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I am just launching my website internationally and to be honest I have limited knowledge of organic listing on local search engines and directories. I understand the principle of having local domains but, I am worried about how multiple sites could be considered spam.
To set the scene my website is selling a large number of widgets (about 15,000) and there is little difference between each site apart from payment options for each country and a slightly different structure depending on which widgets are most popular in each country. Each site will also translated, into relevant languages. All site will be hosted on the same server in the US. The sites will also be linked to each other through one central domain.
I am mainly concerned about the effects of accidentally spamming the SE. Especially in English speaking countries like NZ, Ireland, Canada and Australia. I assume the chance of spaming none English speaking counties is reduced as the content is effectively different.
Also in instances where I am unable to get relevant local domains is the chance of spaming increased if I were to use a sub domains such as [ie.example.com...]
Could someone explain if this is a problem and any suggestion?
Thanks
[edited by: Woz at 1:28 pm (utc) on Mar. 29, 2004]
[edit reason] examplified URL [/edit]
Better is to split it up into different languages and make all information available in all languages.
Only build in differences per country where appropiate, with checkout for instance...
That way it would be possible for a french-speaking person to purchase something from your US site in his native language and using the US checkout options! Now that is user friendly! :D
Get the idea?
just my 1.5 cents
You're right about the local search relevance. There are still many directories and engines that limit themselves to certain domains. I think it's still worth the bump to use local domains. I use several and have not had any problems. However, most of my local domains also have content in the local language...which is not necessarily English.
Splitting up your site for different countries is often a good idea as you can customize those sites to the products you will be selling in that market. It is also useful to understand that even if the target market speaks English, there are certain marketing strategies that may be fine tuned to that particular region. It's not just a question of your shopping cart selling in different currencies, but being savvy enough in the local lingo to convince a local buyer. As you probably well know, high pressure American used car salesman tactics are not always acceptable to the global market ;)
Sorry to disagree DoppyNL but, I think you are missing the point (or maybe I am), having relevant domains is big bonus in gaining organic traffic from country relevant search engines.
I do agree that it is usefull to own a domain to get type-in traffic. But it is also possible to redirect users that enter on that page to another domain and still give them the info in their own language.
Splitting up your site for different countries is often a good idea as you can customize those sites to the products you will be selling in that market.
This also applies to getting driver updates from a specific company.
When going to their site they ask me where I'm from -> Who cares; I just need the driver!
So I tell them I'm from the netherlands and start looking for the driver --> can't find it! HELP
I go back to the starting page and tell them I'm from the US and start looking again --> found it in 3 minutes!
Turns out they are hiding everything for that specific product when you're from the netherlands, simply because they don't sell it there... smart...
Most people just want to buy something or are looking for info; they don't want to tell you where they are from in the beginning. And if you've got product X; you might as well sell it everywhere!
The specific advertising per region might indeed be usefull, but I doubt that you would want a complete different site for every region; you are creating loads of work for yourself! I think it is better to have a uniform site and way to sell your stuff so it is clear and informative to all visitors, this results in people understanding what is going on on your site and how stuff works and they will be happier then if they would have to find out over and over.
But ofcourse, this is just me babbling.
We have several sites: one of them has several "language" subdirectories. Other sites have a separate domain for each language, sometimes (when possible) local domain.
Despite the fact that:
- those site are similar
- they are optimized in the same way
- they have about the same link popularity
- they are included in the same most important directories (Yahoo, Dmoz, Looksmart etc.)
the language pages of the site with subdirectories have less visitors (about half..)
Considering the small additional fees for a domain and hosting cost, I strongly suggest you separate domains per separate language.
I've never noticed some search engine's excluding specific tld's....That's because your .com domains won't be included ;) Seriously though, there are some smaller SEs that only spider certain domains. Then there are also some small directory sites that will only include you if you have a local domain.
But I want to buy product X and live in country A and you are only selling product X in country B! :-(They have these things called licensing agreements that prohibit that in some cases. For example, I live in Japan and want to buy an English version of Windows from Amazon...guess what? I can't. Why? Microsoft Japan is the only company licensed to sell that software in Japan. Amazon USA won't sell it to me. Maybe that's inconvenient for me, but the legal agreements are in place, and one clear way to work with a situation like this is to have different content on a local domain.
we often use subdomains based on language e.g. japanese.mysite.com and haven't hit any spamming problems. we have had issues where both japanese.mysite.com and mysite.com/japanese are valid; this can raise questions from certain engines/directories (particularly russian ones for some reason!)
