International SEO Options?

[jaynamarino]

Hi we currently have a site which is a example.com domain in the Australian market (we have geo-targeted to Australia within search console).

We are looking to expand to United States.

I have added the potential options down below, just wondering which one you guys think would be best from a SEO and practical standpoint?

Or if there are other options i should consider?

Option 1

The Australian domain is strong so this option takes this into consideration.

Keep example.com (Australian)

Add on:

Sub-Directory for US

Which would be:

example.com/us/

In Search Console set the sub-folder to target US and also setup hreflang tags. Setup the US site on the sub-directory.

Option 2

Add sub-folders for both Aus and US

example/au/ (Australian)
example/us/ (United States)

Setup hreflang targeting.

Cons
Need to set up redirects for the current site to new location which is .com/au/ might also see drop in performance due to redirects.

Cheers.

[Katarina-Borovska]

Hi there,

Our UK-based company was facing this problem a while ago and we decided for the first option. Originally we had .com + /uk +/us and what we decided to do now is: we are keeping .com (we changed /uk to .com - it became our global) and the /us remained the same. We have hreflang tags.

Basically, from the point of view of SEO, you might already have a strong site that will outperform the /au. Especially if you have a number of backlinks, you might drop in performance, you are right. The 301s won't help either.

To keep it simple, I would go with what you have - you have started your journey and you might be pretty established there. Have a look at how you can improve your existing site further and don't risk the drop. I would keep the .com - I am saying it from the point of view of a global company launching in the US that can't afford any mistakes.

I hope this helps. Good luck!

Katarina