hosted on a .com domain (the .co.uk forwards to the .com).

They also have a German website hosted on a .de domain. Both the .com and the .de are hosted in the UK. We believe that the .de website should be hosted in Germany. You agree?

Anyway, they now need to target the US market.

They are planning on duplicating the UK (.com) website and creating a US version of the site on a .us domain. They would rewrite the content for the US site to avoid duplications, and add Href Lang attributes etc. They are also debating whether the new US site should be hosted in the US or the UK.

We don't think this is the best strategy. Would it not be better to host both the UK and US website on the .com domain. using reginal folders? i.e. example.com/uk, and example.com/us. Obviously we would setup Href Lang accordingly and change the Google Search Console geo targeting options for each of the sub-sites (/uk and /us).

Or we could suggest hosting the UK site on the .co.uk domain, and the US on the .com domain.

So, what is the best strategy to target the US audience, whilst maintaining UK rankings?

Many thanks for your time, hope to hear from you soon

Lee.

[mememax]

Boom, That's an huge question Lee. And the answer is also huge. I will try to summarize as much as I can. Some points which are common to all solutions are:

• You can easily achieve the localization by setting the folders/subdomains/domains in search console and the language focus via hreflang.

• Normally you shouldn't be facing duplication issues if you deliver the same content for US and EN because duplication happens only within the same market. So having two identical pages focusing on two markets (us and EN) shouldn't be an issue for google.

Starting from here, there is NO best solution, but there is a better solution depending on your dev resources and your Goal. For tackling internationalization you have 3 options:

• Folders. (domain.com/en - domain.com/es) this is the easiest solution technically speaking as you can easily recreate what you have in different folders and also take advantage of the strenght of your domain by passing the juice from the main domain to its subfolders. The "con" I see with this approach is scalability. This is probably the best solution for smaller websites, with less dev support but which won't be growing too much. You don't have too much room for customization and also you're not getting the benefit of a loclaized TLD and domain name which could be a deterrent in some cases.

• subdomains. (en.domain.com - es.domain.com), while still not getting the value of full localization, you have some differentiation you could apply as the subdomains could be assigned to different server/hosting, and you can also build two different sites while using the same domain. The technical challenge is a bit higher but you won't be getting as much value as you are getting from your main domain as if you were using folders. Folders vs subdomains is the eternal debate but I think that there is a clear perspective in the seo community that folders preserve more value of the original domain rather then subdomain, which are seen essentially as different sites by google. BTW you can find a nice whiteboard from Rand about the value of subfolders vs subdomains here

• dedicated TLDs/domains. This is the most dev and SEO heavy solution as you're creating something from scratch, which initially has 100% cost and 0 value. This is the solution that pays the best in the long tho as it is the one that leaves room for more scalability. The main advantage I see here is on the linkbuilding side. all the links will be highly relevant to the local site, as you will have all US links to your US site and all UK links to your UK site. Here another point from rand about the three solutions

So at the end, you decide, but if I were you I would try to take the most advantage of what you have today using the folders solution. In this way you can enter a market with some value that would help you ranking higher as if you were starting from scratch, and if you see room for improvement you can always get serious about it and create a new domain where you can 301 all your existing content. this is a delicate process, but in this way you'll be safe at the beginning when things are harder, and once you decide to invest more you can swap to the domain approach with a more dedicated service AKA linkbuilding heavily on the new domain.

I can keep speaking about this for hours but I will stop here as you may want to ask more questions and get a better view on what are your options and doubts about each approach. I can link to a ton of resources, but I would say that your best readings are from Gianluca Fiorelli, who is not only a Moz associate but also an expert in international SEO.

I hope this helps.

e.

[Webpresence]

That's great, many thanks Emanuele.

Glad to hear that our suggeston of a 'folder' strategy is the best way forward, but as you say there are pros and cons for each solution.

In my opinion, hosting a website 'locally' (i.e. German host for a .de site, US host for .us site) is better from a rankings perspective. I feel that this is not as important as it once was, but it still helps. Would you agree?

Thanks again, much appreciated.

Lee