Help please! .com or .ie SEO & facebook

elvis_lives

Hi,

Little bit of a predicament and looking for some advice.

I run a website on a .ie domain. Its going good and shows up in google ireland as its based in Ireland and is using the .ie.

I now want to open a .co.uk version of the website. The .co.uk will have different pricing (slighty dearer) but same layout.

I also own the .com - this currently redirects to .ie (.co.uk is not active).

I have read a lot and it seems Google is OK with me having 2 websites with the same content, once it can distinguish its for different markets.

My problem is my Facebook page. I have only got one, which has 20000 likes. Its link is for .ie website. I don't really want to make a seperate one for the .co.uk ... but then the problem is... same I post a picture, and people ask where can I get it... I can't say "get it here: example.ie or example.co.uk"
I won't know where they are from anyway.

So, I am thinking of making a clone of the .ie and giving it the .com. Then it will redirect people via GEOip to the .ie or the .co.uk.

The pro of doing this is on Facebook I can say get it at "example.com" and give no price, as they will see it when they land on the page for there country. (So I give the URL example.com - Then UK customers land on example.co.uk and Irish customers land on .ie)

But will Google punish me for having a "clone"?

The other option I am thinking is transfering the .ie to the .com, and on the .com have the GEOip redirect. But then, the .ie will be useless and Irish customers might not think I am irish or might think its from USA.

Pulling my hair out here. Does anyone have any solution? Am I over thinking things here?

Sorry for the long post but hopefully anyone with some experience or knowledge might be able to help me.

Thanks

mad dave 123

Hi there.
I'm not an expert in this area but I often websites which are .com and when you log in from ireland the domain ends in .com/ireland - see the Fedex website as an example.
I would advise not copying the website as google Panda will destroy you - can be tricky to get this done right.

I think a .com/ireland would be the best solution but there is a benefit in having the .ie so I don't think there is one answer - it more of a preference thing.

brian_ire

Hi Elvis,

Been having a think about this one, because really it does come down to the Facebook page causing the headache.

There are a number of setups you can use but seeing that you already have the .ie as the main site, I would suggest duping that over to the .co.uk (and updating for local content, eg £ etc and no reference to Euro in text).

The with the .com simply having a landing page which gives the option to visit either your .ie or .co.uk

Now that doesn't solve your Facebook issue but the headache involved (and development costs) of taking a different approach may not be worth it.

I definitely would advise against cloning the .ie over to the .com and using the GEOip. I would have to assume you'll get hit for duplicate content by doing that as you'll have 3 sites essentially, .com, .ie and .co.uk.

I worked with a company before who had a similar issue, they took the approach I recommended above, and with their FB updates they did post links to both sites. If you use url shortners it tends not to be so big of a deal. For example "get it here for €40 bit.ly/xyz or £30 bit.ly/axyz"

Very interested to hear others input. I'm quite sure there will be a way around this with some coding trickery, but I'm always so concious of the SEO side of things and you really don't want to do anything to damage that!

Cheers,
Brian

PaulPinnacle

The obvious solution with the Facebook page is to pick a primary location and a secondary location (i.e. have your € store as the primary as it's serving a larger potential market), send out one status update to your users based in the UK with the sterling link and then send a different update to everyone else that likes your page with the euro link. If you're not familiar with targeting posts it's certainly something to investigate and see how you might use it in the future.

There are a number of issues with the plan to mirror sites without unique content. While it might technically be 'ok' to do, that doesn't mean you should do it or that it's the most beneficial way to do it. It has been discussed at length here on the forums (I know I've contributed to that discussion multiple times) and on nearly every SEO site at some point, so I won't waste time repeating the same content other than to say you're losing out on a huge amount of authority by mirroring and it probably isn't the most advisable way for you to do it.

elvis_lives

Thank you very much for your replies.

I did look at have ie.example.com, uk.example.com but I was reading on a blog that this can cause problems with SEO also, and confuse customers.

It really is the Facebook page that is the issue. Most of my traffic/sales come from it.

I do like the idea of the URL shortener. The only issue I am thinking I might have with this is the pricing. The UK website will be a little dearer than the .ie one, so I might get people saying "That exchange rate is bad".

See at the moment, 90% of my sales are coming from Ireland. I have promoted the page to the UK, but I really think UK customers don't like buying from Irish websites, as they worry about Returns (having to send back to Ireland). Right now, the website can be changed to Sterling, but I still feel this is an issue (Hence why I want to have a co.uk with a UK returns address) I def think Irish people have no issues shopping on a UK websites (we're used to it) but I think UK people prefer shopping on .co.uk sites.

I am wondering, would it be possible to have example.com with no content, but use the GEOip to redirect the customers? Like a index.html with just that code? So then technically I can say to the customers on Facebook "Click here "bit.ly/xyz" which will go to the example.com, but then redirect Irish people to the .ie and UK people to the .co.uk?

I have been researching this the last few days, I see that most companies can have a "Switch Region/Global settings" on their Facebook page, but this isn't available to small pages like mine. Then there are other large companies who just have a Facebook page targeting their main country and no Facebook page for the other countries.

It really is confusing. Right now Ireland is my main sales, but I do think I would have more sales in the UK (Due to population difference) and I don't want to just move the site to the UK altogether.

Thank you all for your help it really is good to hear different angles.

mark8511

elvis_lives wrote: »

Thank you very much for your replies.

I did look at have ie.example.com, uk.example.com but I was reading on a blog that this can cause problems with SEO also, and confuse customers.

It really is the Facebook page that is the issue. Most of my traffic/sales come from it.

Hi I am not sure that you are aware of facebook page cloning, where some experts can create a clone page of your facebook page. After cloning there will be 2 separate pages with same followers.

Then you can rename one page to like yourbusiness.uk and other to .ie.

Then you can start from there managing 2 facebook pages for different markets with your same followers on both.

Or best will be on domain side, create 2 currencies in store and put prices for both when you put new product in store. ( no exchange will be required). Then some one opening website from uk ( redirect them to uk currency ) and from Ireland to ( Irish). like sportsdirect doing.

Other thing is when you will create a sub domain, then it is like fresh website for google and will be hard to rank well in google, will advise to focus on just one website( if your products are same) with 2 currency options.

You can redirect visitors to accurate currency with Geo Ip and also can put a pop on front page to choose the country or currency at very start.

Hope this may help you in deciding.