The topic of local domains (ccTLDs) is one that comes up regularly in discussions around International SEO. I get asked regularly if and when a local domain should be used and more importantly: why should a local domain be used? This article will go deeper into local domains and why you should be aware of their impact on your international website’s organic search performance.
Browsing Posts tagged Multilingual SEO
If you’re interested in Search Marketing and running a website that targets multiple countries, you will undoubtedly have come across the topic of local hosting. Unlike other SEO factors, local hosting is a topic of heated debate and opinions on the actual impact of local hosting tend to differ. Unfortunately the answer to this question, quite literally, is that “it depends”.
Obviously that would make both a short and rather unhelpful article, so let us investigate the various situations you could find yourself in – and whether or not local hosting could help you.
“We used this reputable translation company to translate our website but we don’t show up in the local search engines… What did it go wrong?“ This is something I hear from clients who want to market non-English countries through the web all the time. They usually find the process gruelling and expensive.
Website localisation is the practice of creating a local version of a website for a different country/language. My friend Davide Corradi is a big advocate of it. Literal translation is not recommended as the translator may translate the content with words that are not going to include the most researched keywords in that particular market. To avoid this issue, the translator needs to have some knowledge of SEO and use some techniques in order to make the copy SEO worthy. Here are some tips and examples anybody can use to make the process much easier.
