Whirlpool

We sell an Australian made range of products using Inetrspire shopping cart on a www.ourbrand.com.au domain. Somehow we get a few hits from overseas searching for information on what we are about, but we could do much better if we had versions of our website hosted say at www.ourbrand.co.uk, www.ourbrand.asia etc

I am not an expert, but I would think we would get a lot more people hitting our website if the whole site, and all its information were duplicated on these other domain names. So when someone in the UK does a local google search for a keyword which might be on page 6 of our website, we still get ranked well as the site is UK based. This would work much better than a redirection to our aussie site.

Are there any web developers who can think of a cost efffective way this can be done? Ideally we would want a UK based site, a .com based site, and three others which will be foreign language.

At the moment we are with Interspire but will have to change probably due to the fact it does not support multiple languages.

mainsite.com.au – mainsite.com
mainsite.com.au/uk – mainsite.co.uk
mainsite.com.au/us – mainsite.com

I've done that before and just simply pointed the domains at the url. lol.

Magento supports this really well.

Thanks for that and excuse the possible misunderstanding. But just pointing the UK domain at the Australian URL is not going to show up if someone did a Google UK search for "jet rocket pack" (not out website btw:) ) which might be on page 6 ofour website as one of 20 products we sell and give information for.

Just to clarify: Someone in the UK does a local search for Jet Rocket Pack information. Our page would show up if the page was www.ourbrand.co.uk/jetrocketpack.html and a whole heap of information there on that page on the .uk domain.

It would not show up if someone did a UK local search for Jet Rocket Pack, as the domain www.mybrand.co.uk just redirects to an aussie domain, and so Google wont pick up anything there.

God i hope that makes sense.

Rummpy writes...

God i hope that makes sense.

In other words, you are concerned that a non-local domain name will prevent you from being searched as effectively by the local populace of that particular nation.

Instead you'd rather have multiple copies of the same stuff, do three times the work and maintain three times the content. Not viable, really, and it's a pain in the bum to manage slight variations of a site.

Burnouts suggest a good alternative. That technique is common, even without the alternative domain name.

You could also try subdomains:

uk.jetpacks.com.au
sg.jetpacks.com.au

Otherwise you have to fight for your domain names in other countries, and you might find someone already has a domain you want. Suddenly you have a potpourri of non-canon names and your product identity gets diluted (also looks like spam).

www.somethingairborne.co.uk
www.zoomboosters.com.sg
www.intheair.com.de

all pointing to your brand? That isn't helpful for you.

Hi Ironheart..thanks for the input. Yes I am concerned that "a non local domain name will prevent us from being searched effectively" when people search for us in that country. Just as when i search for "rocketpacks" using a Google Australia search, the local ones will come up before the UK. Thats the point of a local search.

I wonder what is achieved using Burnouts suggestion? Maybe he could explain it? If he has domain names that are empty except for a re-direction to another website, will that achieve anything in terms of traffic when Google does it sweep? For Google, those other domains are effectively empty?

As we have a local physical presence in the UK, and soon other countries, and a website that has a lot of information and brings in a lot of business, it is in fact viable to do 3 times the work if it gives us an advantage in that country. That is just part of building a market overseas.

The suggestion to look at Magento we considered. However, we got one quote of US$20 000-$30 000 to migrate our existing website (which is not that complicated and all the images are already done) to Magento. If there are any Magento developers here that want to have a look, please PM your details.

One option might be to purchase a shopping cart for each country. The painful part then will be configuring each shopping cart with eway, and of course logging into each separately to process orders.

Another option would be to mimic the shopping cart look in each country, but have the buttons link back to the buy part of our shopping cart.

Rummpy writes...

I wonder what is achieved using Burnouts suggestion? Maybe he could explain it?

Burnouts is (presumably) basically saying, "Keep all the data here, in Australia, in separate folders as suggested. Then, buy your other overseas domain names, and point them to your separate folders on your Australian hosting."

This means your data is always closer to you, and you don't have to deal with international politics and dramas.

If he has domain names that are empty except for a re-direction to another website, will that achieve anything in terms of traffic when Google does it sweep? For Google, those other domains are effectively empty?

One thing you should know is that Google doesn't give a flip where data is actually hosted. The domain name matters, but the file servers hosting your stuff doesn't count for anything. That's why you can move data around from server to server, and still maintain your search rankings (so long as the links and domain name don't change etc)

I think what Burnouts is suggesting is not putting a redirect in, but using the /uk and /us folders in your overseas host settings, such that

www.jetpackuk.co.uk == www.mainsite.com.au/uk
www.jetpackuk.co.uk/main.html == www.mainsite.com.au/uk/main.html

As we have a local physical presence in the UK, and soon other countries, and a website that has a lot of information and brings in a lot of business, it is in fact viable to do 3 times the work if it gives us an advantage in that country

Helly Hansen, an outdoorswear company, has physical presences in many countries but only one site (that I know of): www.hellyhansen.com. They aren't particularly small fish.

It might be viable to do 3 times the work to gain the advantage, but it's more viable to organise your data in an extensible and easy way that results in you doing less than 3 times the work for the same amount of gain.

Having three subdirectories on Australiam hosting, from which the UK/SG/US domains get their data, saves you from messing about with international hosting and crap like that. All you need to do is configure an international domain name, and you're set.

Google is pretty clear that if you want to target multiple regions which share a language then you should set up your site on a gTLD like ourbrand.com and use Webmaster Tools to associate different areas of the site with different regions (e.g. uk.ourbrand.com). If you make the geotarget explicit then au.ourbrand.com is supposed to rank no differently than ourbrand.com.au (in Google's index).

What's not clear is how to effectively target multiple regions using exactly the same content at the same location. So you will probably have some work to do in any case.

Thanks Shuriken...didnt even know about Webmaster Tools. Trying to work through that now.

The Helly Hansen site seems to show exactly the problem I want to avoid. If I do a Google search for "Ocean Racing Suit", their product dominated the whole first page. But when I did an Australia Google search using the same keywords, it didnt get a mention.

Rummpy writes...

The Helly Hansen site seems to show exactly the problem I want to avoid. If I do a Google search for "Ocean Racing Suit", their product dominated the whole first page. But when I did an Australia Google search using the same keywords, it didnt get a mention.

Of course not, but you're confusing the issue. Go out on the street in Australia and ask the average person about 4WD brands they know of. Chances are that Lada won't get a mention.
Go to Russia on the other hand and it's likely to rate highly.

Google searches differ from country to country primarily because of the backlinks found in that country. Brand awareness and advertising plays a major part even on the web. Just because you're popular here in Australia and you buy and host a www.mybrand.co.uk domain doesn't mean you become a success overnight in the UK. You still have to work hard to establish your presence there...

Google has just posted a blog which could be handy: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2010/03/working-with-multi-regional-websites.html

Greg writes...

Google has just posted a blog which could be handy: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2010/03/working-with-multi-regional-websites.html(preview)

Nice find :)

Thanks for the links..good find and the tip on the backlinks.

Not arguing here, just asking the question. You are saying that when Google does its sweep, and finds on www.mybrand.co.uk/rocketpacks.html information on rocket packs, links on rocket packs, reviews on rocket packs... it does not rate any higher on a UK local search then that same information on a .com.au website? To me it doesnt seem to be the case

(no shiit about the "overnight success" and "working hard"..wouldn't be asking these questions if I wasnt aware of how it takes work to build a brand presence in Australia and have spent a few years doing it ).

Rummpy writes...

www.mybrand.co.uk/rocketpacks.html(preview) information on rocket packs, links on rocket packs, reviews on rocket packs... it does not rate any higher on a UK local search then that same information on a .com.au website? To me it doesnt seem to be the case

Probably does, however the following would be the same:

uk.mybrand.com.au/rocketpacks.html
www.mybrand.com.au/uk/rocketpacks.html

if you use Google's Webmaster Tools. As the article linked to by Greg explains, there is no penalty as such and in fact, I've seen an increasing number of large companies dishing out an international site with localised content a la:

www.mybrand.com/<locale_code>/rocketpacks.html

Ma®3k writes...

Probably does, however the following would be the same:

uk.mybrand.com.au/rocketpacks.html
www.mybrand.com.au/uk/rocketpacks.html

Only sites on gTLDs can be geotargetted using Webmaster Tools though.

shuriken writes...

Only sites on gTLDs can be geotargetted using Webmaster Tools though.

Bugger :)