Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Subdomain or Country Code Top Level Domain
-
Hello Friends,
I am planning to develop my website for other languages.
which one is best for SEO?
(The main English website is well ranked in google)
1. de.example.com (subdomain may obtain rank faster as it is part of the main website?)
2. example.de (this is a completely new one; so not easy to get rank?)thank you
Barsbold -
As your website got ranked in top positions use subfolders, let's say for an example if your primary domain in English is abc.com then have subfolder like www.abc.com/de/
Avoid choosing subdomain, If you go for a subdomain, you will lose your current authority as Google assumes subdomains as a separate domain.
As you wish to develop your website for other language use properly translated content from the native speaker of the language and use it under subfolders. If you simply use any API to translate your content then you will hit by Google's Panda Update for having poor content quality.
Avoid creating a new domain, instead, book that domain and redirect to the subfolder version (www.abc.com/de/)
Hope this strategy helps you!
-
Hello Bold,
It's better to choose the languages that you need it for users and deploy only those language translator APIs from Google or from other reliable sources.
Below given is the best one i.e., one domain for multiple locations drives-in professional brand name, traffic, users etc.
" 2. example.de (this is a completely new one; so not easy to get rank?) "
Best Regards.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Having a Subfolder/Subdirectory With a Different Design Than the Root Domain
Hi Everyone, I was wondering what Google thinks about having a subfolder/subdirectory with a different design than the root domain. So let's say we have MacroCorp Inc. which has been around for decades. MacroCorp has tens of thousands of backlinks and a couple thousand referring domains from quality sites in its industry and news sites. MacroCorp Inc. spins off one of its products into a new company called MicroCorp Inc., which makes CoolProduct. The new website for this company is CoolProduct.MacroCorp.com (a subdomain) which has very few backlinks and referring domains. To help MicroCorp rank better, both companies agree to place the MicroCorp content at MacroCorp.com/CoolProduct/. The root domain (MacroCorp.com) links to the subfolder from its navigation and MicroCorp does the same, but the MacroCorp.com/CoolProduct/ subfolder has an entirely different design than the root domain. Will MacroCorp.com/CoolProduct/ be crawled, indexed, and rank better as both companies think it would? Or would Google still treat the subfolder like a subdomain or even a separate root domain in this case? Are there any studies, documentation, or links to good or bad examples of this practice? When LinkedIn purchased Lynda.com, for instance, what if they kept the https://www.lynda.com/ design as is and placed it at https://www.linkedin.com/learning/. Would the pre-purchase (yellow/black design) https://www.linkedin.com/learning/ rank any worse than it does now with the root domain (LinkedIn) aligned design? Thanks! Andy
Web Design | | AndyRCWRCM1 -
Any risks involved in removing a sub-domain from search index or completely taking down? Ranking impact?
Hi all, One of our sub-domains has thousands of indexed pages but traffic is very less and irrelevant. There are links between this sub-domain to other sub domains of ours. We are planning to take this subdomain completely. What happens if so? Google responds for this with a ranking change? Thanks
Web Design | | vtmoz0 -
Location of body text on page - at top or bottom - does it matter for SEO?
Hi - I'm just looking at the text on a redesigned homepage. They have moved all the text to the very bottom of the page (which is quite common with lots of designers, I notice - I usually battle to move the important text back up to the top). I have always ensured the important text comes at the top, to some extent - does it matter where on the page the text comes, for SEO? Are there any studies you can point me to? Thanks for your help, Luke
Web Design | | McTaggart2 -
How to know if a wordpress theme is coded correctly for Seo
Hi, So I am curious if there is a tool to see if a site is coed properly for Google? I am running Avada, a standalone theme, yet I am also using a cache plugin. But when I search my code, its all like on one huge line. So I am curious if there is a way to verify or check if a theme is coded correctly? Thank you
Web Design | | Berner1 -
Subdomains, duplicate content and microsites
I work for a website that generates a high amount of unique, quality content. This website though has had development issues with our web builder and they are going to separate the site into different subdomains upon launch. It's a scholarly site so the subdomains will be like history and science and stuff. Don't ask why aren't we aren't using subdirectories because trust me I wish we could. So we have to use subdomains and I'm wondering a couple questions. Will the duplication of coding, since all subdomains will have the same design and look, heavily penalize us and is there any way around that? Also if we generate a good amount of high quality content on each site could we link all those sites to our other site as a possible benefit for link building? And finally, would footer links, linking all the subdirectories, be a good thing to put in?
Web Design | | mdorville0 -
Side Nav. Vs. Top Nav
I have a client that currently has a side navigation and wants to know how changing to a top nav will affect her SEO. We always recommend top nav for user experience but I am not sure if there is a direct effect on SEO. Would the change affect it? Thoughts?
Web Design | | hwade0 -
WordPress blog hosted on GoDaddy domain mapping help
We set up a WP blog that's hosted through GoDaddy. For various reasons, we purchased a URL to use to get through the technical build and set up and are trying to map that to a subdomain of our company website. (We can't host it on our own server, unfortunately). My question is: for WP blogs hosted via WP you can buy a domain mapping upgrade and I'm trying to find a similar plugin that could offer the same thing that would apply to our GoDaddy hosting and point to our subdomain (GD apparently doesn't offer the domain mapping). Anyone have any thoughts, please?
Web Design | | josh-riley0 -
Optimal redirect configuration from a misspelled domain that we own.
We have a handful of inbound links to www.t-chek.com (note the hyphen). Our normal site is www.tchek.com (no hyphen). We own both domains and have some sort of domain-wide redirect set up now. This works fine for traffic, but I suspect it's not optimal for SEO purposes. I came to this conclusion by looking in OSE and noticing that none of the inbound links to www.t-chek.com were also being attributed to www.tchek.com. 2 questions: Is it immediately evident what type of redirect I have in place now, or do I need to figure that out? Is the fix as simple as editing the .htaccess file on the hyphenated domain? I don't have direct control over the hyphenated domain, and I'd like to be able to know exactly what we need to do so I can request help from my IT department. I'd appreciate hearing your wisdom. Thanks!
Web Design | | SheriGolla0