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Href lang tags are your friend here

I've got a site set up as .com (our global catch all) .com/uk .com/us and .com/de

Get the tags right and you're golden - having fewer pages wont matter either it'll just be a lot less exposure/SEO in those countries

Hmmmm - that is interesting then

I'd of done exactly what you've done. I take it you mean you're home page has dropped in rankings? Are the sub domains outranking it?

How's your internal link structure/navigation back to the home page.

As I say I don't think you've done anything wrong - A link building campaign to the home page might benefit you but even then I'd be tempted to ignore it and focus on the sub domains - ask yourself as a user - When was the last time you used a home page as a landing page as opposed to a page that served your specific request?

If it's a sub directory and it's been migrated correctly and the old sub domain has been removed/redirected then yes it will be considered part of the new website.

It sounds like the sub directory has has benefited (albeit eventually)  are you saying the main website a. hasn't benefited or b. actually suffered?

Whilst from an SEO standpoint the main site should have benefited as a whole from  the new sub directory from a UX standpoint I probably would only expect the sub directories to massively change.

How big is the website?  did the sub directories double the amount of content? Or just add a few pages - What you've done is right, from an SEO and UX perspective (in my opinion) but I think you might be hoping for too much from it.

There isn't always a silver bullet when it comes to rankings... just a lot of hard slog

Has you're traffic and rankings actually dropped or remained static over that top?

Is that to the main site or the sub directory?

and don't forget - ranking factors aren't always down to what you've done. You could be doing everything fine but if you're competitors are doing something better you'll still be doing everything right and experience a drop.

I'm not sure there's enough detail here to answer the question correctly

You say the sub directory has benefited which for me would have been the main goal of this exercise - I wouldn't have expected much short term benefit to the main site. You're right, in the long term the extra content/traffic will help (assuming the sub directory is serving peoples searches) but I'd assume the Homepage and the sub directory will have different key words with the sub domains being more specific or long tail.

If the sub directory has benefited I'd just sit back and wait for the rest to happen - that won't be overnight though as Google builds up a view of people using those pages

You may have been hoping for a bit too much overnight I'm afraid.

It's an awful idea and you need to tell them as their SEO expert.

It's an artificial network and  will be seen as manipulation of teh links and nothing more. If there's a good reason for the link then nofollow it and have it there for the UX but otherwise no, no, no! (Did I say no lol?)

The only issue I could see would be how different your 'product' pages are to your off site transaction pages. I'm thinking duplicate content issues. As long as teh content is different on each though I can't see any issues personally

Ask yourself how people are finding the page. What search terms are they using?

It may just be that the page completely answers their question, which isn't a bad thing. I've never thought bouncing was a bad thing, pogoing is.

Are there any resources on your site you could direct them to than expand on or are related to this page? I'd add some banners/links to that, otherwise I wouldn't worry about it too much

What's your website built with?

Can you use wordpress multisite (or something similar if not?)

You could then configure it for mywebsite.com/my/

You could also then have a mywebsite.com/sg

with your .com being a generic catch all international (excluding Singapore and Malaysia)

All you'd need do is get your lang tags set up right and you can copy all your content over

href lang tags are your friend

Stick everything on the same website for the DA with pagination website/uk website/USA website/NZ then just put the appropriate lang tags in place so google understands each page should be seen in each country

Be VERY careful implementing this and if you're not sure pay someone to do. Do it right and it's excellent seo, do it badly it's going to go VERY wrong

Yes... but it'll likely give it less credence to the content above it assuming you think it's more important (as it's at the top)

You can leave it as it will be read, move it or I've seen some people do tricks with Java/HTML to show content at the bottome of the page first to crawl bots

Sorry Bryan - I probably should have clarified my response

I wouldn't touch press release websites with someone else's barge pole. I was referring to press release tools that give you access to journalist/bloggers lists - You have to earn your brand mention/link with content that they want to write about about and link to.

I think you've answered your own question there - you'll be spending all that time for one link where as you could be building good content on your money site that will attract multiple links

I always find a press release tool can be handy - So long as you have something relevant to discuss within you're niche

Agreed with MichaelAMG on this

If (if) you were going to do this I'd audit the backlinks of the expired domain and then once bought redirect the site to your homepage - Still not great but much better than you're suggesting

Can you do anything to adjust the links? As in just find the route domain which might not redirect so you can contact the webmaster

Thanks for the reply. I originally thought I wouldn't (and shouldn't) be able to use this in this scenario but then I stumbled across this post.

All 301s are in place and working and will closely monitor the situation in GWT.

Thanks Again

Hi Guys,

I have the same situation, whereby we are migrating 123.co.uk to 123.com/uk/

Were you able to use the tool in this situation, as can be seen in the attachment I am not able to do this as 123.co.uk does not directly 301 to 123.com (instead it redirects to 123.com/uk/)

Is there a way around this?

Thanks.

David

changeofaddresstool.png

Hi Matt.

I have one more question in regards to your initial reply.

I am on board with redirecting the .co.uk site to .com/UK/ but what would you then suggest we do with the new .com homepage?

I originally thought from your answer that you was suggesting to redirect the new .com homepage to .com/UK now I don't believe this to be the case.

Would you suggest having a location selector page on the .com homepage with ?

We currently only have 3 main locations (although we are expanding rapidly) so I am not sure this is really required.

Or would you have it set in GWT as targeting no specific location, and again set . Would this give us the best chance to try and grow in areas we do not currently have a regional website for?

Thanks again for all your assistance so far. Much appreciated!

Thanks again for a very comprehensive answer. As the URLs will invariable change once we rebuild it looks best to hold off the migration now and do it all in one go later in the year.

The main reason I prefer not to redirect the homepage to a sub-directory is that it looks a little messy, and if someone from USA visits our homepage I would not want them automatically directed to the /uk/ site. But it seems this may be the best of the options, thanks for the input.