SEO + international sites? country.domain.com or domain.country?
- by Pure.Krome
Hi folks,
is it better to have seperate country specific domains (which costs more money) or subdomains which define the country, for better SEO?
eg.
stackoverflow.com
stackoverflow.com.au
stackoverflow.co.uk
vs
stackoverflow.com
au.stackoverflow.com
uk.stackoverflow.com
Assumption: int the search engine web master tools, each subdomain are associated to a country.
eg. au.stackoverflow.com is associated to the country Australia.
cheers!
Update
I understand that both methods do work, especially when i utilize the assumption, listed above. The question is about: Which method is better? Is there such a small SEO difference between them? Is the first method way way way better than the second with getting better SEO results?
Update #2
A number of folks have suggested that the following is a good/better approach:
stackoverflow.com/
stackoverflow.com/au
stackoverflow.com/uk
By adding a country specific iso
code to the end of the url/the first
folder of the domain can be recognised
as the country.
But a number of SEO mates have suggested that this is a valuable waste of folder level space. Er.. how can i explain. Ok, it's been suggested by some SEO experts that if the number of levels or folders in the domain exceeds 5 then the page drops dramatically in importance. Basically, you don't want to make it deep. As such, adding the country as the first level can be considered a waste, especially when it can be handled by the domain OR subdomain - hence the question :)
So, any more thoughts on this? (Maybe SO is the wrong place to ask this question?)
