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What package are you thinking of? You'll probably get a more tailored/accurate answer.

Thanks Gianluca for your response.

Regarding question/answer 3, it still doesn't resolve the issue of being able to pass link value from the homepage as it will not serve any files from route level.  A 302 redirect would point to the relevant geo specific section of the site so all of the external links pointing to the homepage will reach a dead end due to a 302 redirect. The 'About' page is a good call for usability reasons but is nowhere near as strong as the homepage in terms of its backlinks profile and therefore would not resolve the issue.

Hi All,

Have 3 seperate questions all relating to global/international SEO from a domain strategy point of view so will try to make them all short and 'to the point'.

The current URL is www.example.com. The site's content strategy and all marketing activity has always been for the UK. We're now launching in US with also long term plans to launch in other countries. Each country will have their own webmaster/conternt strategy/marketing team.

1st question

Which is better and why?

• www.example.com/us verses www.us.example.com

The US team are leaning towards (and rightly so) the folder approach as it will help the US section of the site benefit from existing domain authority, link profile and off-page SEO work already carried out to a route domain level. This will also not be regarded as a new site as it's www.example.com/us

On the flip side however the sub domain option although has no short term SEO benefits; will have a more sustainable SEO campaign for each country as they can be treated as individual sites/SEO campaigns. This also reduces some risk elements involved as each geo-specific team will only be concerned about their own sub-domain and not have route domain level control. I'm also aware that sub-domains will be treated as individual sites and therefore certain updates (such as Panda) will treat each sub-domain individually. So a possible negative impact on uk.example.com would not necessarily have an impact on us.example.com unless content strategy was the same.

2nd question

Assuming we decide to go for www.example.com/us (folder option). The site's current geo target market is currently set to UK on Google Webmaster Tools to route domain level. If www.example.com was set to UK and www.example.com/us was set to US on GWT, would there be a conflict? We want to ensure that the route domain level settings does NOT override any settings on folder level within the same domain.  Based on an answer from a top contributer of Google Webmaster Central, setting www.example.com/us to US would not be in conflict with settings within route domain level but I would love to hear/read from somebody that had actually gone through the process.

3rd question

We're considering implementing geo DNS so a US visitor accessing www.example.com will be redirected to www.example.com/us (or www.us.example.com) based on their location from their IP address. Reason being is we're trying to avoid a splash page with a choice of countries (UK or US) on route level (homepage) which is very commonly used by most sites with multiple geo specific target markets. We would be assuming that somebody from North America would be looking for the US site and therefore redirecting the visitor automatically to www.example.com/us. The SEO implications are however that a 302 redirect will be used and therefore redirects used based on the visitors location will not pass link value from the homepage towards landing pages. The homepage currently has very strong link juice and the site's general navigational structure is pretty good allowing the link juice to flow through from the homepage.

Noticed more and more position shifts the week and also reading similar reports from others. This is for Google UK by the way, not google.com.

A neglected website of mine with lots of (not so great) content rocketted onto top of second page from absolutely nowhere. Other sites with good link profiles seem to have dropped. Whether it's Panda or not, something 'content' related seemed to have happened (or happening) in Google UK.

Thanks for the responses so far. I'm pretty sure there is some sort of an update but as it was only just this weekend there may be more and more noises being made as more people notice huge shift in SERP ranks. Here's some interested threads where people are noticing shifts http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4364389.htm and http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=76830633df82fd8e&hl=en&start=5760.

@Aaron, nothing was changed on-page (apart from a few new pages being added).  No low quality sites linking to it (at least no new low quality links obtained for around 6 months).  I genarally have a habbit of thouroughly scrutinising each potential link partner checking even historical on-page and off-page data. Link building strategy in general was going really well and as mentioned, we were #1 for some important keywords. Other new 'target ' keywords were climbing pretty well and many were hovering just below first page.

Our main competitors have benefitted from this but have noticed some new faces on Google UK SERP since the weekend. The new sites now outranking us are more niche (for example www.keyword.co.uk rather than www.example.co.uk/keyword) but have a more spammy looking link profile made up of blog comments, spinned articles etc. Our off page is pretty strong as the landing pages have 60%+  page authority according to OSE with fairly high unique root domain links.

Everything has been checked in our end including on-page, off-page and GWT.

You should look at the overall root domain links and not be too concerned over links solely coming from just a single site.  300 unique root domain links is by far a lot better than 300 links from dex regardless of its authority or pagerank.

High rank on any keyword is achievable depending on your commitment level and budget. Competing pages with 400 pages (mostly from the same sites) is not too competitive but at the same time you need to put in the effort in your side anlog with adequate link building budget.

Just focus on 3 basic principles.

• getting links that are more relevant than those linking to competiton.

• Links that carry more authority, trust and high backlink count

• Focus on obtaining higher number of root domain links than your competion.

On Sunday 18th Sept I noticed a huge drop in our rankings for keywords that we were doing extremely well.  Majority of the keyword SERP positions for our main targetted keywords were #1 and #2. These have all drop the bottom part of first page.

Other new keywords we were targetting had climbed very well (some hovering just below top 10 and some in top 10 of Google UK SERP. These have all completely dropped off.

Although analysing the site thouroughly (both on-page and link profile) it doesnt appear to have any issue significant enough to cause a penalty.

From Monday 20th Sept (everybody back to work) the threads here http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=76830633df82fd8e&hl=en&start=5760 and http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4364389.htm seem to be buzzing over unexpected SERP drops and increases.

By that I assume Panda 2.5 or at least some form of update taken/taking place? If anybody know of the reent heavy fluctuations which seem to have started in the weeken or have experienced unexpected positions increaes/drops, I would be very interested to hear/read from you.

Cheers,

Mo Raja