Our Head of SEO, Emily Mace, has been invited once again to share her knowledge with the wider SEO community at the BrightonSEO conference. In her session Emily looked at Domain Strategies for International Success. She focused on some of her research looking into what performs the best for SEO in a number of key markets including Russia, China and South Korea.

2. INTERNATIONAL DOMAINS

3. Getting search engines to see you as international
Getting visibility!
Getting potential visitors to think you’re local
WHY DOMAINS ARE IMPORTANT
#BrightonSEO @IAmTheLaserHawk @ObanDigital

4. WE ALL KNOW THE OPTIONS
#BrightonSEO @IAmTheLaserHawk @ObanDigital
www.mysite.CO.UK
ccTLD
www.mysite.com/UK
Sub
Folder
UK.mysite.com
Sub
Domain

5. ccTLD STANDARD PROS AND CONS
#BrightonSEO @IAmTheLaserHawk @ObanDigital
Pros
Seen as local by search engines
Good for usability
Can host locally
Cons
New website
Lots of different URLs
Extra costs

6. SUB FOLDER STANDARD PROS AND CONS
#BrightonSEO @IAmTheLaserHawk @ObanDigital
Pros
Easy to set up
Benefits from existing SEO
No extra costs for domains
Cons
Can’t host locally
Not automatically seen as local
Doesn’t work if you’ve got a ccTLD

7. SUB DOMAIN STANDARD PROS AND CONS
#BrightonSEO @IAmTheLaserHawk @ObanDigital
Pros
Some connection to existing SEO
Country code at front looks good
No extra costs for domain
Cons
Can’t host locally
Not seen as local by search engines
Doesn’t work if you’ve got a ccTLD

8. WE ALL KNOW THE DRILL
#BrightonSEO @IAmTheLaserHawk @ObanDigital
Blah, blah, blah!

9. WHITEBOARD FRIDAY TOO
#BrightonSEO @IAmTheLaserHawk @ObanDigital

10. DIFFERENT SEARCH ENGINES
#BrightonSEO @IAmTheLaserHawk @ObanDigital

11. REAL WORLD DOMAIN SELECTION

12. BUT REALLY….
#BrightonSEO @IAmTheLaserHawk @ObanDigital
How do you choose?
How do you know which
one is right?
Does one solution fit all?

13. Leading phone brands in 5 markets
Seed list of a couple of hundred
keywords
Russia, China, South Korea, Germany,
UK
What can we learn about domain
strategy and local rankings?
LET’S DO A TEST
#BrightonSEO @IAmTheLaserHawk @ObanDigital

14. WHAT DID WE FIND?

15. CHINA d
#BrightonSEO @IAmTheLaserHawk @ObanDigital
Most of the domains we found were TLDs
Local sites accounted for most Baidu results
and most of these will be native .com sites
with no sub folder or sub domain

16. CHINA ddddd
#BrightonSEO @IAmTheLaserHawk @ObanDigital
ccTLDs vs generic TLDs
Small number of not local ccTLDs. This
accounts for 52 of the 12,000 results
though!

17. CHINA SUMMARY
#BrightonSEO @IAmTheLaserHawk @ObanDigital
Evidence generic TLDs work in this sector.
Non-natively Chinese sites a ccTLD seems best.
Stand alone Chinese language site work well.
Non local ccTLDs don’t work – SHOCKER!!
Most of the sites we found were local sites.
As always Baidu sites rank well in Baidu – 10% of results are Baidu domains.

18. SOUTH KOREA
#BrightonSEO @IAmTheLaserHawk @ObanDigital
.com domains fair the best in Naver
ccTLDs work well

19. SOUTH KOREA SUMMARY
#BrightonSEO @IAmTheLaserHawk @ObanDigital
Not local ccTLDs hardly rank accounting for just 1%.
Naver results are varied and about more than websites.
Remember local based sites such as Naver Café and Naver Encyclopaedia
to help promote your site.
Domain strategy less important.

20. RUSSIA
#BrightonSEO @IAmTheLaserHawk @ObanDigital
Yandex has always favoured .ru
domains and this is still the case

21. RUSSIA SUMMARY
Interestingly Yandex also shows a high number of non local ccTLDs
Most of these are sites from the Ukraine

22. GERMANY (A CLOSE NEIGHBOUR)
#BrightonSEO @IAmTheLaserHawk @ObanDigital
Big bias towards ccTLDs in the German
market

23. GERMANY SUMMARY
.de domains rank the best in Germany.
Usability shows that the German market is more likely to click on these too, so
Google is supporting this.
Only 1% of domains were not local ccTLDs – split between Austrian, Swiss and
UK domains.
Not local ccTLDs generally rank outside the top 10.

24. UK (JUST BECAUSE IT’S HOME!)
#BrightonSEO @IAmTheLaserHawk @ObanDigital
In the UK .com domains fair better than
ccTLDs

25. UK SUMMARY
#BrightonSEO @IAmTheLaserHawk @ObanDigital
Interestingly the UK has a higher number of non-local ccTLDs.
5% of the rankings we reviewed were ccTLDs from outside the UK.
Lots of Australian sites rank well in the UK on .com.au sites.
Some of these Australian sites rank in high positions including in the top 5.

26. ONE SIZE FITS ALL?
#BrightonSEO @IAmTheLaserHawk @ObanDigital
One size clearly doesn’t fit all here.
Some markets favour .com sites, some a local ccTLD.
In our experiment sub domains and sub folders don’t work as well.

27. SO HOW DO YOU CHOOSE?

28. RESEARCH
#BrightonSEO @IAmTheLaserHawk @ObanDigital
Research is key – our research was one industry and only five markets.
What ranks at the moment?
What’s the prevalent domain strategy winning in the local market?

29. YOUR INTERNAL SETUP
#BrightonSEO @IAmTheLaserHawk @ObanDigital
How does your CMS work?
What does your current site work like?
How will websites be targeted?

30. ccTLDS
#BrightonSEO @IAmTheLaserHawk @ObanDigital
Only work if you are targeting a country and not a language.
Still need hreflang tags.
Can’t build out other international subfolders or subdomains on a ccTLD.

31. EMILY’S MANDATORY RANT
#BrightonSEO @IAmTheLaserHawk @ObanDigital
Whatever approach….. DON’T IP SERVE

32. DON’T FORGET WHITEBOARD FRIDAY
#BrightonSEO @IAmTheLaserHawk @ObanDigital
Make sure it makes sense – in the local language!
Make it pronounceable – in the local language!
Make it memorable for local people!

33. Thanks!
Any questions?
www.obandigital.com | +44 1273 613 400 | @ObanDigital |
@IAmTheLaserHawk | #BrightonSEO
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