Feb 22 2011

Why Do Most SEOs Prefer Country Code Top Level Domains For International Market?

As today everyone’s going bonkers after the LIVE update of Google update. I thought I will do a quite post on giving out some simple but useful tips to target the International market.

Ways To Target International Market

CCtlds (most SEOs preferred method), because every domain name has its own authority. It also targets the locals. Google automatically figures out the IP and known which country you are targeting. Brilliant isn’t it?

Sub domain is another way you can target different countries. But the problem here is because it is looked as a different entity you will have to link build to it all over again because none of the power is passed through the main domain.

Creating sub folders for each country you are targeting is another technique but then the problem is will Google pass the power to the homepage or the sub page? Yes through Google Webmaster Tool you can tell Google a subfolder is targeting a specific country but there is still a BUG in the system.

Here are some of the questions that has been asked about while using CCtlds to target International market:

Does having the same content has any negative affect on SEO?

It doesn’t have any negative affect on SEO as Google has said before. But for users perspective some countries even though they speak the same language have different slangs. So the content should be for the locals/users.

Is hosting a ranking factor?

Oh this one is a tough one to be fair. Some SEOs say hosting is not a big factor as it used to be 12 to 14 months ago but then again some SEOs say they will still prefer the domain to be hosted in a specific country.

Will domain interlinking have a negative impact?

Some companies have upto 50 CCtlds and their question is would interlinking between them have any negative impact? I don’t think so but it would help if they are hosted in different places though.

Here are some of the ranking factors:

Links
Relevant content
Site Speed
CTR
Hosting (has minimal effect these days)
Currency symbols are becoming more valuable and relevant, “believe it or not, it also affects the conversation rate”. It will also help Google determine the country location

Here are some juicy takeaways of International Search Engines:

In China Baidu has 68% of the search market compare to Google, which has less than 20%
In Russia Yandex has 65% of the search market, Google 21% and Mail.ru 8%

Video on influencing the search results in International Market from Google:

Guest post by Saurav, who is a SEO Engineer for a Web Design company, Fresh Egg Ltd and writes about SEO in the automotive industry for customers including Crusader vans. He is new in SEO with passion for Sports & RADIO. His dream job is to be a SPORT SEO Radio Jockey, if this role exists.