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I don't understand if you look at source code and see the text url, then that is how you are linking. Using text rather then a ID gives you a chance to insert a keyword so text is better then ID. Linking to an ID then redirecting to a text url as many CMS do, loses link juice on the redirect.

Hi Matt, Thanks for your reply - this very aptly timed blog was written on the subject yesterday: http://moz.com/blog/hreflang-behaviour-insights.

I would absolutely use 301s in this case as the client is, in essence, picking a new URL. Switching from .uk/uk to .org/uk could Have unintended consequences for your rankings, but this could be offset by an international bump upwards. Without knowing your traffic, it's difficult to codify the potential issues of keeping or leaving the .uk TLD. However, it's always fun To make statements after A disclaimer, so to steal Google's own PPC targeting terminology: People in, searching for, or viewing pages about your targeted location <-- May go down. People in your targeted location <-- May go down. People searching for or viewing pages about your targeted location <-- May go up. At the very least, I would be sure that regional targeting is set to within WMT to ensure that Google knows your target region, based on your audience.

This is very much a question we have been considering for one of our sites and I very much agree with Chammy, that it is very much a resource issue. If you have the resource to provide unique content for each separate domain, build links, do social activity for each one then local domains are perhaps the way to go. For us, trying to maintain multiple domains would have been too labor intensive and we found that consolidating all our activity into one global .com site has had a positive benefit in that there has been an upturn in overall search traffic, likely caused by consolidation of all the ranking factors to one domain.

Google reads "-" as a space. So always use "-" and certainly don't use "%20" A lot of people use "_" also, instead of using a "-" .. Which they should not be doing.

Hi Dan, thanks for the link!

Sorry for the late reply. It doesn't look like too many people here use that technique. If you want a deeper evaluation of if that would be helpful in your situation, you can consider making this a private question and asking SEOmoz staff for an opinion.

Hi! We're going through some of the older unanswered questions and seeing if people still have questions or if they've gone ahead and implemented something and have any lessons to share with us. Can you give an update, or mark your question as answered? Thanks!

Hi! We're going through some of the older unanswered questions and seeing if people still have questions or if they've gone ahead and implemented something and have any lessons to share with us. Can you give an update, or mark your question as answered? Thanks!