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Hi Guys, I'm ranking really well for my domains in my local geo - im wondering if it will be more effective if i moved the co.nz and com.au over to the .com - the only thing is will i still see my com.au and co.nz results on the .com?

Hi I take it once you have domain mapped a country specific subfolder to a country specific TLD (for better local region targeting reasons) Google perceives it as a completely separate entity and it no longer shares any of the parent sites domain benefits (such as domain authority etc) so from that point on requires its own dedicated link building etc ? All Best Dan

Recently our company is going to expand our site from just english to multi-language, including english, french, german, japanese, and chinese. I deeply understand a solid and feasible plan is pretty important, so I want to ask you mozzers for help before we taking action! Our site is a business site which sells eBook software, for the product pages, the ranks are taken by famous software download sites like cnet, softonic, etc. So the main source of our organic traffic is the guide post, long-tail keywords. We are going to manually translate the product pages and guide post pages which targeting on important keywords into other languages. Not the entire english site. So my primary question is: should I use the sub-domain or sub-category to build the non-english pages? "www.example.com/fr/" or "fr.example.com"? The second question: As we are going to manually translate the entire pages into other languages, should I use the "rel=alternate hreflang=x" tags? Because Google's official guideline says if we only translate the navigations or just part of the content, we should use this tag. And what's your tips for building a multi-language site? Please let me know them as much as possible Thanks!

Bonjour! If with rel="alternate" hreflang="x" we can indicate to Google that an URL have translated equivalents of a page, are the links metrics splited between all pages or Google considers all the pages as only one? Thanks! Maxime

Hi all This is the situation. I have a client who runs a number of ccTLD sites (all exact match brand name domains), including a .com which they use for the US. This is a hair care product and due to Advertising Standards Authority (UK) restrictions, they cannot use a certain phrase to promote their products - 'hair loss' on the domain.co.uk site. However, in the US, there is no such restriction and can use wording this on the site. A brand name search in google.co.uk brings up .co.uk as 1st result and .com as 2nd result, so the .com is indexed in google.co.uk. Any non-US user visiting domain.com will be redirected to their ccTLD site. Here's my question - could I feasibly get the domain.com site ranking in google.co.uk for certain 'hair loss' based keyphrases, considering the fact that I can mention it in the copy on there but not on the domain.co.uk site. Would I need to remove any Geographic Target in the WMT account for domain.com? Or is this a form of Google cloaking and could see the site penalised? Thanks

Hi guys, I own a guesthouse which is facing a messy structural problem in its own web presence: Portuguese: www.residencia-aeminium-coimbra.com.pt English: www.residencia-aeminium-coimbra.com Spanish: www.residencia-aeminium-coimbra.com/espanol Looking for success in the long term, a few years ago, we decided to host 3 TLDs: 1 for global international english, 1 for local portuguese and 1 for the main foreign market Spain (we already redirected it to a subfolder in the .com in the meanwhile). We tried to promote each one of these in their targeted markets -  mainly the .com got back-links links and authority. With time, google local appeared and changed the face of google accommodation rankings. Google local are now the top results for most searches, even outside the country, and I came to the conclusion that the TLD assets were now a problem. For instance, I can only add 1 domain to google local..what language should this be? It is the same for most social media presence..How should international markets be targeted in a local page? Since TLDs do not seem to be an advantage right now, I am thinking we should be moving to a single domain and use a folder structure so we can use it everywhere. Questions: 1. In terms of structure (TLD or Folder) and multi-lingual targeting what is the current best practice for hotels that show in local results but promote internationally? 2. What language should I point google local results to? And our Facebook page, etc? 3. If I move things around to a folder structure, what domain should I use? the .com is in english and has the most authority and links according to opensiteexplorer the .com.pt is in portuguese, our local language and our main market (but only 35% share) should I create a new domain ".pt"? 4. I don't think that geo-targeting the languages is worth it in this case, what do you think? Kind Regards
Ricardo Madeira
Residencia Aeminium Coimbra

One of my clients is targeting UK customers. They have UK IP address. I then noticed that they had their Geographic target set to "Target users in: United States". I advised them to change this. Anyone know: How this could have been set, the client says they didn't do it? How long will it take for Google to see this has been changed? Thanks in advance. Justin